Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On Why So Many Americans Feel Sick, Tired, & Inflamed - And What Needs To Change

Summary

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The Bossticks Podcast: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Why So Many Americans Feel Sick, Tired, & Inflamed – And What Needs to Change

Hosts: Lauryn Bosstick & Michael Bosstick
Guest: Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Date: March 23, 2026
Duration: ~79 minutes

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Episode Overview

In this insightful and nonpartisan episode, Lauryn and Michael Bosstick engage Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the current U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, in a frank discussion about the declining health of Americans despite unprecedented national wealth and resources. The episode steers clear of sensational headlines and political sparring, drilling into the “architecture of American health”: systems, incentives, policies, and industry practices that have fostered a chronic disease epidemic, widespread metabolic dysfunction, and an ineffectual, reactive health care system.

Kennedy draws on his decades of experience in law, environmental health, and public policy to explain the historical and structural roots of the problem—touching on processed food, agency capture, outdated dietary guidelines, environmental toxins, and systemic fraud. The episode blends accessible personal anecdotes and detailed examples, aiming to equip listeners—especially parents—with crucial knowledge about the factors impacting their health and choices.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Are So Many Americans Sick?

• High Disease Burden & Costs:

  • US spends 2-3 times more per capita on healthcare than other developed countries, yet has the world’s sickest population.
  • “77% of American teens can't qualify for military service because of obesity or autoimmune diseases or other chronic diseases.” – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [02:40]

• Explosion in Chronic Disease:

  • When JFK was president, there was almost no spending on chronic diseases; now it's $4.3 trillion a year (about 40% of every federal dollar).
  • 90% of health spending is to treat diet-induced chronic diseases.

• Diet & Mental Health:

  • Diet affects not just bodies but brains—connections to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, ADHD, depression, and violence.
  • Studies show real food reduces violence and behavioral issues in institutions by significant margins.

    “When they switch from typical prison food to real food, violence level goes down by 40 or 50%... all of these metrics for depression and anxiety and violence drop dramatically when you start giving people good food.” – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [05:47]

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2. How Did American Health Get Derailed?

• Timeline of Decline:

  • Kennedy pinpoints the mid-1990s as the inflection point. Tobacco companies, facing regulation, diversified into food, hiring scientists to make foods addictive through sugar, salt, and artificial chemicals.

    “By adding salts and sugars and developing all of this ultra processed food and highly refined carbohydrates and putting in chemically lab-created chemicals that would hijack your brain and make you insatiable.” [07:20]

• Agency Capture:

  • The FDA (by food industry) and CDC (by pharmaceutical industry) became “sock puppets” of the industries they regulate, leading to a flood of new, untested food ingredients.
  • The GRAS ("generally recognized as safe") loophole was exploited, allowing ~10,000 ingredients (vs. 400 in Europe).

    “Our food became the most chemically-laden... we're changing that now... we closed the GRAS loopholes.” [11:28]

• Food Pyramid & Dietary Guidelines:

  • Food companies and lobby groups manipulated dietary guidelines, pushing processed carbs and demonizing proteins/fats, often with the collusion of NGOs (e.g., American Heart Association).

  • Result: 70% of kids’ calories now come from ultra-processed food, described by Kennedy as “poison, not food.” [13:49]

    “Fruit Loops is not a food. And yet it was at the top of the food pyramid.” [13:49]

  • The new guidelines under Kennedy are science-based, concise, summarized as: “Eat real food.” [15:49]

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3. Policy Impact & Practical Changes

• Massive Federal Food Subsidies:
  • USDA spends $405 million/day on food (SNAP, school lunches, military, etc.), now required to align with new, real-food guidelines.
  • Changes underway in military and institutional meals, with fresh/local food shown to be both healthier and cheaper.

    “Mark Hyman's new book... shows you how to eat... three meals a day, really good, tasty, delicious, wholesome, real food... for $10 a day.” [18:34]

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4. Environmental & Systemic Factors

• Pesticides & Glyphosate:
  • Immediate glyphosate ban isn't practical due to current agricultural dependency (98% corn, 97% soy use it), and China’s near-monopoly on production is a national security threat.
  • Transitioning to alternatives (e.g., weed-killing lasers, safer pesticides) is a key focus, balancing food security and health.

