The MAHA movement is all about pooling knowledge and calling for out-of-the-box ideas.

The common goal of making America healthy again can use such help, because the country's obesity epidemic really does baffle the best minds.

A comparison of how Americans looked in videos in the 1970s and '80s really does tell us something is wrong out there.

But what it is -- the food pyramid, the sedentary lifestyle of computers and cell phones, chemicals in food and GMO products, or people just eating too much at all hours in gargantuan portions is something nobody is entirely sure about.

So when Chef Andrew Gruel put out a new idea about where the obesity epidemic comes from, all I could think was #MAHA:

The disappearance of home economics classes does coincide with the generations that grew up obese.

It all could be a decline in the ability to cook since the timeline seems just about right -- when home ec classes disappeared, people started ballooning out. Processed and convenience foods became more common, and working mothers often no longer had time to teach their daughters (and sons) the art of how to cook.

A lot of it went alongside the feminist movement that denigrated parents, particularly mothers, who stayed home to take care of their children instead of went out and had careers with big salaries. Food consumption got pretty junky and suddenly, double-seats on airlines were a thing.

My sense is that home economics classes went out of style around 1980 or so. I recall taking one when I was age 12 in summer school the 1970s and it was most informative and enjoyable.

Today, cooking is usually considered a rarified specialty, or a hobby of the rich -- the world of Martha Stewart -- rather than an everyday health matter.

And in societies that have not embraced that model -- I am thinking of Colombia, where I saw no fat people whatsoever there about a decade ago -- there often still is a culture of mothers teaching their daughters and sons how to cook good cuisine properly, and no culture of snacking between meals either, just three squares a day, nicely prepared with time and care.

Obviously, some research would be beneficial here, but Gruel has come up with a good kernel of an idea, one so strikingly coincident in timelines that it ought to be investigated by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team for a good road to getting the country healthy.

If it's true, a new curriculum should be encouraged in schools, or wherever young people gather, for both boys and girls, on how to cook healthy food from fresh ingrendients, in order to avoid processed and pre-packaged food, and start once again looking like those pictures of young people at the beaches that were seen in the 1970s.

It's an idea worth pursuing. #MAHA

Image: Screen shot from X video gif