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Living in a totally-integrated modern society often requires a bit of sacrifice for those who seek to live as healthy as can be reasonably expected, and fewer sacrifices on the altar of modernity is bigger than a trip to the airport.
A flight consists almost entirely of sitting. They’re often disruptive of our natural circadian rhythms, with lights dimmed down in the daytime to let passengers nap, and flights dropping a person in different time zones. In the airports, there are little to no whole food choices available at the terminal restaurants, and if one has a long layover, there’s little else to do other than sit. Stress too, for those traveling with children or infants, is a trigger for inflammation and exhaustion.
As part of the always noteworthy change-of-tune out of the Dept. of Health and Human Services, away from a focus on medicine and towards helping Americans live a more naturally healthy lifestyle, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently announced the “Make Travel Family Friendly Again” funding initiative, which will offer grants to airports that want to build a variety of health and family-focused additions.
The grants total $1 billion, and would be taken from the trillion-dollar Biden infrastructure bill. According to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, “it’s pretty wide open” what the grants could cover. Kennedy spoke specifically to food, and hoped that airports would look at adding more healthy dining choices.
“This is where healthy diets go to die,” Kennedy said, a fact Duffy has previously bemoaned. “The food that’s available at the airport a lot of times tastes very good, but it’s not very good for you. It’s deep-fried food, it’s sugar bombs, it’s ultra-processed food, and all of them are going to leave you sicker than before you ate them”.
Duffy suggested expansions to play areas for children, more nursing areas for mothers and babies, and workout areas “where people might get some blood flowing doing some pull-ups or some step-ups”.
Science has eagerly shown that even micro workouts—no longer than a minute or two at high intensity, can produce measurable changes in cardiovascular health and blood sugar levels, but also all-cause, cancer-related, and cardiovascular-related mortality. A simple fitness area with pull-up bars, treadmills, and other equipment would offer the perfect place for these “exercise snacks” without requiring the airport to invest in a dedicated gymnasium with weights and showers.
Such activity would be all the more important because of how much sitting is done during the process of going to, waiting in, and flying out of, an airport. Sitting 13 hours a day and taking less than 4,000 steps, if done 3 days in a row, is so debilitating for human physiology that a study found how a 60-minute run at 60% maximum heart rate had no improvement in cardiometabolic health markers. It’s a phenomenon called “exercise resistance,” and a major danger to the health of an American office worker consuming the standard American diet.
Having pull-up bars in airports means you can stay fit while traveling.
You can challenge yourself, or better yet, challenge your friends & family during a layover. The downside is your daughter might beat you!
That happened today as me, my daughter, Paloma, @SecKennedy &… pic.twitter.com/e6fJ59p1hR
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) December 9, 2025
Family Friendly Flying
Kennedy’s “MAHA” movement, or Make America Healthy Again, reflects the movement of health and fitness information in American society away from consultations with doctors or newspaper sections and to the personal deep-dives of health and fitness influencers, two of whom were present with Kennedy and Duffy at an airport when they made their recent announcement.
“This is how government is supposed to work in serving people, where our society needs our help,” said Isabel Brown at the event. Brown hosts a show on family life for the conservative media outlet Daily Wire, and spoke alongside Duffy on her experience with airport nursing rooms. “I can’t tell you how many times I have found myself in a situation being completely stranded in an airport with no option to safely, or in a clean way, feed my daughter or to pump safely and be out of everybody’s way”.
Flying with kids can be challenging—a surprise to neither parents nor those who have ever had to sit near children aboard planes. At least in the terminals, play areas—a potential addition a grant would be approved for—could allow children to burn off some of their excess energy and frustration while waiting for a flight.
On the issue of stresses and hassles of flying with children, Sect. Duffy has previously said that he would honor a Biden Administration attempt to convince airlines to allow parents to sit next to their children free of charge when buying multiple tickets. Out of 10 major American carriers, 5, including Alaska, American, Frontier, JetBlue, and Hawaiian have agreed to implement the idea.
Duffy, himself a father of 9, had no update on the remaining 5 by the time of the press event with Kennedy.
“I know that was under review at DOT,” he said. “It’s an issue I’m sensitive to; I want families to be able to sit together. A lot of feedback I get is it’s already happening, but that rule is under review”.
The idea of government grants going towards what are obviously entirely market activities and decisions, like whether to give restaurant space to a health food restaurant or to McDonalds, or whether or not to install a gym or nursing room at the airport, is not typically an American one. However, the Biden Infrastructure bill was passed years ago, and the $1 trillion that it contained—for dozens of different purposes beyond anything related to infrastructure—was already created and waiting for use. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: Secretaries (left) Sean Duffy and Robert Kennedy Jr. announcing the Make Travel Family Friendly grant program. PC: DoHHS, via Facebook.
