RFK Jr. Announces Plan to Teach Americans to Cook
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the agency was discussing a plan to “teach people how to cook,” noting that Americans “have forgotten how to cook.”
At a news conference Wednesday, Kennedy, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Dr. Ben Carson announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) “launch of the Dietary Guidelines for America’s Strategic Partnerships” and provided an update on the “final storage standards rule,” according to a USDA news release.
Kennedy explained how Secretary of War Pete Hegseth took dietary guidelines and incorporated them into “military meals.” Kennedy explained that Hegseth “hired a dietician,” celebrity chef Robert Irvine, who “modifies the meals on all the military bases” in the United States so that they are “real food, fresh food, locally sourced whole foods.”
About a third of the soldiers ate in the cafeteria, Kennedy said, adding that soldiers instead spent their pay on fast food. Kennedy noted that after the change, “there are lines around the block” and soldiers have “stopped eating the local fast food.”
Kennedy shared that Irvine said people “don’t need more money to eat good food, you just need to shop smarter.”
“Every American can eat for less than fast food,” Kennedy said, adding that “one of the challenges” HHS faced and was working to solve was that “Americans have forgotten how to cook.”
“Well, the convenience of fast food is one of the things that attracts them. A lot of them don’t have cutlery, they don’t have pots and pans, they don’t have cutting boards and they don’t know how to shop,” Kennedy added. “One of the things we’re talking about right now at HHS is using the Commissioned Corps or other groups within our agency to go out and teach people how to cook.”
Kennedy’s announcement comes as he said last week that HHS would ask companies such as Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks to provide “safety data” regarding their ingredients, the Hill reported.
“We’re going to ask Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks, ‘Show us the safety data that shows it’s OK for a teenage girl to drink an iced coffee with 115 grams of sugar,’” Kennedy said at a rally.
As HHS secretary, Kennedy also made great strides in making Americans healthy again. In March 2025, Kennedy told CEOs of several major food companies that one of the Trump administration’s “top” priorities was to remove artificial food colors from the American food supply.
Companies including General Mills, Nestle, Hershey, Kraft Heinz and JM Smucker Co. have also announced they will work to eliminate artificial colors and flavors from their products by mid-2026 or 2027.
