The ad that Hims & Hers Health plans to air during the Super Bowl comes at you with rapid-fire visual overload—a giant jiggling belly, bare feet on scales, X-ray results, sugary sodas, a pie in the oven, a measuring tape snug around a waistline—all set to the frenetic hip-hop beat of Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.” A disembodied voice warns: “This system wasn’t built to help us. It was built to keep us sick and stuck.” The Super Bowl spot is a strikingly dark, politicized way of getting at the company’s latest initiative: selling weight-loss drugs to both women and men. The ad also marks a pivot for the telehealth company colloquially known as Hims, which rose to prominence just under a decade ago, slickly marketing hair-loss treatments and erectile-dysfunction drugs to men.

Since Hims’s founding in 2017, the company has been pointing toward a very particular future, one in which the word patient is interchangeable with customer. The Hims brand has primed people to view both their everyday health and the natural-aging processes as problems that can be tweaked and optimized—as if it were peddling operating-system updates for the human body. Now, as the national mood and the business environment shift, Hims’s message is undergoing its own reboot.

Catering to male anxiety can carry a company a long way: If you’re a man in your 30s, as I am, ads featuring Hims’s signature branding—a hip font on a bright background—have become inescapable across Instagram and Facebook. Hims sells all manner of pills, supplements, shampoos, sprays, and serums. Central to the Hims pitch is the fact that many people, especially younger men, avoid regularly going to the doctor; a recent Cleveland Clinic survey found that less than a third of Millennial and Gen Z men receive annual physicals. Hims markets the telehealth experience as a welcome alternative. After filling out an online intake form and communicating with a licensed provider from its partner group about hair loss, for example, you might be prescribed a Hims-branded chewable. One such offering, advertised at $35 or more a month, contains minoxidil, a medication that first hit the market in the 1980s as Rogaine, combined with finasteride, which most people know as Propecia, plus supplements.

On platforms such as Instagram, under the logic of targeted advertising, if you linger over an ad for one hair-growth supplement, similar ads will follow. In my daily tapping and scrolling through the app, Hims ads began to appear everywhere—and eventually got in my head. Some time last year, my self-interrogation started: How long has my hairline had that peak? Was my forehead always that … giant?

“The job of marketing is to influence behavior, and sometimes that means identifying problems that you may not know that you have, or underlying insecurities that may prevent you from losing social currency down the road,” Marcus Collins, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, told me. A former advertising executive, Collins said that he, too, had been bombarded by Hims ads. He could see how Hims was trying to “elevate itself from being a shortcut that represents a hair-loss solution to being a solution for masculinity, to being an outlet for him, for what it means for manliness.”

In December, after my dermatologist examined my scalp during an annual skin screening, I sheepishly asked her about Hims. She rolled her eyes. When we moved to discussing treatment options, she also warned me that a potential side effect of using oral finasteride for hair growth is decreased libido, erectile dysfunction, or both.

After a few minutes of discussion, a topical solution seemed like a better bet than the pill. But there is nothing special about Hims itself. “If you want, I can just call in a minoxidil-finasteride solution to your pharmacy,” my doctor said. “It’ll be cheaper.” She saw me as her patient, not an e-commerce shopper. Still, the fact that I asked about Hims at all made me feel like the company’s pervasive marketing was working on me. One minute, I was reporting, checking out Hims-branded biotin gummies; the next minute, I was practically at the checkout, ordering some myself.

When I spoke with Mike Chi, Hims’s chief commercial officer, he leaned hard into words such as normalization and empower. I told him that the constant barrage of Hims ads had made me feel almost bullied into doing something about my hair. Chi disagreed with my characterization but acknowledged the high volume of the company’s ads. The goal of its campaigns, though, was “to create an emotional connection with a customer,” he said. “And to create that personal connection with a customer, we often have to have varied messaging to find the way in that connects with them.”

Even though Hims’s ubiquitous stuff-for-dudes marketing campaign has proved effective at tapping into male insecurity, treating masculine vulnerabilities with generic drugs has its commercial limits, and Hims faces growing competition in the space. A company called Ro (formerly Roman) has a model similar to Hims’s; Amazon has an online pharmacy and telehealth business. In the past several years, Hims has steadily expanded its business into a broader array of treatments for both men and women: antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication—and, as the Super Bowl spot indicates, weight-loss drugs that include a version of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy. Semaglutide is currently on the FDA drug-shortage list, a status that allows Hims and other companies to sell their own compounded versions. (The makers of Ozempic are urging the FDA to declare an end to the semaglutide shortage.) Going down the compounded glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) path is a bold gambit for Hims. The market for a monthly supply of hair-growth or erectile-dysfunction pills is limited to men in certain age brackets, but the perpetual quest for thinness and hotness transcends demographics.  

