Thanksgiving traditions are often personal, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. be the exception.
This holiday, the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services has shared his take on cooking a Thanksgiving turkey, calling it the “MAHA way.”
In a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, Kennedy Jr. is seen barefoot in his backyard heating beef tallow in a metal pot before carefully lowering the turkey.
“This is how we cook the MAHA way,” Kennedy said, referring to his “Make American Healthy Again” slogan. He is also heard telling onlookers to “put it in very slowly. Wait until it stops making noise” before leaving the turkey to cook.
At one point he also asks his wife Cheryl Hines if she wants one, to which she replies “No. I don’t eat turkey.”
Kennedy Jr. presented the results after 40 minutes: “It’s going to be delicious.”
The video has gone viral on the X channel with 3.7 million views early Friday morning.
Kennedy Jr. has previously argued that beef tallow is a healthier cooking fat than the seed oils he believes are the main cause of the obesity crisis.
“Seed oils are one of the unhealthiest ingredients in our food. We need to redo cooking oil,” he told X in October.
However, some nutrition experts, including Stanford University Professor of Medicine Christopher Gardner, have argued that the claim that seed oils are harmful to health is false. Studies have shown that the heart-healthy unsaturated fats they contain have been linked to a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer and earlier death. Meanwhile, alternatives like beef tallow, butter, or lard are high in unhealthy saturated fats.
However, other experts, such as James J DiNicolantonio and James H O’Keefe from Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute, have suggested in their research that excessive consumption of seed oils can promote inflammation in the body and increase the risk of diseases such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
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Many social media influencers on platforms like TikTok have also claimed that seed oils contain toxins.
Joe Rogan has claimed they are “the worst things your body can consume”. Meanwhile, JD Vance has also said that he does not cook with seed oils.
Seed oils include canola, soybean and hydrogenated soybean oil. A blend of these oils is often used in fast food at chains like McDonald’s, which switched to using seed oils in the 1990s largely to reduce saturated fat in response to growing concerns about heart disease.
Kennedy Jr. has spent decades lambasting McDonald’s and publicly criticizing Donald Trump’s love of the fast food chain. He described the food as “poison” and “really bad” on an episode of The Joe Polish Show podcast this month.
In a separate recent interview with Fox News, he said, “I have nothing against fast food. I’m against food with seed oils in it. When I was a kid, McDonald’s was made of tallow [animal] fat, it was good for you, and your body needs it, it makes you healthy. Why don’t we do it again with lard?”
Kennedy was accused of hypocrisy last week when he was photographed aboard Trump Force One, apparently tucking into a McDonald’s hamburger, fries and Coca-Cola, while surrounded by the president-elect, his son Donald Trump Jr. and billionaire Elon Musk. .
Donald Trump Jr., seated to his right, joked after sharing the photo that Kennedy Jr.’s mission to “make America healthy again” would have to wait “until tomorrow.”
“Like all good diets, you have to have a cheat day every now and then,” she said.
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