HOLLAND, Mich. — U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited Holland Thursday to tour Kids Food Basket Farm, a local nonprofit working to address childhood hunger in Ottawa and Allegan counties.
WATCH: Health secretary visits Holland nonprofit fighting childhood hunger
Kennedy was joined by U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga (R) during the visit, which was part of the secretary's tour of programs across the country that provide families with nutritional foods.
"I wanted to come here today to talk to the people who run this program about how we can help them and how we can support them," Kennedy said.
Kennedy discussed how families in West Michigan can get better access to healthy foods and highlighted a new program from the Trump administration that provides 2 billion meals of protein to 60,000 food pantries across the country every year.
"We flipped the food pyramid several months ago and put good food, protein, greens, vegetables, whole grains at the top of the food pyramid. The big challenge for us is how do we make sure that every American has access to good food," Kennedy said.
Both Kennedy and Huizenga spoke about how organizations like Kids Food Basket are helping advance their mission to make Americans healthy while not impacting taxpayers.
"One of the reasons I've visiting place like this, the government can't do everything. We rely on industry, we rely on partners, on public-private partners, and we rely on NGOs like this one," Kennedy said.
Huizenga echoed that sentiment.
"It's really about making sure that we are covering those needs, but it's also about making sure that we respect the taxpayers' dollars as well, while we're doing it, and those two things aren't mutually exclusive," Huizenga said.
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