By some measures, Hims’s expansion has been successful. The company has accumulated more than 2 million regular customers and achieved a market cap of $9 billion. Last February, the company announced its first profitable quarter. Marketing accounted for 45 percent of Hims’s operating expenses during last year’s third quarter. Peter Fader, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told me that such a percentage is “absolutely high” when it comes to typical marketing costs in a successful operation. “And it’s not sustainable, either,” he added. “A lot of people do question [the company’s] long-term viability,” he said, but he also commended Hims for “rolling with the times.”

Although Hims’s stock has gone up 65 percent in the past month, investment experts seem split over the reason. Some appear confident in the value of the company’s prospects. Others, such as the CNBC host Jim Cramer, suspect that Hims’s surging stock price is the effect of a “short squeeze,” in which speculators’ bet on a future steep decline temporarily boosts the share price.

Even the Super Bowl ad carries pitfalls for Hims. On Friday, Senators Dick Durbin, a Democrat, and Roger Marshall, a Republican, sent a letter to acting FDA Commissioner Sara Brenner stating that Hims’s “Sick of the System” commercial “risks misleading patients by omitting any safety or side effect information” about an injectable weight-loss medication that appears in the ad. In response, a Hims spokesperson told me in an email, “We are complying with existing law and are looking forward to continuing working with Congress and the new Administration to fix the broken health system.” The person went on to imply that the company’s critics are defending the status quo. “The ad calls out industries that are part of a system that fails to prioritize the health of Americans,” the spokesperson said. “And now these industries are asking to shut the ad down.”

Hims is now doing business in a world where a concept such as “Make America healthy again” has rapidly migrated from a fringe political movement to the center of government. And although MAHA purists might shun pharmaceutical solutions, some potential customers might be sympathetic to Hims’s claim of being an ally against “the system.” The one-note, full-volume message in the Hims Super Bowl spot is that everything is rigged against you—keeping you overweight, making you unhealthy—and that you’re right to be mad about that.

The company could be betting that in a political moment when talk of needing more “masculine energy” is playing an outsize part, this vibe shift in its marketing strategy will help it reach an even bigger audience. Hims has done well selling its own recipes for masculine energy; now it figures it can do even better pushing remedies to help you take back control from the elites and make you feel great again. It’s audacious, possibly cynical, and probably very effective.

Ron Johnson may be the most anti-vaccine lawmaker in Congress; he’s the kind of guy who says he’s “sticking up for people who choose not to get vaccinated” while claiming without valid evidence that thousands have died from COVID shots. This morning, at the Capitol, Johnson walked over to his Senate Finance Committee colleague Bill Cassidy, a doctor and a passionate advocate for vaccination, and gave him an affectionate pat on the shoulder. The two of them had just advanced Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services to the Senate floor.

The committee vote, which was held this morning in a room crammed to capacity with what appeared to be roughly equal numbers of Kennedy’s skeptics and devotees, certainly fit with the behavior of a compliant GOP. But it was still surprising in its way, if only because, until this morning, Cassidy had been so clearly wary of giving the nation’s highest role in public health to a prominent anti-vaccine activist. At last week’s confirmation hearings, he seemed like he might even be prepared to cast his vote with the opposition. That didn’t happen.

Whether you like Kennedy or not, the hearings showed that he lacks the basic qualifications to hold this office. He knows very little about the nearly $2 trillion behemoth that he would be tasked with running. He flubbed the basics of programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, and seemed wholly unaware of an important law that governs emergency abortions. The hearings also called attention to a passel of health-related conspiracy theories that RFK Jr. has floated in the past, including that Lyme disease was developed as a bioweapon, that COVID is “ethnically targeted” to infect Caucasians and Black people (and spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people), and that standard childhood vaccinations are damaging or deadly.

As of last Thursday, Kennedy appeared to have unwavering support from the committee’s Republicans, who occupy 14 of its 27 seats—with one notable exception: Cassidy. Prior to taking office, the Louisiana senator had personally led a campaign to vaccinate 36,000 kids against hepatitis B. In an interview with Fox News last month, he said that RFK Jr. is “wrong” about vaccines. And in early 2021, Cassidy joined six other GOP senators in voting to convict Donald Trump on charges of “incitement of insurrection.” The doctor had voted his conscience before. It seemed possible that he would do so once again.

