For decades, doctors have warned Americans not to overindulge in fast food. So it was striking to see the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sit down to a burger and fries on national television this week.
While waiting for a meal at a Florida Steak 'n Shake, Robert F. Kennedy explained to Fox News host Sean Hannity that Americans will be healthier if they start consuming more of what he calls "traditional" ingredients, like beef tallow.
Kennedy has inspired Steak n' Shake to switch back to tallow — which is rendered beef fat — for cooking its fries. The cooking fat was phased out from fast food chains about 35 years ago when heart-attack survivor Phil Sokolof launched a campaign against saturated fat.
Steak n' Shake described the change as "RFK'ing" its fries, and Kennedy wants more restaurants to follow its lead, arguing that seed oils are fueling the obesity epidemic.
"We are poisoning ourselves. And it's coming principally from these ultra processed foods," Kennedy told Hannity, going on to cite statistics about America's sky-high levels of chronic disease.
Moments later, he took a bite of a crunchy French fry and said: "People are raving about these fries.
The TV appearance has nutrition scientists dropping their jaws. Rates of obesity and diet-related chronic disease have been rising for years, and are linked to poor diets.
A different type of frying oil won't make this calorie and cholesterol-rich food healthy, says Christopher Gardner, a nutrition scientist at Stanford University School of Medicine.
"People should eat fewer French fries, whatever they're deep fried in," he says.
He notes that beef tallow and other saturated fats like butter can lead to clogged arteries and high cholesterol, a risk factor for heart disease and stroke. And while seed oils are ingredients in many highly processed foods, like potato chips and frozen dinners, they're not why these foods are unhealthy, he adds.
NPR reached out to Kennedy's team for comment but did not hear back.
Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and head of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, told NPR he's glad Kennedy is concerned about ultra processed foods and the diet-related disease epidemic, which he calls an urgent national crisis.
But, "concern around seed oils is really a distraction, and we need to be focusing on the real problems," he says.
The real villains, says Mozaffarian, are excessive amounts of refined grains, starches, and sugars, as well as salt and other preservatives, chemical additives, and contaminants from packaging.
"Seed oils are actually the bright spot," he says. "Seed oils are healthy fats, healthy monounsaturated, polyunsaturated fats that are really good for our bodies."
He notes that seed oils are well researched and have "incredible evidence" of health benefits, including studies showing they're linked with lower cholesterol levels and heart disease; randomized trials have shown that consuming seed oil does not cause inflammation.
Gardner is troubled that Kennedy is using his platform as Health Secretary to promote fast food, and fears it could lead some people to think that it's OK to eat more of it. (Though Kennedy conspicuously turned away a milkshake brought to his table at Steak n' Shake, Hannity had already downed one burger before Kennedy arrived and ordered another to eat with him.)
Excess sugar, fat and salt make fast food and packaged food "hyper-palatable," as Gardner notes, and they encourage overeating.
He says he'd like to warn Kennedy, "people follow your directions"
"If people are eating more hamburgers and more French fries, even though they're now in tallow instead of seed oil, more people are going to die."
And while Steak n' Shake has gotten a blitz of positive publicity in MAHA circles — Laura Loomer recently visited one the chain's restaurants to try the fries, and one TikTok user praised the chain for, "getting on board with healthy oils" — it's a bit of a case of tallow-washing.
In an email statement, Steak 'n Shake told NPR that its food manufacturers still use vegetable oils to pre-fry the food before it's frozen and shipped to stores. It said it's working to remove these oils from its supply chain, "as fast as possible."
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