RFK Jr.'s New Cooking Show 'The Real Food Show' Draws Lukewarm Reviews in Debut Episode
Key Takeaways
- •HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched "The Real Food Show," an unconventional YouTube cooking series for a sitting Cabinet secretary.
- •The series promotes Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again agenda, which addresses concerns about ultra-processed foods, food additives, and chronic disease rates.
- •The debut episode featured chef Andrew Gruel demonstrating crispy salmon cakes accompanied by a salad of apple, white beans, and greens.
- •Journalist Amy McCarthy's review for Ravenous described the show as boring and criticized it as a politically motivated effort to mainstream Kennedy's policy agenda.
- •The program reflects the Trump administration's broader strategy of using social media platforms to communicate directly with supporters outside traditional media channels.
The debut episode of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s new cooking show, "The Real Food Show," received lukewarm reviews following its premiere on Wednesday.
Kennedy announced the launch of the YouTube series last week. The series represents an unusual communications vehicle for a sitting Cabinet secretary, blending culinary demonstration with policy promotion. The first episode features chef Andrew Gruel, based in the Huntington Beach, California area, who is associated with MAGA-aligned circles.
Amy McCarthy, a journalist for Ravenous, reviewed the premiere and observed that the show appears to be part of a broader communications effort by the Trump administration. As McCarthy noted, the episode and the series as a whole seem designed to serve a larger political purpose.
Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda, which underpins the show, has centered on concerns about ultra-processed foods, food additives, and chronic disease rates—themes he has championed since before his Senate confirmation to lead HHS. The cooking series appears designed to translate those policy priorities into accessible, lifestyle-oriented content, a strategy consistent with the administration's broader use of social media platforms to communicate directly with supporters outside traditional media channels.
In the episode, Gruel demonstrates a recipe for crispy salmon cakes accompanied by a salad of apple, white beans, and greens. McCarthy pointed out that Gruel incorporates expected praise for Kennedy's MAHA agenda and related dietary priorities.
McCarthy's critique of the show was blunt. "Aside from the fact that this is, essentially, a worse version of the pedantic, reality-ignoring cooking show that Jamie Oliver was making 20 years ago, RFK's new cooking show is, mostly, just boring," she wrote. "He just stands there looming like a specter over Gruel as he cooks, adding no insights or conspiracy-fueled rants. (This is, if you've ever heard the man speak out loud, actually a blessing.)"
She continued: "Ultimately, 'The Real Food Show' is little more than a slick and simplistic attempt to make Kennedy's MAHA nonsense seem both reasonable and mainstream. How could anyone argue with the idea of eating more beans for fiber? Or tips for creating affordable veggie sides at home? Neither of those things is the problem; it's that the insistence on cramming this politically motivated pseudoscience into something that seems totally innocuous is part of this whole broader effort from President Trump and his cronies to make everything a little bit stupider."
The review was published by Ravenous and can be found at weareravenous.com.