Cassidy made no attempt to hide his skepticism of RFK Jr. during Thursday’s hearing. He spoke up at one point to correct the record after his Republican colleague Rand Paul worked up the crowd of pro-Kennedy spectators by disparaging the practice of vaccinating babies for hep B. Later on, he paused to cite a meta-analysis disproving Kennedy’s often-stated belief that childhood vaccines may be a cause of autism. (Cassidy also explained the concept of a meta-analysis for those in the room and people watching at home.) When RFK Jr. cited his own evidence for being skeptical of vaccines, referring to a paper from a little-known journal, Cassidy put on his reading glasses, peered at his iPad, and reviewed the evidence firsthand. At the end of the hearing, he reported that he’d found “some issues” with the paper, and then implored Kennedy to disavow mistruths about vaccine safety. “As a patriotic American, I want President Trump’s policies to succeed in making America and Americans more secure, more prosperous, healthier. But if there’s someone that is not vaccinated because of policies or attitudes you bring to the department, and there’s another 18-year-old who dies of a vaccine-preventable disease [...] It’ll be blown up in the press,” he warned. “So that’s my dilemma, man.”

Cassidy’s “dilemma” hardly went unnoticed by RFK Jr.’s supporters. Calley Means, a proponent of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again campaign, said last weekend on The Charlie Kirk Show that MAHA moms are now “camping out at [Cassidy’s] office.” (I did not see any tents or sleeping bags outside his door this morning.) Other MAHA leaders, including the anti-vaccine activist Del Bigtree, have also issued political threats to any lawmakers who might try to stop Kennedy’s confirmation. “Anyone that votes in that direction, I think, is really burying themselves,” Bigtree told me and a group of other reporters last week.

Cassidy, for his part, wasn’t saying much about his personal deliberations. His only official social-media post from the weekend quoted a Bible verse from the Book of Joshua: “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged,” it read in part. “Be strong and courageous.”

When he arrived at the committee room this morning, Cassidy was somber. He stared straight ahead, his brow furrowed. He’d been verbose at last week’s hearings, but now he said only a single word—“aye”—and left the room. In a social-media post that went up this morning, Cassidy explained that he’d received “serious commitments” from the Trump administration that made him comfortable with voting yes. Speaking later on the Senate floor, he added that RFK Jr. had promised to “meet or speak” with him multiple times a month, that the Trump administration would not remove assurances from the CDC’s website that vaccines do not cause autism, and that the administration would give his committee notice before making any changes to the nation’s existing vaccine-safety-monitoring systems. “It’s been a long, intense process, but I’ve assessed it as I would assess a patient as a physician,” Cassidy said. “Ultimately, restoring trust in our public-health institution is too important, and I think Senator Kennedy can help get that done.”

Even if Cassidy had voted no, his vote may not have mattered in the end. Under normal circumstances, a nomination that got voted down by the Senate Finance Committee would be dead in the water—but these were not normal circumstances. Majority Leader John Thune could still have scheduled a vote by the full Senate, at which point Kennedy would have been kept from office only if at least three other Republicans had joined Cassidy in opposition.

It’s still not a sure thing that Kennedy will be confirmed by the full Senate. Other Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have raised concerns about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine activism. But the odds of RFK Jr.’s defeat are shrinking, and Cassidy’s thumbs-up may one day be remembered as the mirror image of John McCain’s thumbs-down from 2017, when that independent-minded senator doomed Trump’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Faced with an opportunity to make the same sort of stand, Cassidy folded. Now the American public is at the whims of the administration’s promises.

As many as 400 million Hindu pilgrims are expected to visit Prayagraj, India, during this year’s 45-day Maha Kumbh Mela festival. Held every 12 years at one of four places in India, the Kumbh Mela is considered to be an especially auspicious time to bathe in the Triveni Sangam—the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna, and mythical Saraswati rivers—for purification from sin. Gathered below are images from the first days of this year’s Maha Kumbh Mela.

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From inside the room, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings felt at times more like an awards show than a job interview. While the health-secretary nominee testified, his fans in the audience hooted and hollered in support. Even a five-minute bathroom break was punctuated by a standing ovation from spectators and cheers of “We love you, Bobby!” There were some detractors as well—one protester was ushered out after screaming “He lies!” and interrupting the proceedings—but they were dramatically outnumbered by people wearing Make America Healthy Again T-shirts and Confirm RFK Jr. hats.

