Last month, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched a podcast, which he said would be part of a “new era of radical transparency in government.” In a teaser, Kennedy promised, over foreboding background music, to “ask the questions and lift the taboos and expose the hypocrisy” around the root causes of the chronic disease epidemic.
“For decades now, Americans have been told that we should trust the system, but our children are sicker,” he said in the video. “Chronic disease is exploding, and the answers that we've been given aren't working. Many of us have come to the conclusion that government actually lies to us.” His podcast, he said, would feature conversations with independent doctors, scientists, and leaders in medical innovation and research.
The launch of The Secretary Kennedy Podcast—not to be confused with The RFK Jr. Podcast, which covered similar ground—comes amid signs of trouble in the MAHA movement. Kennedy has reportedly been told by the White House to tone down his anti-vaccine rhetoric ahead of the midterm elections, and his MAHA PAC is apparently running low on cash. President Donald Trump recently dropped health influencer and close Kennedy ally Casey Means as his nominee for surgeon general, and Kennedy’s panel of hand-picked vaccine advisers has been disbanded after a federal judge ruled they were unqualified.
Coincidentally or not, Kennedy steers clear of vaccines in the first two podcast episodes and instead focuses on food, leaning into celebrity over policy. HHS did not respond to a request for comment.
In the first episode, Kennedy interviews reality-TV chef Robert Irvine about his makeover of military food at Fort Hood, an Army base in Texas. Irvine was the host of the popular Food Network show Dinner: Impossible when a newspaper investigation found that he had embellished parts of his résumé, including that he had created Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding cake. Irvine admitted to exaggerating his qualifications and was initially dropped by the network but was eventually brought back. (Irvine also happens to have a line of snack bars called FitCrunch; while protein-packed, they’re also made with the sort of difficult-to-pronounce ingredients many nutritionists caution against.)
Irvine did serve in the UK’s Royal Navy after enlisting at a young age, and he began his culinary career there. On the podcast, he tells Kennedy he’s been working with the US military to bring in healthier dining options with a focus on fresh and whole foods. He claims he’s helping to lower food costs by negotiating with suppliers—something the Pentagon has presumably not thought of doing—and that the dining hall food at Fort Hood is so good there are “lines out the door.”
Irvine doesn’t address what kinds of foods Fort Hood was serving before he stepped in nor does he elaborate on the meals it offers now, beyond lower-sodium chicken and sliced melon.
The privately run dining venture, called 42 Bistro, was the subject of an Army press release in February, which showed pictures of bean salads and deli sandwiches. (Irvine also worked with the military under the Biden administration to roll out healthy grab-and-go meals, a detail that isn’t mentioned in the podcast.)
Irvine goes on to suggest that individuals can eat better and healthier if they’re smarter with their money. “We talk about food being expensive. If you're buying expensive food, it’s expensive. But if you're buying food, and you know what to do with it, it’s not expensive,” he says.
The statement, while true to a point, ignores the fact that food costs are set to increase this year by almost 3 percent and that a diet rich in animal protein, which is featured prominently in the administration's new inverted food pyramid, is getting more expensive. The US Department of Agriculture estimates that beef and veal prices were more than 12 percent higher in March than in March 2025, while poultry prices were up 1.5 percent over the same time period. Fresh vegetable prices, meanwhile, were 7.5 percent higher in March compared to a year earlier.
Irvine says a main barrier to eating healthy is education, joking that he didn’t know about okra and avocados growing up in England. While partly right, he and Kennedy fail to mention other important factors like cost, access, and a lack of time for meal preparation. Packaged and ultra-processed foods are popular because they are more convenient, have a long shelf life, and are a cheap source of calories. And research continues to show that many adults still eat these foods despite knowing they shouldn’t.
The second episode of Kennedy’s podcast is just 15 minutes long and features professional boxer Mike Tyson, who appeared in a MAHA-aligned Super Bowl ad for “real food.” Kennedy introduces Tyson, who was convicted in 1992 of raping a teenager and served three years in prison, as one of his “heroes.”
After talking about raising pigeons for the first few minutes, Tyson says he grew up in a neighborhood where ultra-processed food was a “delicacy” and that his boxing mentor, Cus D'Amato, pushed him toward a healthy lifestyle.
Kennedy mentions Tyson’s sister, who died in her mid-twenties from a heart attack related to obesity. “That's all we ate was processed food,” says Tyson, “because we didn't have no money to buy food. We were the kind of family that knocked on the neighbor's door, ‘You have any food?’”
Tyson famously adopted a vegan diet for several years to improve his health, which he doesn’t discuss with Kennedy. He does, however, describe what seems like disordered eating patterns, which are prevalent in weight-sensitive sports. “If I'm not in good shape, I won't eat,” he says. “If I'm not the weight I want to be, it’s just so subconscious, I won't eat.”
Kennedy asks what should be done to help people in urban neighborhoods eat better—acknowledging, to his credit, the existence of food deserts. Tyson replies, “We need more mentors. You know, they need mentors to show them how to have proper diets and take care of themselves.”
He’s not wrong. Nutritional knowledge and support from family and friends are key to motivating people to adopt healthier diets. But the biggest issue with Kennedy’s podcast is that, to date, this is about as far as it goes in dispensing practical nutritional advice to the average Americans who are ostensibly its audience. There are no meal prep tips or suggestions of lower-cost protein swaps. Crucially, despite casting them as the villains of the piece, Kennedy never provides a definition of what “processed” or “ultra-processed” foods are—while defining these terms is infamously vexing, FitCrunch bars would surely qualify—or what types of foods or ingredients to avoid.
There’s no doubt that Americans are overwhelmingly unhealthy. Despite Kennedy’s assertions, doctors and government officials have been telling people to eat healthier—for decades, in fact. And most Americans already know they should be eating healthier. It’s unclear how Kennedy’s podcast will help them do that—and perhaps, given its host’s claim that he eats only meat and fermented foods, best if it doesn’t try.
