This had been the case for most of my life. From childhood on, I struggled to make friends, which took a toll on my self-worth. By adolescence, my mental health had deteriorated, and I spent close to a year cycling through multiple psychiatric hospitalizations, outpatient programs, and group homes for depression and self-harm. At age 15, I was groomed online by a much older man, culminating in a traumatic sexual assault. Immediately afterward I tried to end my life, then spent a year in a youth residential treatment center in Utah.

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The term “peptide” picks out a broad category. Peptides are small versions of proteins, or segments of proteins. Our bodies make a variety of peptides to send signals between cells, regulating everything from blood pressure to wound healing, and from sleep cycles to fat storage. Peptide drugs can interact directly with these signaling pathways. GLP-1s, the weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic, are peptides that alter hunger signaling. Insulin is a peptide drug that duplicates a natural peptide needed to extract energy from food. Both, of course, are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Other promising drugs are slowly making their way through the pipeline.

These are not controversial, nor are the powdered collagen peptides sold in Whole Foods and other health food stores. The latter are regulated by the FDA as supplements—a category they fall into because they are derived from cattle and fish and are considered a component of food. They may not necessarily do anything, but they’re considered safe enough, as are peptides sold in skin creams and approved as cosmetics.

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These questions are meant to tell us about a person’s risks. But no one taught me to ask a question that now seems embarrassingly obvious, given that we spend about 90 percent of our time indoors: What kind of environment are you living in?

We are trained to think of health as something that happens largely inside the body. Organs malfunction, hormones shift, and cells mutate. We search for pathology in blood and on scans. Sometimes that is exactly where the answer is, but not always.

What enters the lungs matters—hence the typical “Do you smoke?” question. But many of us spend almost all of our time breathing the air of homes, offices, schools, hospitals, barracks, dormitories, and apartment buildings. We assume these spaces are neutral backdrops to our lives, when in fact they are active participants.

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By the time she’s born, those 6 to 7 million eggs will have dropped to about 1 or 2 million. And by the time she’s 27.5—the average age an American woman has her first child—only 200,000 remain, if she’s lucky.

Most people, and especially most men, don’t think about those odds until they’re sitting in a fertility clinic.

That was the case for Travis Potter. In 2022, the then–40 year-old Wall Street hedge-fund manager and his wife, 37, had spent months in IVF clinics, and tens of thousands of dollars on hormonal treatment, trying to have a second kid.

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“My blood sugar was out of control. My weight was out of control,” she said. And yet, despite her worsening arthritis and type 2 diabetes, she still craved food.

She also craved alcohol, and was beginning to worry that her drinking habits were unhealthy.

And then, just like that: One shot took it all away. Her daily drink turned into one a month, her chronic joint pain vanished, she dropped 25 pounds. Ozempic didn’t just improve her health, it gave her choices—to do “things in life that I wasn’t doing before,” like going to the gym each day. She was finally sleeping through the night.

And yet when we spoke recently, she said she wasn’t sure Ozempic had made her life better. “My mind and my day-to-day is kind of gray,” Francis told me. In the first 48 hours after she injects herself—which is every week—the emotional impact is almost unbearable. “I just feel worthless,” she said.

This is the trade-off of weight loss for her: “You don’t want to be involved in life” for two days of every week.

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This is one of the greatest triumphs in the history of public health, and groups like the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Lung Association—and the FDA itself—should be celebrating. Instead, they are obsessing over whether flavored e-cigarettes should be allowed.

It's a complete waste of time. There are already plenty of vapes on the market in every conceivable flavor, illegally. Kids could buy them, but don’t. And the only thing really at stake in the fight over flavored vapes is whether adults should have easy access to what has proven to be one of the best ways to quit tobacco, which continues to kill people.

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In Ontario alone, 219 people were killed by the end of the next day following their request for “medical assistance in dying” (MAID) in 2023, according to a 2024 report by an advisory committee. About 30 percent of those deaths occurred on the same day that the person sought the government’s permission to die. The committee hasn’t published comparable numbers since then.

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But just how harmful are they, really?

That’s the central question in a new book by professors Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg, released Tuesday. Feed the People! Why Industrial Food Is Good and How to Make It Even Better doesn’t deny that the modern industrial food system has serious flaws. Still, the authors argue, it has dramatically improved food access and safety—reshaping public health in ways that would have once seemed unimaginable.

In the excerpt below, adapted from the book, they contend that processed foods—even ultra-processed ones—aren’t the dietary demons many make them out to be. And today’s calls to purge them entirely and “eat clean,” they suggest, offer no magic fix. In fact, such advice may even leave us worse off. —The Editors

In 1929, the canned-meat company Libby, McNeill & Libby printed a now-legendary pumpkin-pie recipe on the side of cans of its 100% Pure Pumpkin. It was an enormous hit, and pumpkin pie became a national superstar. But the can’s branding wasn’t quite accurate—and still isn’t. According to FDA regulations, the contents of a can of pumpkin can be made of a variety of squashes we don’t conventionally call pumpkins. And, in fact, most canned pumpkin you’ve ever eaten is probably something called a Dickinson squash.

