A Dietitian Reviews RFK Jr.’s Cooking Show and Its Nutrition Clai

4 min read

IN HIS BID to help Americans eat better, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently launched a YouTube-based cooking show called “The Real Food Show.”

Two episodes are now live, and each features RFK Jr. cooking a healthful, inexpensive meal alongside a different chef. As a dietitian, I was all-in on a show that teaches people how to make healthy meals for less than $5 a serving. Then I actually watched the show.

The first episode features Andrew Gruel, the chef of the Slapfish franchise (and he himself a politician), teaching viewers how to make wild salmon cakes and arugula salad in his sparkling Huntington Beach kitchen. The second episode has longtime Food Network chef Geoffrey Zakarian making a French omelette with a simple butter lettuce salad.

Both episodes do include helpful cooking instruction. But, unfortunately, the good stuff is repeatedly undercut by nutrition misinformation and false claims.

In fact, I found 32 errors in the first two 19-minute episodes—and they tended to fall into a few major categories.

Seed oil fear-mongering

THERE WAS A lot of anti-seed oil rhetoric, despite a substantial body of evidence showing that the polyunsaturated fats in seed oils are safe and healthy.

Chef Gruel claimed that seed oils are addictive, and implied that they were responsible for his gut issues, which he has reportedly since healed by removing seed oils from his diet. He also recommended achieving a “normalized ratio” of omega-3 to omega-6 fats.

There is no good evidence that seed oils are addictive, and the idea that there is an ideal ratio is not supported by science. What matters more is getting adequate amounts of each essential fat.

The same episode recommends beef tallow as a cooking fat. But research shows that a diet high in saturated fat, like the type in beef tallow, is linked to elevated LDL, which is a known risk factor for atherosclerotic heart disease.

Ultra-processed foods misinformation

GRUEL REPEATEDLY IMPLIES that ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are addictive. Zakarian tells us that when we hear the word “shelf stable,” we should “run.” Shelf-stable translates to “nutrient unstable,” he says, meaning extra chemicals are added to make it last longer, and are not as healthy.

This is inaccurate.

Ultra-processed food is a huge category that includes snack foods, but also protein powder, tofu, and high-fiber cereals. And while diets high in UPFs are associated with poor health outcomes, that doesn’t mean that we should never consume these foods or that every UPFs is unhealthy or “addictive” or contains chemicals, as Gruel claims.

The idea that shelf-stable foods are nutritionally worthless is also incorrect. Beans, fish, vegetables, fruits, jarred sauces, pastas, oats, rice, nut butter—shelf-stable foods are packed to preserve nutrients, and they can be incredibly helpful for people who are short on time, money, and access to fresh food.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but we can encourage people to eat more whole and minimally processed foods without shaming the affordable, convenient ingredients that millions of people rely on to feed themselves and their families.

Yes, Gruel correctly states in his episode that beans contain prebiotic fiber and protein, and Zakarian extolls the virtues of the macro and micronutrients in eggs. And, yes, these are exactly the sorts of accessible foods that can anchor a healthful diet—but they aren’t the only ones.

A healthful diet can include ultra-processed foods.

Cost issues

THROUGHOUT EACH EPISODE dollar amounts of the ingredients used pop up on screen to reinforce the point that healthy cooking can be inexpensive. But then the chef will say something that feels out of touch.

In the first episode, Gruel recommends using organic canned beans, which are more expensive and no more nutritious than non-organic canned beans.

Zakarian’s recipe uses regenerative eggs, which he admits are more expensive but more nutrient-dense than regular eggs. This may be true, but the slightly higher micronutrient content is not going to make an appreciable difference in terms of health. The extra cost, however, can make a big dent in a low-income budget.

Plus, the cost numbers themselves are off—way off.

Here’s my biggest issue with The Real Food Show: There’s little acknowledgement of the upfront cost of buying the pantry staples used in the recipes, including extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, and avocado oil mayonnaise.

Calculating a tablespoon of an ingredient makes the cost look small, but you still have to purchase an entire container of it.

The USDA Thrifty Food Plan—designed to represent a low-cost, nutritionally adequate diet—allots about $2.75 per person per meal. Even the USDA’s lowest-cost food plan works out to around $3 per person per meal.

Four servings of Gruel’s salmon cakes plus salad come in at just under $20.

While Zakarian claims his omelette and salad meal is $3.15 a serving, for a family of four it’s far more costly.

According to the recipe listed on the HHS website, four servings of Zakarian’s omelette takes a dozen eggs: 8 whole eggs, 4 yolks. Even without any of the other ingredients, an entire carton of the regenerative eggs he recommends costs between $6 and $10, despite him telling us that they are $3 to 4 a dozen.

When we crunch the numbers, the economics of The Real Food Show start to look a lot different than what’s presented on the screen.

If the goal is to help Americans eat healthier, then the show should reflect the realities of what the majority of people can afford. Not the 1 percent, but the people who need a show like this the most.