The MAHA faithful have plenty of reason to be excited. If confirmed, RFK Jr. would oversee an agency that manages nearly $2 trillion, with the authority to remake public health in his image. “He just represents the exact opposite of all these establishment agencies,” Brandon Matlack, a 34-year-old who worked on Kennedy’s presidential campaign, told me on Wednesday. We chatted as he waited in a line of more than 150 people that snaked down a flight of stairs—all of whom were hoping to get a seat for the hearing. Many of them were relegated to an overflow room.

Of course, Matlack and other RFK Jr. fans could be in for a letdown. Whether Kennedy will actually be confirmed as health secretary is still up in the air. There was less raucous cheering during the hearing on Thursday, as Kennedy faced tough questions from Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, whose vote could be decisive in determining whether Kennedy gets confirmed. But the realization of RFK Jr.’s vision for health care in America may not hinge on his confirmation. The MAHA movement has turned the issue of chronic disease into such a potent political talking point that people like Matlack are willing to trek from Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C., just to support Kennedy. Politicians across the country are hearing from self-proclaimed “MAHA moms” (and likely some dads too) urging them to enact reforms. They’re starting to listen.

Kennedy is best known as an anti-vaccine activist who spreads conspiracy theories. His more outlandish ideas are shared by some MAHA supporters, but the movement itself is primarily oriented around improving America’s diet and the health problems it causes us. Some of the ways MAHA wants to go about that, such as pressuring food companies to not use seed oils, are not exactly scientific; others do have some research behind them. Consider artificial food dyes, a major MAHA rallying cry. Multiple food dyes have been shown in animal studies to be carcinogenic. And although a candy-corn aficionado likely isn’t going to die from the product’s red dye, the additive is effectively banned in the European Union. (Kennedy claims that food dyes are driving down America’s life expectancy. There’s no evidence directly linking food dyes to declining human life expectancy, though one study did show that they cut short the life of fruit flies.)

Until recently, concerns over food additives, such as artificial dyes, were the domain of Democrats. In 2023, California became the first state in the nation to ban certain food additives: red dye 3, potassium bromate, brominated vegetable oil, and propylparaben. But now food-additive bans are being proposed in Donald Trump country, including West Virginia, Arkansas, and Kentucky. Some of the efforts, such as the Make Arkansas Healthy Again Act, are an explicit attempt to enact Kennedy’s agenda.

In other states, something a bit more Schoolhouse Rock is happening: The purported dangers of food ingredients are riling up Americans, who are then going to their lawmakers seeking change. Eric Brooks, a Republican state legislator in West Virginia, told me that he decided to copy California’s food-additive bill after being prodded by a constituent. “I said, Well, I don’t normally look out West, especially out to California, for policy ideas, to be honest with you,” he told me. “But once I had done the research and I saw the validity of the issue, I said, Okay.” Although his bill, which was first introduced in January 2024, did not move forward in the previous legislative session because, in his words, “there were bigger fish to fry,” Brooks hopes the national interest coming from the MAHA movement will motivate West Virginia legislators to take another look at the proposal.

Other red-state efforts to follow California’s lead have similarly not yet been passed into law, but the fact that the bills have been introduced at all signifies how motivated Republicans are on the topic. The MAHA moms may be enough to propel Kennedy to the job of health secretary. One Republican, Senator Jim Banks of Indiana, told Kennedy on Thursday that he plans to vote to confirm him because doing anything else “would be thumbing my nose at that movement.” Republicans are not only introducing bills to ban food additives; they’re also taking up Kennedy’s other MAHA priorities. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently asked the federal government for permission to forbid food-stamp recipients in her state from using their benefits to buy junk food—a policy Kennedy has repeatedly called for.

Over the past two days, senators seemed shocked at just how loyal a following Kennedy has amassed. One pejoratively called him a prophet. MAHA believers I spoke with made clear that they want RFK Jr.—and only RFK Jr.—to lead this movement. Vani Hari, a MAHA influencer who goes by “Food Babe” on Instagram, told me that, if Kennedy fails to be confirmed, there “will be an uprising like you have never seen.”

But at this point, it seems that the movement could live on even without Kennedy. On Wednesday, the Heritage Foundation hosted a press gaggle with MAHA surrogates. Heritage, an intellectual home of the modern conservative movement, is now praising the banning of food dyes. This is the same pro-business think tank that a decade ago warned that should the FDA ban partially hydrogenated oils, trans fats that were contributing to heart attacks, the agency “would be taking away choices,” “disrespecting” Americans’ autonomy, and mounting “an attack on dietary decisions.”

