Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent most of this year telling Americans to put down the processed snacks and “eat real food.” It turns out one of his toughest critics on that front was working inside the same administration.
The health secretary revealed this week that while he was finalizing the government’s new food pyramid, he got hit with one of the biggest pressure campaigns of his tenure.
It didn’t come from Big Food lobbyists. It came from Donald Trump’s White House, and it targeted the same pyramid Kennedy unveiled at the White House in January as part of the administration’s war on obesity.
The request was for something that has no business near the top of any nutrition chart. And when Kennedy finally confronted the person he’d heard was behind it, live and in front of a packed ballroom, the answer he got was nowhere close to a denial.
Kennedy told the story on Tuesday, Sept. 29, at the second annual Make America Healthy Again Summit, a daylong gathering of administration officials, health executives and MAHA supporters at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, D.C. He and Vice President JD Vance closed the event with a livestreamed fireside chat, according to HealthExec.
For those who missed it, Kennedy’s pyramid turned decades of federal advice on its head. It moved fruits, vegetables, red meat and cheese to the top, pushed whole grains toward the bottom and called for cutting back on sugar and processed foods.
Kennedy told the crowd that he and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins faced “tremendous pressure from the White House at the last minute” to add one more item to the very top, AgDaily reported.
That item was Oreo ice cream.
Then Kennedy turned to the man sitting across from him. “I heard that that came from the vice president’s office, and I want to just ask you face-to-face in front of an audience, is that true?” he asked.
Vance didn’t exactly rush to clear his name. “I like ice cream,” he said. Then he made it weirder. “I’m like the Brett Kavanaugh of ice cream. He liked beer, I liked ice cream.”
The line was a nod to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 confirmation hearings. Kavanaugh was fighting a sexual assault allegation from Christine Blasey Ford, which he denied, and he famously told senators, “I liked beer. I still like beer.”
Needless to say, it’s quite an odd reference to reach for when you’re trying to laugh off a question about who was meddling in national nutrition policy.
When Kennedy pressed him a second time, Vance settled on “no comment,” per AgDaily. The Oreo ice cream never made the final pyramid.
Vance then claimed Kennedy had since put him on a “crazy diet.” He said he called the health secretary on Fat Tuesday about giving up sugar for Lent, only to hear, “No, no, no, no, no, have I got the thing for you.” His punchline: “Thanks to Bobby Kennedy, fat Wednesday never came.”
Meanwhile, on social media, people were riled up in the comments section of the ice cream clip.
“Wait, what?! I thought MAGAs hate ice cream because Joe Biden does,” one person wrote.
Another added, “I’m old enough to remember them giving Joe Biden grief for eating ice cream.”
Others were stuck on the Kavanaugh line. “What a perverse comparison. Quelle surprise…” one user wrote.
“This is awesome!!!!! Exactly what I need the government focused on,” another sarcastically posted.
Kennedy never said Trump himself was involved. But the flavor at the center of the fight will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the president’s eating habits. Yahoo News has listed Oreos and ice cream among his indulgences, alongside McDonald’s and Diet Coke, after Kennedy said in a 2024 podcast that the food Trump eats is “really, like, bad.”
And Trump’s own waistline isn’t helping the administration’s healthy-eating pitch. Trump’s May physical at Walter Reed put him at 238 pounds, 14 pounds heavier than his April 2025 exam. His physician advised diet changes, more exercise and continued weight loss, MS NOW reported at the time.
Kennedy has had trouble keeping quiet about his boss’s plate before.
In January, he told podcaster Katie Miller that Trump has the most “unhinged” eating habits in the administration, admitting he doesn’t know how the president is still alive on a steady diet of McDonald’s, candy and Diet Coke. That same month, Trump told The New York Times he hasn’t taken the popular weight-loss drug, then added, “I probably should.”
For now, the food pyramid is Oreo-free. Whether the White House’s sweet tooth is under control is another question.
