America’s newest cooking show host Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lashed out after his budget-busting recipes were brutally price-checked on TV.
The health secretary, 72, launched The Real Food Show on YouTube, where he travels across America to cook with guest chefs, following his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
However, the claim that nutritious meals can be made for under $5 per portion and be “affordable for every family” went down the drain after a CNN investigation on OutFront, which triggered RFK Jr.
A meal of wild Alaskan salmon cakes with a side salad can be prepared for four people at a total cost of $19.64, according to the Republican. CNN’s Tom Foreman made the same recipe, using the same ingredients, and found it cost $70.54.
MAHA’s low pricing is engineered by breaking down the cost of the ingredient per serving, rather than the cost of purchasing the entire pack or bottle.
After OutFront’s Erin Burnett shared Foreman’s report online, an incensed Kennedy responded, claiming Burnett had “abandoned both common sense and basic arithmetic.”
In his X post, the Trump ally wrote, “CNN wants us to incorporate the full package price of every ingredient, regardless of what is used in the recipe. If you put a squirt of ketchup on your burger, would you be surprised if the restaurant charged you for the whole bottle?”
Claiming they used “standard recipe costing,” RFK Jr. said “we count what the recipe actually uses,” and “the rest” of the ingredient “stays in the kitchen.”
Foreman’s report noted that grocery stores don’t offer individual servings, highlighting the flawed reasoning behind Kennedy’s math.
“When we started buying ingredients used in the show, even going for the lowest prices at a big, competitive chain, the cost heated up fast,” Foreman said.
The Real Food Show priced its wild-caught sockeye salmon at $8.99, while the cheapest fish of the same variety the CNN reporter could find was $24.04, which was a reduced price after a supermarket deal.
The MAHA show priced its serving of red onion at $0.08, while the entire vegetable cost $1.03. Avocado mayonnaise, meanwhile, was priced at $0.40, even though the bottle needed to obtain the small amount cost $11.19.
“They’re only pricing parts of it,” Foreman said, “and grocery stores don’t sell things that way.”
After making the salmon dish for “a whopping $70.54,” Foreman said, “Yes, it certainly is tasty, and it appears healthy, but the problem remains. I do not see having made this, how you can walk into a grocery store with $20 and come out with everything you need for this, making that part of the claim from any consumers, I think, very hard to swallow.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Health and Human Services and CNN for comment.
Other outlets have attempted the budget salmon recipe and found a similar issue. Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse also found Kennedy’s numbers did not add up.
According to her website, Hesse said that when she plugged Kennedy’s ingredient list into the online cart for her nearest grocery store—choosing the cheapest option each time—the bill came to $73.46.
That puts the cost at just over $18 per serving, nearly four times Kennedy’s $4.91 estimate.
The Republican has previously spoken about his hatred for processed food and soft drink, and has adopted a meat-and-fermented-vegetable-heavy diet. He has a supply of sauerkraut with him at all times.
