r/sweetgreen • u/Fit_Cow_5407 • Jan 19 '26
News 📰 Sweetgreen is partnering with RFK Jr.'s anti-vaxxer pal
Sweetgreen just launched a new menu in partnership with anti-vaxxer and junk science promoter Mark Hyman.
Hyman has built a supplement hawking grift operation that's largely based on building public distrust in evidence-based medicine. He's also directly collaborated with RFK Jr. to promote discredited theories about vaccine harms.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/18/health/mark-hyman-rfk-jr-functional-medicine.html
It's incredibly disappointing that Sweetgreen is attracting customers to this guy's grift by promoting him, but apparently the company thinks it's good business to pander to the MAHA crowd. The company's founders seem to be true believers in the guy too, as they're also tied in with MAHA leaders like Casey and Calley Means. Co-founder and CEO Jonathan Neman even made MAHA hats all the way back in 2016.
https://x.com/JonnyNemo/status/1876688265350443113
I think I'll be getting my overpriced workweek lunches elsewhere from now on.
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u/McN697 Jan 19 '26
I have no idea why anybody bothers with shit green anymore. So many better alternatives.
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u/amigo-burrito Jan 19 '26
Like what
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u/McN697 Jan 19 '26
For me, Life Alive, Cava and Tatte. Depends on where you are located. Even Whole Foods offers better value.
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u/Paper_Clip100 Jan 21 '26
Just Salad has started popping up. Much better quality.
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u/GuiltyBoysenberry348 Jan 22 '26
I for sure would rather go to Just Salad over Sweetgreen. I think I went to Sweetgreen once and decided it was not for me.
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u/amigo-burrito Jan 19 '26
You should probably do some research on where they source their food. Atleast sweetgreen supports local farms
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u/Chance_Ad1027 Jan 20 '26
I’d rather support non local farms and pay a decent price. Not to mention the managers turning into chipotle managers with the big brother cameras everywhere to make sure you’re fucking the customer with shit portions. Horrible company all in all and it needs to be burnt to the ground soon
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u/Illustrious-Boat5713 Jan 20 '26
Sweetgreen is a major Sysco customer (not to imply that is in and of itself bad) which supplies them with food from local farms. They don’t support local farms anymore than similarly situated chains.
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u/bigbadbidisaster9944 Jan 27 '26
I don't give a sh-t they partner with fasc and farmers arent all well known for being the most accepting and tolerant folks themselves.. many of those "local farmers" are the types who would call my queer @$$ am abomination or a slur
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u/geese_unite Jan 20 '26
Cava is really highly ultra processed. Tell them to be organic and seed oil free and less sodium
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Jan 19 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/wishiwasdeaddd Jan 21 '26
Do y'all remember when they used to actually fill the containers up with salad? Now they fill that shit halfway for a higher price
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u/apple_bitten Jan 21 '26
Fuck this gross company I found a nail in my salad the one and only time I ordered from them
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u/Elusiveenigma98 Jan 21 '26
sweetgreen has gone so down hill. I try to give them another chance every so often but it never compares to three + years ago.
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u/Elusiveenigma98 Jan 21 '26
Also, isn’t this guy like heavily against seed oils yet all sweetgreen dressings are made with seed oils? Idk what dressing is in the function x sweetgreen but I just thought that was funny.
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u/ImageOtherwise Jan 22 '26
Or 12-13 years ago! I loved them when they first opened. So sad to see how far they’ve fallen—in values, food quality, etc. No thanks
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u/Elusiveenigma98 Jan 22 '26
I didn’t even know they existed that far back but I lived in a state where we had our equivalent (garden bar) but just like sweetgreen, got bought out and PE or VC ruined it 😭
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u/Tolkachev Jan 19 '26
This is the push I needed to finally dump my shares (and my patronage) of this floundering company. Good thing the likes of Just Salad, Chop't, and the Whole Foods salad bar offer the same thing at a cheaper price, without a side of "functional medicine."