Apologies if you’re a pumpkin purist. But if you are, and you’ve just found this out, what’s the alternative? Roasting and pureeing a pumpkin yourself? That’s a bad idea. Store-bought pumpkins don’t have the right starch or water content for the custard. Go to any bakery or grocery the week before Thanksgiving and ask them what they use for their pies. They’ll tell you the truth: It’s from the can.

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This disconnect has fueled a growing mistrust of the medical establishment—out of which has emerged the Make America Healthy Again movement (MAHA), led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of conventional public health wisdom. While some MAHA policies are controversial, few dispute the source of their appeal: Many parents no longer trust that the experts are acting in their children’s best interests.

Enter family physician and New York Times best-selling author Mark Hyman. His new book, Food Fix Uncensored, released today, argues that government malpractice and powerful corporate interests have rigged the medical and health systems against us. Watch Dr. Hyman’s interview with The Free Press’s Rafaela Siewert here. And read on for an exclusive excerpt from the book, in which Dr. Hyman takes aim at one of the primary culprits: the food industry. Big Food, he argues, is killing our children. And it won’t stop unless we stop it.
—The Editors

Kids today are fatter than ever.

Obesity rates in children have nearly quadrupled since the 1970s. Thirty-six percent are overweight or obese. One in four teenagers now has type 2 diabetes or prediabetes—a condition we used to call “adult-onset diabetes.”

Most of us know that the problem exists, and the Make America Healthy Again movement has made alleviating it one of its main goals. But why has it happened in the first place? The answer is tied to the powerful Big Food lobby—a collection of corporations that subjugate children’s health to the endless pursuit of profit—and to our political leaders who appease it.

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Our patients could sense that something was different, though. At 50 times the potency of heroin, how could they not? The high from the fentanyl component of what they had just snorted or injected came on more quickly and intensely than did heroin, thereby accelerating addiction to the drug. For dealers, this ensured an even more faithful customer base.

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For instance, there was a highly publicized study of cadaver brains in February 2025, using a new technique for finding plastic particles in the body, that concluded that in the most extreme cases, plastic shards made up 0.48 percent of the brain—enough to make a plastic spoon. Other studies, using the same technique, came to the same conclusion, leading to lots of shocking headlines and scary quotes from scientists. Matthew Campen, co-author of the plastic spoon study, even implied that plastic lodged in the brain might cause dementia.

Fast-forward to November, when another group of researchers published commentary in the journal Nature showing that the technique used to find all this plastic couldn’t distinguish the stuff from ordinary fat molecules. The Guardian, which had run some of the most alarmist headlines (“Microscopic Plastics Could Raise Risk of Stroke and Heart Attack, Study Says”), suddenly reversed course. Last week, it published a lengthy article slamming the research, with critics calling the original 2025 brain study a “joke.”

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That era is officially over. The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, developed by the Donald Trump administration, represent a fundamental and long-overdue course correction. We have incorporated the best scientific research and common sense to say clearly what many Americans have known all along: We should eat more real food—high in micronutrients and derived from good sources—and less highly processed food.

The new guidelines, which inform school lunches, meals at military bases, and other government programs, incorporate several significant changes for all Americans to consider.

First, the new guidelines emphasize the critical importance of protein and raise its recommended daily intake by between 50 percent and 100 percent. For years, protein recommendations were based on flawed studies that used urine nitrogen measurements, which underestimate total body protein. Ensuing recommendations were set at a bare minimum to prevent deficiency, not to promote thriving.

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Marty Makary, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and his deputy Kyle Diamantas, laid out the case for the new pyramid in an op-ed for The Free Press, which you can read here. We also asked some doctors, journalists, and other health experts what they think of the changes. Here’s what they told us.

Here is my hot take on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new dietary guidelines.

First, the good:

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For decades, insurance and health-system pressures have required doctors to see more patients in less time. Visits narrow to whatever symptom is in front of you, and the view of the whole person is forgotten. Physicians learn to signal that their time is scarce. Questions are hurried, at best. Patients, sensing or experiencing judgment or dismissal, grow quiet. Many end up avoiding anything but the most urgent medical visits altogether.

Primary care doctors are supposed to be medicine’s first line of defense. A doctor familiar with your medical history can understand the entire state of your health, not just the problem you came in with. That influences whether you get preventive screening, early disease detection, and a thoughtful approach for further treatment. Yet most people spend almost no time thinking critically about choosing a primary care provider; they open the insurance directory and pick whoever is available. Their experience of primary care is often so negative that they can’t see how it matters.

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Folks come here for the drugs. Sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers, all drawn by the promise of the strongest and cheapest highs in America. Somehow, they—the drugs and the people—always end up on Kensington Avenue in Philadelphia, the country’s most notorious open-air drug market.