    “This is a bridge solution until we can transition off of glyphosate...there are compelling alternatives on the horizon.” [39:27]

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5. Healthcare System Flaws and Achievements

• Drug Pricing Reform:

  • Thanks to new Most Favored Nation (MFN) drug pricing negotiated during Kennedy’s tenure, US now gets drugs at parity with Europe, and pharmaceutical production is being on-shored.
  • “List price for Ozempic... $1,300 here, $88 in London. Not anymore.” [31:07]

• Waste, Fraud & Bureaucracy:

  • Rampant fraud in Medicare/Medicaid, with loss of $100B+ per year to scammers posing as healthcare providers, often foreign crime rings—aggravated by agency indifference.
  • “Nobody was feeling accountability... just huge amounts of fraud…” [64:06]
  • Policies under prior administrations prioritized enrollment numbers over prosecution of fraud.

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6. Personal Health Practices & Recommendations

• Kennedy’s Diet & Fitness:

  • Currently on a strict carnivore diet with ferments (sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt)—significant reduction in visceral fat and reversal of atrial fibrillation within 30 days.
  • Structured, 40-minute daily workouts, lifelong commitment to sports and activity.

    “I do weights... four different routines and rotate.” [24:10]

• Advice on Cell Phones/EMFs:

  • Strongly urges against cell phones by the head, especially for kids; always use speaker; avoid sleeping near them.

    “Kids who use cell phones for even 10 minutes, their EEGs don't return to normal for at least 12 hours.” [48:27]

• Family & Children’s Health:

  • One of Kennedy’s children is on the same strict diet; he hopes to instill health consciousness without pressuring them.

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7. Systemic Change: Guidelines, Infant Formula, and SNAP

• Infant Formula:

  • First updates since 1998 are underway; new focus on scrutinizing ingredients, contaminants (PFAS, metals), and updated nutritional science.
  • “Their brain is absorbing contaminants at a rate it will never do again...” [47:19]

• SNAP Waivers and Partisanship:

  • Half of states (mostly red) seek to limit junk food/SODA from being purchased with food stamps; blue states resist, seeing it as a "Trump program," despite policy’s bipartisan public health benefit.
  • “You gotta love your kids more than you hate Donald Trump.” [53:22]

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8. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the food system’s capture:

  “These chemicals are weapons of mass destruction against the human metabolic process. And they're destroying our kid's metabolism and all of these kids are metabolically injured.” – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [13:04]

• On modern American diet:

  “Eat real food. Most of the items in your food today... are not food. They're something else.” [15:49]

• On the fraud in Medicaid/Medicare:

  “LA has more hospice companies than the entire nation, mainly operated by Russian mobsters...their mortality rate is 0%; nobody ever dies.” [67:03]

• On family legacy:

  “Of all the thousands of people I met, I never knew anybody with autism...and all of a sudden, they're everywhere.” [42:40]

• On working with President Trump:

  “He understands the uses of power better than any other president, at least in my lifetime...” [41:35]

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9. Timestamps – Important Segments

• [02:36] — Why Americans are sick: chronic disease stats and historical context
• [07:20] — The rise of processed foods and agency capture
• [13:49] — Corruption of dietary guidelines and the new food pyramid
• [18:34] — Military and institutional food overhaul
• [31:07] — MFN drug pricing; onshoring pharmaceuticals
• [39:27] — Pesticides, glyphosate, farming technology innovations
• [47:19] — Infant formula regulations & need for reform
• [48:27] — EMFs, cell phones, and child safety
• [53:22] — SNAP reform: “Love your kids more than you hate Donald Trump.”
• [64:06] — Systemic fraud in healthcare
• [78:39] — Kennedy’s legacy: “End the chronic disease epidemic... make a big dent in the next three years.”

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Tone & Final Takeaways

Kennedy’s tone is direct yet accessible, blending policy depth with personal passion. He’s analytical and critical of entrenched systems but optimistic about new science, evolving guidelines, and policy reforms aimed at prevention and transparency.