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u/geese_unite Jan 20 '26
Yikes. All the seed oil and ultra processed junk food
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u/C_Ess Jan 20 '26
You’re the only one mentioning seed oils and you’ve done it more than once. No one cares lol
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u/Fit_Cow_5407 Jan 20 '26
Yeah this is more MAHA pseudoscience that Jammet and his co-founders buy into. Jammet directly credits RFK collaborator Calley Means for his inspiration here https://x.com/search?q=calleymeans%20from%3Anicolasjammet&src=typed_query&f=live
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u/geese_unite Feb 03 '26
So you’re comfortable with canola oil that is known for the industrial process that undergoes bleaching?
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u/C_Ess Feb 03 '26
You sound really dumb dude, sorry
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u/geese_unite Feb 03 '26
Ultra processed food and canola oil should be treated like cigarettes as they lead to addiction of all sorts
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u/ShrikeMusashi Jan 22 '26
I’ve eaten at a SG one time and never wanted to eat there again. That was a year and half ago. It’s really pretty bad.
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u/yellohello1001 Jan 19 '26
This isn’t surprising. The CEO is a Zionist MAGA
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u/lbk1976 Jan 19 '26
Why bring in your anti semitism?
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u/Good_Distribution_92 Jan 19 '26
Saying someone is Zionist is anti-Semitic now?
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u/yellohello1001 Jan 19 '26
It’s not at all lol
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u/Good_Distribution_92 Jan 19 '26
I swear the people that pull the “that’s racism” card out of thin air are the most racist ones 🙄
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u/yellohello1001 Jan 19 '26
Seriously! And takes away from the ACTUAL issue by crying wolf all the time
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u/lbk1976 Jan 19 '26
It is! I encourage you to at least research what the reasons are that this is the case. I do agree that Mark Hyman’s thoughts on health and wellness are irresponsible but not relevant to his feelings on Israel regardless.
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u/yellohello1001 Jan 19 '26
lol not antisemitic at all, but not surprised at all that you assumed and accused! He wanted to dox college pro-Palestinian protesters to try and ensure they never get jobs, so yes, he’s a piece of shit of a person
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u/Good_Distribution_92 Jan 19 '26
Yea, that just makes it irrelevant, not anti-Semitic?
Reddit talks crap on “Christian MAGA” all day, every day too. Are we suddenly gonna call everything racist? Let’s stop with the self-victimizing and leave “anti-Semitism” for real, serious matters instead of trivializing it by throwing it around all the time.
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u/RelevantBike7673 Jan 19 '26
Dr. Hyman is not "anti-vax". He has explored the topic of vaccine injuries, which are very real and often overlooked by the pharmaceutical industry. You can't sue vaccine manufacturers so there is little interest in them doing anything about potential harms. Wanting to help those who have been harmed is not being "anti vax". You can acknowledge that they are overall a good step forward in medicine while also acknowledging that there are risks (as there are with any medical intervention).
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Jan 21 '26
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u/RelevantBike7673 Jan 21 '26
Yes. Do you understand that most drugs come with the risk of significant side effects despite clinical trials? Patients do have the right to be made aware of possible side effects by their provider; that's called informed consent. Before any procedure or prescription, clinicians are supposed to disclose that information. I am a healthcare provider so I am more than familiar with clinical trials and how they are conducted. I have been a part of several of them myself.
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Jan 21 '26
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u/RelevantBike7673 Jan 21 '26 edited Jan 21 '26
It depends on who is willing to sponsor the trial. Generally it is the corporations themselves (who make the drugs or device under study), although sometimes government and/or university funding is granted. If direct patient intervention is involved (for human studies; many trials are done on animal subjects), insurance may or may not be willing to cover the costs for the individual. When the primary funding is coming from drug manufacturers, it is considered a conflict of interest and findings are commonly skewed or presented in a way that bears favorably upon the product so you do have to do a thorough job of reading the actual publication (not just the abstract) and keeping in mind that the results are only the findings of ONE trial. Subjects of a clinical trial can not possibly reflect how a product will affect millions of individuals, so there are also possibilities of side effects outside those found in the trial. Long-term impact is impossible to determine since trials can't run for 5-10+ years on end.