Republicans have generally been a bulwark for the food industry against policies that could hurt its bottom line. Democrats and Republicans in Washington today seem more aligned on food issues than ever before. “When you have members on both sides of the aisle whose constituencies are now extremely interested in understanding fully what’s in their food products, it does shift the game a bit,” Brandon Lipps, a food lobbyist and a former USDA official under Trump, told me. After all, even Bernie Sanders, despite chastising Kennedy multiple times during this week’s confirmation hearings, professed his support for aspects of the MAHA movement. “I agree with you,” Sanders told Kennedy on Thursday, that America needs “a revolution in the nature of food.” During the same hearing, Cassidy said that he is struggling with Kennedy’s candidacy because, despite their deep disagreements on vaccine policy, on “ultra-processed foods, obesity, we are simpatico. We are completely aligned.”

Although MAHA has shown itself to be a unifying message, the real test will come down to the brass tacks of any political movement: passing actual legislation. How willing lawmakers—especially those with pro-business proclivities—will be to buck the status quo remains to be seen. Politicians have proved eager to speak out against ultra-processed foods; in that sense, MAHA is winning. But policy victories may still be a ways off.

In a Massachusetts cellar in 1873, Lydia Pinkham first brewed the elixir that would make her famous. The dirt-brown liquid, made from herbs including black cohosh and pleurisy root, contained somewhere between 18 and 22 percent alcohol—meant as a preservative, of course. Within a couple of years, Pinkham was selling her tonic at $1 a bottle to treat “women’s weaknesses.” Got the blues? How about inflammation, falling of the womb, or painful menstruation? Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound was the solution. Pinkham’s matronly smile, printed on labels and advertisements, became as well known as Mona Lisa’s.

Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound was one of thousands of popular and lucrative patent medicines—health concoctions dreamed up by chemists, housewives, and entrepreneurs—that took the United States by storm in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These products promised to treat virtually any ailment and didn’t have to reveal their recipes. Many contained alcohol, cocaine, morphine, or other active ingredients that ranged from dubious to dangerous. Dr. Guild’s Green Mountain Asthmatic Compound was available in cigarette form and included the poisonous plant belladonna. Early versions of Wampole’s Vaginal Cones, sold as a vaginal antiseptic and deodorizer, contained picric acid, a toxic compound used as an explosive during World War I. Patent-medicine advertisements were unavoidable; by the 1870s, 25 percent of all advertising was for patent medicines.

After the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906, the newly created Food and Drug Administration cracked down on miracle elixirs. But one American industry is still keeping the spirit of patent medicine alive: dietary supplements. In the U.S., vitamins, botanicals, and other supplements are minimally regulated. Some can improve people’s health or address specific conditions, but many, like the medicines of old, contain untested or dangerous ingredients. Nevertheless, three-quarters of Americans take at least one. Some take far more. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the longtime conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist who’s awaiting Senate confirmation to run the Department of Health and Human Services, has said he takes a “fistful” of vitamins each day. Kennedy has in recent years championed dietary supplements and decried their “suppression” by the FDA—an agency he would oversee as health secretary. Now he’s poised to bring America’s ever-growing supplement enthusiasm to the White House and supercharge the patent-medicine revival.  

The newly created FDA eventually required all pharmaceutical drugs—substances intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease—to be demonstrably safe and effective before they could be sold. But dietary supplements, as we call them now, were never subject to that degree of scrutiny. Vitamins were sold with little interference until the “megadosing” trend of the late 1970s and ’80s, which began after the chemist Linus Pauling started claiming that large amounts of vitamin C could stave off cancer and other diseases. The FDA announced its intention to regulate vitamins, but the public (and the supplement industry) revolted. Mel Gibson starred in a television ad in which he was arrested at home for having a bottle of Vitamin C, and more than 2.5 million people participated in a “Save Our Supplements” letter-writing campaign. Congress stepped in, passing the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which officially exempted dietary supplements from the regulations that medications are subject to.

Since then, the FDA has generally not been responsible for any premarket review of dietary supplements, and manufacturers have not usually had to reveal their ingredients. “It’s basically an honor system where manufacturers need to declare that their products are safe,” says S. Bryn Austin, a social epidemiologist and behavioral scientist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. The agency will get involved only if something goes wrong after the supplement starts being sold. As long as they disclose that the FDA hasn’t evaluated their claims, and that those claims don’t involve disease, supplement makers can say that their product will do anything to the structure or function of the body. You can say that a supplement improves cognition, for example, but not that it treats ADHD. These claims don’t have to be supported with any evidence in humans, animals, or petri dishes.

