RFK Jr.’s Cooking Show Continues Long Line of Trump’s Obsession With Reality TV

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the current Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has launched a new food show that focuses on the questionable dietary guidelines he issued earlier this year.

“The Real Food Show,” which can be watched on the HHS website, debuted last week. The meals presented on the program fall in line with Kennedy’s so-called “upside-down” food pyramid, which emphasizes eating meats, dairy products, and fatty foods.

When that dietary guideline was launched in January, many critics noted that its focus on those foods could be harmful to many groups of people, as they are drivers of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and other health issues.

Despite these concerns, Kennedy — who has neither a medical nor professional dietary-related background — stood by his version of the food pyramid.

“When we published the dietary guidelines, there was immediately sort of a good reaction, but also a little trepidation from the public and from critics saying that this food is a lot more expensive than the ultra-processed food that we’ve been eating. And that’s not true,” Kennedy said ahead of his first show.

Notably, food prices overall have increased under the Trump administration over the past year, with the most recent Consumer Price Index Report (CPI) indicating that costs overall have gone up by 3 percent — including an increase in milk by 6.6 percent and ground beef by 12.4 percent, two staples that are featured in Kennedy’s upside-down pyramid.

Kennedy’s focus on an HHS-based reality TV show comes as the U.S. is dealing with a nationwide cyclospora outbreak, which the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) stopped monitoring last year under his watch (the diarrhea-inducing parasitic endemic has spread to 45 states). It also comes as Kennedy has failed to address the rapid increase in measles cases over the past two years — after being deemed virtually eliminated since 2000 (with only 285 cases being identified in 2024), last year, there were 2,286 measles cases identified. So far, as of July this year, the U.S. has already surpassed the total number of cases seen in 2025.

Kennedy joins Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy as another cabinet member to have produced a reality TV series while serving in office. Duffy’s show features him taking his family on a nationwide road trip at a time when millions of Americans are struggling with rising gas prices.

Duffy, alongside his wife, was an MTV reality star of that network’s “Road Rules” program. The current show is being sponsored by several transportation companies — including Toyota, United Airlines, Boeing, and others — that are regulated by the department Duffy oversees, raising conflict of interest concerns.

Last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was also reportedly considering producing a reality show for immigrants in the U.S., to star then-Secretary Kristi Noem, who was widely criticized at the time for her frequent photo ops and “costume changes” while serving in her position. The show supposedly would have granted citizenship to the winner of the competition.

President Donald Trump — himself the former multi-year host of the reality program “The Apprentice” — has a noticeable obsession with surrounding himself in the White House with celebrities.

Besides Kennedy and Duffy, the president also appointed Mehmet Oz, former star of the “Dr. Oz” syndicated program, to be his current director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Current DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin was previously a mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter who performed on live pay-per-view shows. And in his first term, Trump hired Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” to serve in his administration for a brief time.

Other celebrities Trump has surrounded himself with include former WWE chair Linda McMahon, who serves as his education secretary, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a former anchor on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” program, which Trump still frequently calls into.

Trump’s obsession with celebrity continues, as he was a strong supporter of reality TV star Spencer Pratt’s run for mayor in Los Angeles, and came to his defense after Pratt falsely claimed fraud led to his loss in the race, similar to how Trump did in the 2020 presidential election. Many of Trump’s clemency orders have also featured celebrities and reality TV stars.