Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched an online cooking show on Thursday that aims to teach Americans that making healthy meals can be “delicious and affordable,” according to the show’s splashy new web page.
The slickly produced program is part of the Health Department’s “Eat Real Food” initiative, which dramatically reshaped the country’s dietary guidelines earlier this year in alignment with Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
The new guidelines effectively flipped the long-standing food pyramid to prioritize meat, dairy and vegetables over refined foods and grains. The guidelines also endorsed consumption of saturated fats that contradict established nutrition advice to limit them.
The American Medical Association praised the guidelines, which shifted standards for school lunches and food stamps, for its straightforward advice on eating whole foods.
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Kennedy, an ardent critic of ultra-processed foods, has continually targeted what he claims are the catalysts of childhood chronic disease: sugary products, environmental toxins, Wi-Fi radiation and medications, including vaccines and antidepressants.
Kennedy’s first stop on his cooking show brought him to Huntington Beach, California, where Andrew Gruel, a city council member, chef and conservative political commentator, joined the show as its first special guest. Thursday’s premiere episode was not entirely devoid of politics.
Between a lesson on how to cook crispy salmon cakes, Kennedy inserted talking points about why Americans don’t eat enough seafood.
“I think it’s cultural because we have a lot of seafood in this country, and we’re used to eating meat, and think of that as our protein. Today we have the lowest level of cattle herds in history, in at least 100 years,” he said. “The cost of meat has gone up, we’re doing everything that we can in the administration to bring that down and increase the size of the herd.”
As he mixed avocado mayonnaise in a bowl, Kennedy took a moment to slam the “war” on saturated fats and the previous dietary guidelines that had been workshopped by the Biden administration.
“They were 453-pages long, and they were entirely written by food industry lobbyists,” Kennedy said. “They reflected the same kind of mercantile impulses that had put Fruit Loops at the top of the food pyramid.”
Kennedy is the second Trump Cabinet member to launch his own show. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced in March that he was launching an online series dubbed “The Great American Road Trip,” in which he and his family traveled cross-country to various American landmarks.
Democrats panned Duffy’s show as a prepaid vacation that distracted Duffy from important work in Washington. The series was also scrutinized for ethical concerns over its sponsors, which included several companies regulated by the Transportation Department, including Toyota and Boeing.
Despite an extensive marketing campaign announcing the program’s release, the show has not premiered yet and Duffy said in May he would not record any more episodes.
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment about who is footing the bill for the show’s production and how much it has cost to make.
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