In 1994, the dietary-supplement industry was valued at $4 billion. By 2020, it had ballooned to $40 billion. Patent-medicine creators once toured their products in traveling medicine shows and made trading cards that people collected, exchanged, and pasted into scrapbooks; today, supplement companies sponsor popular podcasts, Instagram stories are overrun with supplement ads, and influencers make millions selling their own branded supplements. The combination of modern wellness culture with lax regulations has left Americans with 19th-century-like problems: Pieter Cohen, an associate professor of medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance, has found a methamphetamine analogue in a workout supplement, and omberacetam, a Russian drug for traumatic brain injuries and mood disorders, in a product marketed to help with memory.

Last year, Kennedy accused the FDA of suppressing vitamins and other alternative health products that fall into the dietary-supplement category. But “there is no truth about the FDA being at war on supplements over the last several decades,” Cohen told me. “In fact, they have taken an extremely passive, inactive approach.” Experts have repeatedly argued that the FDA needs more authority to investigate and act on supplements, not less. And yet, Kennedy continues to champion the industry. He told the podcaster Lex Fridman that he takes so many vitamins, “I couldn’t even remember them all.” Kennedy has vocally opposed additives in food and conflicts of interest in the pharmaceutical industry, but has failed to mention the dangerous additives in dietary supplements and the profits to be made in the supplement market. (Neither Kennedy nor a representative from the MAHA PAC responded to a request for comment.)

In an already permissive environment, Kennedy’s confirmation could signal to supplement manufacturers that anything goes, Cohen said. If the little regulation that the FDA is responsible for now—surveilling supplements after they’re on the market—lapses, more adulterated and mislabeled supplements could line store shelves. And Americans might well pour even more of our money into the industry, egged on by the wellness influencer charged with protecting our health and loudly warning that most of our food and drug supply is harmful. Kennedy might even try to get in on the supplement rush himself. Yesterday, The Washington Post reported that, according to documents filed to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Kennedy applied to trademark MAHA last year, which would allow him to sell, among other things, MAHA-branded supplements and vitamins. (He transferred ownership of the application to an LLC in December. Kennedy’s team did not respond to the Post.)

A truly unleashed supplement industry would have plenty of tools at its disposal with which to seduce customers. Austin studies dietary supplements that make claims related to weight loss, muscle building, “cleansing,” and detoxing, many of which are marketed to not just adults, but teenagers too. “Those types of products, in particular, play on people’s insecurities,” she told me. They also purport to ease common forms of bodily or mental distress that can’t be quickly addressed by traditional medical care. Reducing stress is hard, but ordering the latest cortisol-reducing gummy on TikTok Shop is easy. Your doctor can’t force vegetables into your diet, but a monthly subscription of powdered greens can.

Judy Z. Segal, a professor emerita at the University of British Columbia who has analyzed patent-medicine trading cards from the 19th and 20th centuries, told me that supplement-marketing strategies “have not changed that much since the patent-medicine era.” Patent medicines appealed to ambient, relatable complaints; one ad for Burdock’s Blood Bitters asserted that there were “thousands of females in America who suffer untold miseries from chronic diseases common to their sex.” And the makers of patent medicine, like many modern supplement companies, used friendly spokespeople and customer testimonials while positioning their products as preventive care; according to one ad for Hartshorn’s Sarsaparilla, “The first deviation from perfect health should receive attention.”

In 1905, the muckraker Samuel Hopkins Adams lamented that “gullible America” was so eager to “swallow huge quantities of alcohol, an appalling amount of opiates and narcotics, a wide assortment of varied drugs ranging from powerful and dangerous heart depressants to insidious liver stimulants; and, far in excess of all other ingredients, undiluted fraud.” Compounds and elixirs go by different names now—nootropics, detoxes, adaptogens—but if Adams walked down any supplement aisle or browsed Amazon, he’d still find plenty of cure-alls. He could even pick up a bottle of Lydia E. Pinkham’s Herbal Supplement, which is sold as an aid for menstruation and menopause. Pinkham’s face smiles at buyers from the label, though its advertised benefits are now accompanied by a tiny disclaimer: “This statement has not been evaluated by the FDA.”