Let Them Eat Salmon Cakes

RFK Jr's MAHA cooking show is the latest media production from an administration that favors profitable content creation over substantive policy.

Screenshot via YouTube

Perhaps the best thing that can be said about The Real Food Show, R.F.K. Jr’s new government-sponsored cooking show, is that he doesn’t make anything with roadkill.

On Friday, the Secretary of Health and Human Services unveiled the first episode of a new program “that empowers families to make healthy eating practical, approachable, and affordable,” according to the HHS website.

“I’m traveling across America, connecting with renowned chefs to show families how to cook delicious, nutritious meals with real ingredients, all at affordable prices,” Kennedy says in the intro, as stock images of red meat and chopped vegetables flash behind him. The show is designed as a showcase for recently revised dietary guidelines that encourage the consumption of protein and full-fat dairy — including red meat and butter — over whole grains.

The first episode features Andrew Gruel — yes, gruel, as in the slop they feed the orphans in Oliver Twist — a chef, restaurateur, and Fox News regular from Orange County, California, who shows the secretary how to make salmon cakes with white bean, apple, and arugula salad.

The 20-minute episode has the look and feel of a particularly sluggish morning TV segment, with none of the forced cheer, but way more talk about the supposed danger of seed oils.

The Real Food Show is yet another sketchy media production from a high-ranking member of the Trump administration, which prioritizes content creation and self-enrichment over substantive policy — a grim yet fitting state of affairs for a presidency that owes its very existence to reality TV.

Before Kristi Noem was pushed out of the Department of Homeland Security, she appeared in a series of taxpayer-funded, self-dealing ads which cost a whopping $220 million (or nearly as much as The Odyssey). As of last year, DHS was also reportedly considering making a reality show in which immigrants compete for American citizenship.

Earlier this year, Usha Vance unveiled Storytime With the Second Lady, a show that was supposed to promote children’s literacy (even as the administration cut funding for libraries), but mostly just promoted the belief that J.D. Vance is a charmless creep.

The Great American Road Trip, an ethically fraught reality show following Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and his family on trips subsidized by the companies he’s supposed to be regulating. It was supposed to debut in mid-June but has yet to see the light of day. According to Tori Barnes, a spokesperson for The Great American Road Trip, “The production team is still working through the final edits process.” Instead of the Duffy family road trip, in June we got a UFC fight on the White House lawn, streamed live on Paramount+. For Trump and his loyalists, it’s all spectacle, all the time.

The Real Food Show arrives at a moment when Kennedy is under fire for outbreaks of multiple preventable diseases and the thorough undermining of public health on his watch — rather than his commitment to nutritious, affordable food. There’s a very real question of whether a cabinet member should be spending his time (and taxpayer money) making a lifestyle show when he’s supposed to be managing numerous crises. (The Real Food Show isn’t even Kennedy’s only media enterprise. He also hosts The Secretary Kennedy Podcast, where celebrities like Mike Tyson share diet tips.)

On Sunday, he sat for a disastrous, bloviating interview with CNN’s Dana Bash in which he once again attacked Anthony Fauci over his COVID response, accused Bash and journalists at CNN of needlessly sowing fear about the virus, and spouted misinformation about vaccines. Then on Monday, authorities in Michigan said that two people had died in a cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands of people across the country and was likely exacerbated by cuts to the Centers for Disease Control.

All of which is to say that people will be, or should be less receptive to Kennedy’s healthy eating message when “healthy eating” can lead to weeks of explosive diarrhea — or, apparently, death.

The Real Food Show offers a confusing mix of sensible nutritional advice (eat whole foods as much as possible) and dubious MAHA propaganda (slather everything in beef tallow). There’s nothing wrong with the recipe — which, I admit, sounds tasty — or with encouraging people to make their own meals using simple, straightforward ingredients. Writers like Michael Pollan have been popularizing these ideas for decades, and Michelle Obama successfully touted healthy food during her eight years as first lady (yet for some mysterious reason received a chillier reception from the Fox News crowd).

But between the chopping and pan-frying, Kennedy and Gruel also offered up some questionable commentary.

Gruel tells Kennedy he cured himself of chronic, unspecified stomach problems by cutting out seed oils, which Kennedy and his acolytes have likened to poison, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. (Gruel also appears to be skeptical of antidepressants and makes an off-color joke about putting his four kids to work in his restaurant.)

In a digression about how Americans don’t eat enough seafood, Kennedy claims that cattle herds are at their lowest levels in more than 100 years (it’s actually 75, according to the USDA), but doesn’t get into why that might be the case (e.g., the rising cost of raising cattle). Then there’s the show’s risible intro in which Kennedy credits Trump — a man known for binging late at night on potato chips and Starbursts — with putting “real food back where it belongs at the center of the American plate”.

But the most deceptive aspect of the show so far might be its fuzzy home economics. Unlike the president, The Real Food Show pretends to care about affordability — which is theoretically a good thing given that grocery prices are up 33% since 2019. According to the HHS website, every recipe “uses real, whole-food ingredients” and “will cost less than $5 per serving whenever possible.”

They claim that this recipe costs $4.91 per serving, using frozen, wild sockeye salmon (an oddly worded graphic appears, stating that the salmon that Kennedy is using cost $8.99 “per four servings,” but doesn’t list the price per pound). How they came to this number is anyone’s guess. Even at Walmart, frozen wild sockeye salmon costs you $17.28 a pound, and this recipe calls for a pound and a half — or more like $25 for the salmon alone before you get to any of the other ingredients, like arugula (the leafy green Barack Obama was ridiculed for mentioning on the campaign trail nearly 20 years ago). Their calculations also minimize the cost of buying fussier specialized ingredients like avocado mayonnaise ($7 for a 12-ounce jar at Walmart) or nutritional yeast ($8.15), which may not get used with any regularity.

The truth is that eating nutritious, well-balanced, responsibly-sourced meals with lots of protein and fresh produce is not cheap, even in less economically strained times. People who want tips on low-cost meals have plenty of options other than sitting through a 20-minute video laden with MAHA misinformation. And the entire premise of The Real Food Show overlooks the fact that affordability isn’t the only obstacle to eating well. Many people also lack the free time to prepare meals or shop for fresh ingredients — or don’t live close to a well-stocked grocery store.

But, as we know, this is an administration that doesn’t care about science — evidently they don’t care about math, either.

Meredith Blake is the culture columnist for The Contrarian

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