RFK Jr. Loses It Over CNN Host Doing The Math On Meal Costs From His Cooking Show
from the make-believe dept
As you’ll recall, RFK Jr., who is totally not checked out of his job at HHS, has managed to sneak in hosting a government sponsored cooking show in between not doing anything about the country’s problems with measles, cyclosporiasis, whooping cough, and so on.
Well, two episodes are now out, and the reviews are not great. Some have referred the episodes as mere “long, boring political ads,” while others have simply pointed out that the meals so far taste like shit. But while those particular reviews may rely heavily on subjective matters of opinion, the main thrust of Kennedy’s show does not. And that thrust is the promise that American families can feed themselves fresh, wholesome meals for less than $5 a plate. CNN’s Tom Foreman appeared on Erin Burnett’s show and walked viewers through what buying ingredients at the grocery store to make one of Kennedy’s meals would actually cost.
When we started buying ingredients used in the show, even going for the lowest prices at a big competitive chain, the cost heated up fast. This was the cheapest frozen wild-caught sockeye salmon we could find. The closest to what they are using. They priced theirs at $8.99. The cheapest we could find, even with the deal from the store, was more than $24. Now the greens mix, that was about the same cost. So were the eggs on a per egg basis. But that’s the trick here, because they’re only pricing that one egg out of the carton. And that gets worse with other things.
For example, this red onion, they say they only spent eight cents on this because that’s how much they used. Getting the whole onion cost us more than a dollar. And look at this. This is the avocado mayonnaise. They priced this at 40 cents, because they were only using a couple of tablespoons to buy. The whole thing cost us more than $11. They’re only pricing parts of it. And grocery stores don’t sell things that way.
In other words, you can’t associate the cost of buying a meal by portioning out what ingredients you use and how much of it. The total cost of the ingredients has still left your bank account. We’re not talking about restaurants, where marginal costs per plate make all the sense in the world. Those are businesses that buy in bulk and have to calculate a profit into their pricing. These are families. Hungry families and the only profit they’re looking for is healthy caloric intake.
Well, Kennedy lost his shit on the internet over the segment, all because Burnett and Foreman refused to play his particular version of make believe. And, after accusing Burnett of having Trump Derangement Syndrome (does that come from vaccines and chemtrails too?), he did so in a way that perfectly illuminated the fact that he doesn’t understand that homes are not restaurants.
After the report aired, Kennedy hit back on X, trashing the host and accusing her of having “abandoned both common sense and basic arithmetic.”
“CNN wants us to incorporate the full package price of every ingredient, regardless of what is used in the recipe. If you put a squirt of ketchup on your burger, would you be surprised if the restaurant charged you for the whole bottle?” Kennedy wrote.
Kennedy argued his show uses “standard recipe costing,” saying “we count what the recipe actually uses,” while “the rest” of each purchased ingredient “stays in the kitchen.”
First off, this is a mostly misleading bit of pushback. While Foreman’s segment did tally up the grocery bill needed in order to make Kennedy’s meal, because that’s how shopping works, that wasn’t the only cost discrepancy he uncovered. For some items, the cost difference was in the marginal quantity of the ingredient used in each meal, that wasn’t the case with every ingredient, such as the fish itself.
So Kennedy’s claims in his show, like most everything he claims, are built on funny math and lies. It’s simply not how grocery shopping for a family works. It’s not how meal planning works. What could be interesting would be for the show to demonstrate from start to finish how to plan out a family’s meals for a week, shop for the ingredients for those meals in a way that you can double up on them to make full use of their cost, and build a recipe list around that and then see what the per-meal cost is.
But that would be way too much work for Kennedy and would place him way outside the cushy, entitled, wealthy experience he has had his entire life as a Kennedy.
Filed Under: cooking show, groceries, health & human services, rfk jr., shopping, tom foreman
Comments on “RFK Jr. Loses It Over CNN Host Doing The Math On Meal Costs From His Cooking Show”
No, no. It’s not that weekly meal planning is hard. It’s that it’s women’s work.
One of the first things the new Congress does, inshallah, is impeach and remove Kennedy. But this criticism is weird. You can’t cook without pantry staples.
That’s kind of a bullshit complaint, in that they’re being as pessimistic as possible on cost but not considering the benefit. Like, if you’re gonna call that a “$25 meal” or whatever, because that’s what the ingredients cost, you’d better also count the number of “free meals” that come from using the remaining portions. And if we’re talking about families, as is the case here, it’s absurd to deal in single servings and ignore the ubiquity of refrigerators and freezers and cupboards.
Okay, some stuff could go bad, but realistically not eggs. The date’s usually at least a month out, I (living alone) often use them a month or two past their dates, and they’re not some special-purpose ingredient that can’t be used elsewhere. A family of 3 or 4 people, if they eat eggs, will have absolutely no trouble amortizing the cost of 18 or 30.
I don’t know too many recipes that use avocado mayonnaise, but it’d probably make egg salad well enough, along with those “surplus” eggs. I’ve sometimes added onions too, and I’ve got about 80% of a cut onion in my fridge right now (along with the rest of the bag it came from; I’ll eat them over the next few weeks).
If you’re being picky, add the cost of electricity for the stove and fridge (not that anyone unplugs their fridge when empty, and nevermind that a full fridge wastes less power). But, hell, with frozen water bottles and occasionally commerical ice top-ups in a cooler, I’ve used ingredients like this even on week-long road trips. It’s no big deal. And, growing up, my mother would often plan meals based on “what’s in the fridge that needs to be used up soon?”
We don’t need to invent ridiculous things to accuse RFK of.
The other half of "ingredient margin pricing"...
Hmm… So I buy a container of Avocado Mayonnaise and use only a spoon-full of it in this recipe. Now I’ve got the rest of the Avocado Mayo in my refrigerator (presumably) for the rest of time, like my Jalapenos, capers, and every other ingredient-for-one-dish.
And I bet the Mayo doesn’t have the (refrigerated) shelf life of the capers.
I mean, I get both views. Obviously if you don’t have the cash to buy the items, that’s a problem.
On the other side, I’ve always calculated out how many meals for my money I get. Costco pizza was great at 10 bucks for 4-6 meals.
How DARE you check my grocery maths Lupita our nanny assures me its right, and my personal assistant counts the change for me.
Accusing me of being some kind of out of touch crudite eater like the last right wing health quack; the nerve!
Ill have you know I harvest all my own blubber, and have worn the same pair of workout jeans for 30 years!
Signed in Sincerely,
Bobby’s Brainslug
It’s ridiculous because there are youtube channels that already do this but better. If you really want to get deep into meal planning and “using the whole onion” so to speak, you can find at least a dozen channels that talk exactly about that.
As an aside, personally, even for home cooks I would allow for some ingredients to fall in the category of “expected to have” and be excluded from the overall price. For example: table salt, flour, vegetable oil, etc. Yes it may cost $10-$15 to stock those necessities for most recipes you’re going to use a few pennies worth and most people will have them already. However, if you say it needs flaky finishing salt, barley flour, avocado oil, or similar then that shit needs added into the price.
Since Bobby wants kids eating healthy, I’m curious if he’s advocating for schools to bring back home ec classes.