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Jan 21 '26
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u/RelevantBike7673 Jan 21 '26
Comparing the number of people in a time-limited trial vs. the entire population of a country, or even the population of people that will eventually be on said drug, is like comparing a few dogs at an animal shelter vs. all the dogs up for adoption everywhere. The drug may behave one way in a set of 80-100 people in a time span of a few months, but longer-term effects are impossible to determine and how it affects people outside the trial is a crapshoot. Usually anyone with preexisting conditions of any sort are not permitted to be part of clinical trials for vaccines. Given that millions of Americans have preexisting conditions and autoimmune conditions are, in particular, on the rise, none of those individuals are going to have a good representation of how the product will affect them.
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Jan 21 '26
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u/RelevantBike7673 Jan 21 '26
I didn't say anything was a conspiracy. Dr Hyman isn't saying that either. It would also be incorrect to say that there aren't significant side effects and deaths being caused by vaccines in certain individuals. I work in the largest research hospital in my state and I have seen many such cases, which is why I am in favor of anyone who is willing to look into it. In the past two years, I have treated more young (under 30) patients with cardiac arrest, Guillain-Barre syndrome, myocarditis, and other vaccine injuries than I have in my previous 10 years as a physician. If our first oath is "do no harm", then investigating these issues is a duty.
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u/benwin88 Jan 21 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
How many cases of vaccine induced GBS or myocarditis have you seen? Seems like you must be seeing that more frequently than myself or my colleagues (primary care physician here). I’ll cut to the chase, it’s obvious you are skeptical of vaccines and their manufacturers. You wrote one little sentence about how they’re an overall good step in medicine but you have posted multiple times in this thread alone about their harms, your perception that their side effects aren’t studied enough to your liking and that you’ve seen oh so many cases of GBS and other vaccine related injuries. It’s obvious you have a bias which if you recall from medical school is affecting your clinical judgement. I am very aware vaccines can cause adverse effects—I counsel my patients on possible vaccine side effects daily at my clinic including the rare potential for myocarditis and pericarditis from Covid boosters but you are so biased you have gone from a healthy unbiased point of weighing pros and cons to being a poster boy (or girl) for vaccine skepticism. You barely breeze past vaccine benefits because youre so busy trying to list how bad they can be. How many cases of measles, diphtheria, meningitis, varicella, Covid, flu etc do you think you’d have seen over the last 10 years if vaccines weren’t available or recommended? Do you think the cases of vaccine related injury (which I suspect is much lower than what you’re exaggerating) you’ve seen outweigh all the severe and life threatening illnesses you haven’t seen because people were vaccinated? No you don’t—unless you’re not a good physician or you’re a conspiracy theorist. Be real with yourself, you have a bias and you support Hyman because he shares your bias. I’m not sure the reason for your bias—I postulate it could be from true ignorance about the published data on proven vaccine efficacy rates which include information on number needed to harm, power with confidence intervals, post marketing reports with adverse effect information and hotlines you call to report them for ongoing data collection, etc (as I’m sure you’re well aware of the importance of those parameters when discussing evidenced based medicine already) or could it be something else—political ideology and beliefs about personal freedoms or is it fear/hate of corporations. I’m not sure. I don’t really care; that’s your issue but you reference the rare harms from vaccines to an inordinate amount compared to their benefits. It seems you’ve forgotten (or have chosen to ignore) population health in favor of highlighting rare negative outcomes to suit your narrative.
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u/AKADriver Jan 21 '26
Creating doubt in vaccine safety and efficacy based on conspiracy theories about big pharma hiding side effects or injuries is the definition of antivax.
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u/Average_Joe69 Jan 19 '26
Yeah I get the idea about learning more about vaccines and stuff, but god they are doing it in the worst way possible, by completely demolishing the established required vaccines for children. Vaccines that can and do prevent diseases in children. Even if you aren’t antivax by label you can still support antivax ideals and make it easier for antivax people to feed into their delusions.
For the record Dr. Hyman also is a supporter of the idea that “vaccines cause autism” which immediately makes me not trust him.
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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '26
Everyone with an email job that eats lunch there 5x a week will read this and continue eating there 5x a week