Miss a day, miss a lot. Subscribe to The Defender's Top News of the Day. It's free.
In a recent episode of “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast,” actor Fran Drescher discussed toxins, pollution and public health with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“The cleaner you live, the healthier you are, the less sick you get and the quicker you heal if you do get sick,” Drescher said. “So for me, food is medicine. Medicine is food. And living very pristinely makes a huge impact on your health.”
Drescher is best known for starring in the TV sitcom “The Nanny,” which she co-created and co-produced with her then-husband, Peter Marc Jacobson.
In 2021, she was elected president of the entertainment union SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists).
Drescher told Kennedy she had been “on this path” of taking the approach that “we all need to be our own doctor” since her own cancer survival in 2000 — after she initially was told by eight different doctors that she did not have cancer before actually getting a proper diagnosis.
Drescher wrote about her experiences in her book, “Cancer Schmancer,” and founded the Cancer Schmancer Movement, which aims “to save lives by transforming the nation’s current sick care system into one that focuses on genuine health care.”
Drescher and Kennedy discussed the harmful health effects of toxins, such as glyphosate weedkillers and industrial cleaning products used at schools.
“Why are we in bed with the chemical industry?” Drescher asked. “It’s all repurposed war chemicals imposed on civilian life.”
Most people are “mindless consumers,” Kennedy said. “They’re enabling the sociopaths that are hurting us — hurting our children, hurting the planet, hurting our pets — all for the bottom line.”
Drescher responded:
“When making money at the expense of all things of true value is what you’re doing — the air you breathe, the food you eat, the earth, all of our health — if everything is sacrificed for the bottom line, we’re living in a very dangerous time.
“It’s up to us, the consumer — that’s what it all comes down to. We can blame everybody, but if we just stop buying it, they’d stop making it.”
Changing the narrative that normalizes single-use plastic
Kennedy commended Drescher for being an “amazing activist” on other public health issues, including the use of plastics.
As SAG-AFTRA’s first environmentalist president, Drescher launched the Green Council, an initiative whose No. 1 mission is an industry-wide ban on single-use plastic, both on camera and behind the scenes.
“This is particularly important,” she told Kennedy “because it’s a very effective way that we can leverage the visual normalizing of single-use plastic and change that narrative.”
Drescher added:
“We have a lot of very high-profile members that are at the ready to help push this commitment by the industry to all the viewers around the world and really make the influence of this action bigger than the sum of its parts.”
Kennedy and Drescher also discussed the negative health effects associated with exposure to, or consumption of, microplastics, mercury and aluminum, which has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
When people get overwhelmed by all the toxins in their environment, Drescher said she encourages them to detox their home, “because the home is the most toxic place we spend the most time in and ironically have the most control over.”
“If you do it and your neighbor does it and your sister does it and your parents do it … it only takes 10% of a population to shift a paradigm,” she pointed out.
Drescher concluded:
“I’m always trying to wake up the consumer to go from being a mindless consumer to being a mindful consumer. And once you wake up and smell the coffee, it’s hard to go back to sleep.”
Watch the podcast here:
