In the Trump administration’s campaign to promote healthy eating, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has not stopped at his slogan urging people to “eat real food” to prevent disease.
In recent speeches and podcast appearances, the nation’s health secretary also has claimed that diet can “cure” schizophrenia and diabetes and allow people to rid themselves of bipolar disorder diagnoses. Researchers say the comments overstate current evidence about the real and promising role that food can play in managing illness.
“Food is medicine, and you can heal yourself with a good diet,” Kennedy said on comedian Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” podcast in February.
The talking point aligns with an idea from Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” allies that has gotten some bipartisan support: The role of food in health deserves more attention.
Scientists agree that diet can contribute to some diseases and also can be valuable in treating them. But public health advocates say Kennedy’s exaggerations are part of a pattern in which he cherry-picks and misrepresents scientific research, a tendency that he has regularly applied to vaccine science, enraging doctors.
It is the latest example of Kennedy being “incredibly careless and irresponsible” in talking about health issues, said Kayla Hancock, director of a public health project at the advocacy group Protect Our Care.
Dr. Theresa Miskimen Rivera, president of the American Psychiatric Association, fears the language could drive patients to self-medicate with food alone.
“The concern always is that people can have hope and they might interpret that as, ‘Well, I don’t need medication. I do not need treatment. I just need to follow the diet,’” Rivera said.
In an early February speech at the Tennessee Capitol, Kennedy cited the work of Dr. Christopher Palmer, a Harvard Medical School researcher who in 2019 wrote about two patients with schizophrenia who experienced remission of their symptoms following a high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet.
Kennedy said that Palmer had “cured schizophrenia using keto diets.”
Palmer has called that inaccurate. He told media that “as much as I wish we had cures for mental illness or other chronic diseases, it is important that we use more precise language.” Palmer prefers the word “remission.”
During the same speech, and later on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Kennedy referred to studies “where people lose their bipolar diagnosis by changing their diet.” He said “there’s a big paper about to come out” showing results.
Kennedy spokesman Andrew Nixon said those comments referred to a “growing body of research” on the issue, including a University of California, Los Angeles, study investigating the effect of a keto diet on teenagers with bipolar disorder.
That study is still recruiting patients and will not be completed until March 2027, according to a posting on a federal website. Any publication would come months after that.
Rivera, of the American Psychiatric Association, said Kennedy’s claims exaggerate the evidence. Studies testing the role of the ketogenic diet on mental health conditions have been small, anecdotal or pilot studies, she said. Many did not include a control group of patients following a regular diet.
