The Secretary Cooks While Measles Make a Comeback

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ties on an apron. In a school kitchen in Austin, the Secretary of Health serves lunch onto children's plates, and since last week he has also been doing it in front of the cameras. His program is called The Real Food Show, available on his own department's website, and it showcases the dietary guidelines he introduced in January, an upside down food pyramid with meat and dairy products at the top, along with plenty of fat. When he unveiled those guidelines, experts warned that this very diet increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes, not to mention obesity. Kennedy, who is neither a physician nor has ever studied nutrition, stood by his pyramid. The fact that a man with no training tells the country what belongs on its dinner plate does not seem to bother him. After all, this is television, where conviction counts for more than proof.

RFK Jr. announced The Real Food Show on July 31, a cooking program produced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In the show, Kennedy will travel across America with celebrity chefs, teaching people about healthy eating, budget friendly recipes, and basic cooking techniques.

Before the first episode aired, Kennedy acknowledged that the initial reaction had been positive, but that many people were concerned his meals would cost far more than the highly processed food they had been eating. He said that simply was not true. The numbers tell a different story. Under this administration, food prices have risen over the past year. The latest Consumer Price Index shows an increase of 3 percent. Milk is up 6.6 percent, and ground beef has climbed 12.4 percent, the very two foods sitting at the top of Kennedy's food pyramid. Ironically, milk and ground beef, the foundation of his dietary recommendations, have become the most expensive, while he continues to claim his meals cost less. The show serves the food. It never shows the grocery receipt.

The show airs while a parasite is spreading across the country. The organism responsible for cyclosporiasis, an illness that causes severe diarrhea, has now spread across 45 states, and under Kennedy's leadership the CDC stopped tracking it last year. At the same time, measles have returned after being considered virtually eliminated since 2000. After 285 cases in 2024, the number jumped to 2,286 in 2025, and by July of this year the country had already surpassed last year's total. Meanwhile, the secretary stands in the kitchen. A disease the United States believed it had defeated 25 years ago has returned, and the agency responsible for counting it has stopped counting. If you don't measure it, you don't end up with bad numbers.

The rest of the cabinet is in good company, because the entire administration is putting on shows. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has his own program, a road trip across America with his family, at a time when millions of Americans are struggling with rising gas prices. Duffy and his wife were already television personalities years ago on MTV's Road Rules. His current show is sponsored by companies that are regulated by the very department he now oversees, including automaker Toyota, aircraft manufacturer Boeing, and United Airlines. Some call that a conflict of interest, but the phrase itself seems to have gone out of fashion. A transportation secretary whose travel show is financed by the companies whose airplanes and cars he is supposed to regulate would have been a scandal in more sober times. Today, it is simply another television slot.

As early as last year, the Department of Homeland Security reportedly considered producing a television show for immigrants, with then Secretary Kristi Noem as its central figure, a politician already well known for her constant photo opportunities and frequent wardrobe changes. According to the proposal, the winner of the competition would receive American citizenship. In other words, someone would win legal status the way other people win a vacation or a new car. And the proposal was entirely serious.

At the top is a president who himself spent years hosting The Apprentice. Donald Trump surrounds himself in the White House with celebrities the way a television network surrounds itself with its cast. He appointed television doctor Mehmet Oz to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. His Homeland Security Secretary, Markwayne Mullin, once competed as a cage fighter on pay per view television. During his first term, he briefly brought Omarosa Manigault Newman, a contestant from that very same Apprentice show, into his administration. The Department of Education is led by Linda McMahon, the former chairwoman of the wrestling company WWE. The Department of Defense is headed by Pete Hegseth, formerly a host on Fox & Friends, a program Trump still likes to call into. Most recently, he endorsed reality television personality Spencer Pratt in his campaign for mayor of Los Angeles and defended him after Pratt claimed, following his defeat, that the election had been stolen, much like Trump himself did after 2020. Even Trump's pardons disproportionately go to people with prominent names.

In an administration that is always broadcasting, the image replaces the substance. A cooking show stands in for nutrition policy. A family road trip stands in for transportation policy. And at one point, citizenship itself nearly became the grand prize on a game show. What is shown begins to seem more real than what is actually happening. Governing becomes a performance, and those performing no longer have to deliver results. They simply have to be seen. The parasite never appears on television because it is no longer being counted. And measles quietly return to a country that watches its Secretary of Health cook.