For years the street ran on heroin; then gangs started putting fentanyl, or “fetty,” in the dope. Then came the animal tranquilizer xylazine, known locally simply as “tranq.” Now, there is something new: medetomidine.

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Nazarro, now 38, had blazed through med school and residency in her 20s. Then there was the blur of years of a high-stress job and breastfeeding and chasing kids. Like Sleeping Beauty, her vanity awoke with a start. Nazarro is an Ohio-based obstetrician/gynecologist, so her first thought wasn’t a peel or Botox. It was estrogen, formulated into a face cream.

“I use it every night, and I feel like my skin is more hydrated, less red, and my fine lines have softened. Estrogen is our key to aging well,” she says. This is what she tells viewers of a social media video she made for the telehealth company Musely, which sells topical beauty products that require a doctor’s prescription because they contain estrogen.

Nazarro is at the vanguard of the latest skirmish in the long-running estrogen wars. At issue is whether this hormone can enhance and extend a woman’s feeling of vitality, or whether it is a dangerous molecule that can hasten disease, even death.

If you are a woman of a certain age, and the algorithm has found you, estrogen’s comeback won’t be news. You’ll have already encountered countless testimonials that estrogen doesn’t just provide relief from hot flashes and mood disturbances, but overall life enhancement.

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For parents looking for definitive guidance on when to vaccinate their kids, and for a medical establishment left in limbo by presidential announcements that circumvent official communication channels, Trump’s post raised more questions than it answered.

There’s no one better equipped to answer these questions than Dr. Vinay Prasad, a name that will be familiar to Free Press readers. (Read all of his pieces here.) Prasad is now the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration, where he oversees the vaccine schedule and regulation.

I spoke with Dr. Prasad to help make sense of it all. Was Trump’s post a change in official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance? What’s the current status of vaccine research and regulation under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? Should children receive the hepatitis B vaccine? Is the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine safe?

Read our conversation below.

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Which is why I called the former Johns Hopkins professor to discuss the Trump administration’s bombshell announcement this week that autism is tied to Tylenol use during pregnancy.

Below is our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity.

Bari Weiss: On Monday at a White House press conference, President Trump, standing alongside you and other members of his administration, declared that autism is linked to Tylenol use during pregnancy. He said that there is “a very increased” risk of autism when pregnant women take Tylenol. Is that true?

Marty Makary: There are a number of pathways involved in autism, each of which may be a cause. As we unlock the science behind these different pathways, we arrive at a point in our investigation where there is enough information that should be made available to the public in real time.

One finding that we believed rose to that level was the association between prenatal acetaminophen and autism—an association that was affirmed in a Harvard review published four weeks ago. One of the co-authors of the study, the dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said that there is a causal association between prenatal acetaminophen and the neurodevelopmental disorders of ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. When the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health is waving a flag in the air about an expanding epidemic that barely existed a generation ago, an epidemic that affects over two million kids in a way that makes their lives brutal, and we know that most acetaminophen prescribed is unnecessary, do you have a moral obligation to let the public know about this body of research?

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Katie Herzog understands this reality intimately. For nearly 20 years, alcoholism took over her life, her relationships, and her career. She tried repeatedly to stop drinking, but it never lasted long. Then, in 2022, she came across an unorthodox treatment online.

It’s called the Sinclair Method (TSM), and it flips abstinence-based recovery on its head: Instead of never touching alcohol, you keep drinking, but first take an opioid blocker. The blocker stops you from feeling the pleasurable effects of alcohol, gradually extinguishing the brain’s craving for it. The results are striking: Nearly 80 percent of TSM participants in clinical trials cut their alcohol use dramatically.

Herzog is one of these success stories. Less than a year after starting TSM, she found her way to sobriety. Then she wrote a book about it. Drink Your Way Sober hits shelves on September 30. We’re thrilled to publish an exclusive excerpt today. —The Editors

I was a chronic drinker for over 20 years. At times, I was drinking between 10 and 12 drinks per day, every day. Short of rehab, I tried all the usual treatments to get better, and even a few less usual ones: Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), cognitive behavioral therapy, individual counseling, group counseling, yoga, cleanses, white-knuckling it through cravings and shakes. At one point, I tried swapping out my drinking habit for a cannabis one, which no drug counselor would recommend, but was definitely less dangerous. The worst thing that happened to me on weed was accidentally inhaling old bong water.

Some things worked, at least for a while. But even when I wasn’t drinking, the obsession with drinking was still there. I marked sober days on my calendar as though I were in prison, counting down each one until eventual relapse.

Each time I relapsed, the consequences got worse. I didn’t just have headaches; I had the shakes—and not just in my hands. My whole head would tremble, like a bobblehead on a car dash. I didn’t just have misadventures and funny stories; my liver hurt. At some point, I realized I was the last one at the party, there so long the party slowly withered away as my drinking buddies got careers or kids or cancer. I was alone with my bottle and miserable for it.

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