Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, appeared with a cheeseburger and fries in a nationally televised interview on Fox News – a highly unusual move for a federal health official.
The appearance, in which he endorsed the decision of the burger chain Steak ‘n Shake to cook its fries in beef tallow, comes as Kennedy has attacked seed oils and made claims about the measles vaccine that lack context.
“We are poisoning ourselves and it’s coming principally from these ultra-processed foods,” said Kennedy, while seated at a table with the Fox News host Sean Hannity.
“President Trump wants us to have radical transparency and incentivize companies like this one to switch traditional ingredients for beef tallow,” Kennedy added, before he was delivered a double cheeseburger and french fries at a restaurant location in Florida.
Kennedy has moved to make the health department significantly less transparent using a little known provision called the “Richardson waiver”.
In multiple interviews, Kennedy has claimed seed oils are harmful to health and that fats, such as beef tallow, are preferable. The advice contradicts that of the American Heart Association (AHA), the largest nation’s largest non-profit focused on heart disease.
A 2017 review by the organization found replacing saturated fats such as beef tallow, lard and coconut oil with unsaturated vegetable oils could reduce cardiovascular disease at rates “similar to the reduction achieved by statin treatment”, according to clinical trials.
Seed oils have become a bugbear of wellness influencers on social media because they frequently are included in processed foods. Physicians speaking with the AHA have described the oils as “not to be feared”.
Kennedy’s appearance comes as the secretary is under fire for lukewarm support of vaccination amid a measles outbreak expected to “expand rapidly” through west Texas.
Measles is one of the most contagious diseases known to medicine. A vaccine to prevent the miserable and potentially dangerous virus is so effective that measles was eliminated from the US in 2000.
However, outbreaks reoccurred in the US as vaccine hesitancy increased globally, following the publication of a fraudulent paper that linked vaccines to autism. Groups such as Children’s Health Defense, which Kennedy led for nearly a decade, spread unfounded associations.
Kennedy made several claims on Hannity’s show that lacked context, including: “Some years we have hundreds of outbreaks” and that the vaccine causes “all the illnesses that measles itself causes”, specifically naming symptoms such as severe brain swelling.
The measles vaccine causes rates of side-effects that are far lower than the virus itself. For instance, brain swelling called encephalitis strikes one in 1,000 children infected with measles, but one in 100,000 children who receive the vaccine.
