Photo: Bloomberg via Getty Images
When I think of who I want to get my cooking advice from, it’s not necessarily a politician famous for his diet of meat, sauerkraut, and raw milk. Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would beg to differ. On Thursday, he launched his government-sponsored cooking show, The Real Food Show, on YouTube. If there’s one person whose palate I trust, it’s the guy who said he once ate so many tuna sandwiches that it gave him mercury poisoning!
In a promotional video for The Real Food Show, RFK Jr. touted his flipping of the food pyramid, saying that the Trump administration has “put real food back where it belongs, at the center of the American plate.” He said that his show would have him traveling across the country to link up with chefs and show Americans “how to cook delicious, nutritious meals with real ingredients, all at affordable prices.” As he said all of that, the green screen behind him showed fruit, vegetables, and cash flying through the air.
RFK Jr. dropped the first episode on Thursday, in which he was joined by chef and frequent Fox News guest Andrew Gruel to make salmon cakes and an arugula-and-white-bean salad. It is, for the most part, a pretty normal cooking show, save for the several times Gruel trashes seed oils and the part where he lambasts his doctors for prescribing him antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication (he claims he solved his health issues through a change in diet alone). What really sets The Real Food Show apart from other cooking shows is that — and this may be shocking — RFK Jr. doesn’t have the star power necessary to be a host. He takes the tiniest bite at the end and flatly tells Gruel that it’s “amazing.” Clearly, he did not bone up on old episodes of Emeril before this.
RFK Jr. may be a pioneer in making really boring cooking shows, but he’s not the first member of Trumpworld to poorly host an edutainment program for the administration. They love taking someone from the White House and making them host a program despite a total lack of charm or energy. This is, I assume, how Usha Vance ended up running a children’s story-time podcast. What’s next? I hate to speak it into existence, but I feel like we’re about to get the world’s most boring travel show hosted by Marco Rubio.
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