What does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. eat?
It isn’t a query one would sometimes ask of potential Cupboard members, even these whose broad remit as secretary of well being and human companies — the submit for which Kennedy was put ahead, on Thursday, by President-elect Donald Trump — would come with oversight of the nation’s meals security and the promotion of public well being.
However a central part of Kennedy’s pitch, as a presidential candidate and later as Trump’s potential public-health czar, is his private emphasis on diet and train. He likes to speak about nutritional vitamins and has been recognized to submit movies of himself lifting weights, shirtless. He has additionally been linked to loads of lifeless animals, so the query looks as if honest sport, so to talk.
A evaluation of Kennedy’s latest interviews, and conversations with individuals aware of his consuming habits, turned up common themes about what he consumes and the way, however few specifics. The reply seems to be: virtually something you will discover in nature. And solely between midday and seven p.m.
In a 2023 interview with Lex Fridman, a pc scientist who hosts a well-liked podcast, Kennedy stated he engaged in “intermittent fasting” — a dietary protocol that requires consuming meals solely in a selected, transient window throughout the day.
Adherents say time-restricted consuming helps with weight reduction and different metabolic features, resembling diminished irritation and improved coronary heart and mind well being. Folks like it, though latest research haven’t substantiated main well being advantages past extra typical food plan plans.
In his interview with Fridman, Kennedy stated he ate his first meal round midday and tried to not eat after 6 or 7 p.m. He stated he began each morning with a 12-step assembly, a 3-mile hike together with his canines, meditation and a few half-hour on the health club — a routine that doesn’t go away a lot time for breakfast. He eats very healthfully, buddies say, and he has been recognized to throw scraps of leftover meat to a pair of ravens he’s making an attempt to befriend in his yard.
Kennedy additionally advised Fridman that he took loads of nutritional vitamins — “I can’t even checklist them to you right here, ’trigger I couldn’t even bear in mind all of them” — and that he was on an “anti-aging protocol” from his physician that features testosterone alternative.
Kennedy, 70, has pushed for stress-free laws on the sale of uncooked, or unpasteurized, milk, which he stated at one level this yr that he drank completely. Such milk is extra more likely to trigger illness, though its advocates have stated it carries well being advantages. Kennedy didn’t reply to detailed requests for touch upon his food plan.
(He doesn’t drink alcohol — he has been sober for years, after scuffling with drug habit in his youth.)
Kennedy has described himself as a “very adventurous eater,” which has turn out to be useful but in addition gotten him in hassle, in his world travels as an environmental lawyer and adventure-seeking celeb.
Working example: Kennedy has a lifeless worm in his mind. The parasite was found when he sought medical remedy in 2010 after experiencing what he described as vital reminiscence loss.
Initially, docs thought he had a tumor, however additional testing confirmed the spot on his mind was a parasite. It isn’t recognized how a worm made its approach into Kennedy’s mind, however he has speculated that it could have come from consuming undercooked pork, maybe in India.
When he was scuffling with the reminiscence loss, Kennedy was subsisting on a food plan heavy on predatory fish, notably tuna and perch, each recognized for his or her elevated mercury ranges. Kennedy, of all individuals, ought to have recognized higher — for years, he railed towards the hazards of mercury contamination in fish from coal-fired energy crops.
One other take a look at he underwent on this time interval, for mercury poisoning, confirmed that his mercury ranges have been 10 occasions above what the Environmental Safety Company considers secure. Kennedy stated he was sure that the mercury poisoning, not the worm, had triggered his reminiscence loss. “I cherished tuna-fish sandwiches. I ate them on a regular basis. I caught fish on a regular basis and freshwater fish. I might fish and eat loads of perch at very, very excessive ranges,” he advised The New York Occasions in 2023.
Kennedy has additionally described what he doesn’t eat. For one factor, he says he by no means eats processed meals.
It isn’t clear what, if something, he ate whereas touring on Trump’s airplane within the closing months of the marketing campaign. In a latest podcast interview, he described the meals choices on the marketing campaign airplane as “simply poison,” including that what Trump eats “is de facto, like, unhealthy.”
It’s almost not possible to keep away from processed meals, a class that’s most broadly outlined as any meals altered from its authentic state, together with chopped greens. A few of his podcast interviews counsel that he’s utilizing “processed” as shorthand for “ultra-processed,” a time period that extra narrowly refers to industrially made meals containing hard-to-pronounce components and components.
In a January interview with Mark Hyman, a physician and podcast host, Kennedy famous that “processed meals” had existed since he was younger.
“We have been consuming Hostess Twinkies, by the way in which,” he stated. “I want I had a greenback for each a kind of that I ate. I’d nonetheless eat ’em if I might.”
One other factor he says he gained’t eat: canines.
This got here up within the wake of a Vainness Truthful article revealed in July about Kennedy, which featured {a photograph} of him posing with a splayed, spit-roasted animal that the article stated was almost definitely a canine, eaten in Korea.
After the article got here out, Kennedy stated in an interview with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation that it was not a canine in Korea however a goat in Patagonia. “I’m a really adventurous eater, Chris,” he stated. “I’ll eat just about something.”
He added: “There’s two issues I wouldn’t eat. Nicely, three. I wouldn’t eat a human, I wouldn’t eat a monkey and I wouldn’t eat a canine.”