The episode deliberately strips away partisanship, championing changes that serve everyone’s health—especially the next generation. Listeners are left with the sense that understanding and reforming America’s health systems is a civic and family imperative, not a political debate.

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Key Listener Actions / Reflection

• Read ingredients, favor real, unprocessed foods (“Eat real food”).
• Be aware of the powerful impact of diet—mental and physical, especially in children.
• Limit kids’ exposure to cell phones and EMFs.
• Scrutinize wellness supplements and peptides—seek regulated, inspected sources.
• Support/advocate for policy and personal changes that prioritize prevention over profit, regardless of political affiliation.

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“There’s no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children... you’ve got to love your kids more than you hate Donald Trump.”
– Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [53:22]

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Transcript

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Welcome to the Bostics, starring Lauren Bostic and Michael Bostic. Together they are the Bostics.

[Michael Bostic]

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Bostics. Today's episode is one we approached very intentionally. We're sitting down with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And before we get into it, we want to be really clear about how and why we had this conversation. This is not a political episode. We didn't bring him on to debate headlines, take sides, or get pulled into the noise. We brought him on because there's a much bigger question we think everyone is asking right now. And that question is, why are we so unhealthy in a country with so many resources? Why are chronic diseases rising? Why does our food system look the way it does? Why does healthcare cost so much and still feel reactive instead of preventative? And maybe most importantly, why is it so hard to change any of it? So in this conversation, we stayed focused on the architecture of American health. The systems, the incentives and the decisions that shape what we eat, how we're treated, and how we live. We talk about the rise in chronic disease, what's happening inside our food supply, how dietary guidelines have evolved, and why terms like ultra process are only now being clearly defined. We get into infant nutrition, environmental factors like soil health, and what's driving issues like fatigue, inflammation, and hormone disruption. Many of the things we talk about regularly on this show, we. We also zoom out and look at healthcare itself, why it's so expensive, where it prioritizes treatment over prevention, and what it would take to actually build a system centered around long term health so quickly, before we dive in. For those who may not be familiar with his background, Secretary Kennedy is an environmental attorney, author, and longtime public health advocate. He previously served as Senior Attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council and co founded the Waterkeeper alliance where he focused on clean water protection and holding corporations accountable for environmental harm. He comes from the Kennedy family, the son of former U.S. attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, and has spent decades working at the intersection of environmental issues, public health and policy. Today, he serves as the 26th US Secretary of Health and Human Services, where his focus includes reforming aspects of the food system, increasing transparency, and addressing chronic disease in America.

[Lauren Bostic]

Whether you agree with him or not,

[Michael Bostic]

the goal here is simple. To understand how these systems work and what that means for you and your family. Because at the end of the day, this episode is about something bigger than any one person or opinion. It's about your health, it's about your choices. And it's about understanding the world you're living in more clearly. So with that, let's get into it with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Mr.

[Unidentified Male Host]

Secretary, we have more convenience than any generation, yet we're sicker than ever from a basic level. What are we getting wrong?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Well we have, right now we're the sickest country in the world. So we pay two to three times more for healthcare per capita than any of the industrial countries and we have the sickest population. We have the highest chronic disease burden. Our kids are, you know, are sick. 77% of American teens can't qualify for military service because of obesity or autoimmune diseases or other chronic diseases. We spend now, when my uncle was president, I was a 10 year old boy. We spent zero on chronic disease and now we spend 4.3 trillion a year. And it's the fastest growing budget item. It's about, about 40% of every federal dollar goes to healthcare and 90% of that is to treat food induced diet induced chronic diseases. And so it's existential for our country. You can't solve the healthcare crisis without solving chronic disease. You can't. Obamacare is not going to solve it. Single payer. All of the things that the Republicans and Democrats are, have been arguing about historically are just like switching decking chairs around on the Titanic. Unless we address the issue directly, we're not going to get it solved. When I was a kid, the average pediatrician would see one case of juvenile diabetes in his lifetime over a 40 or 50 year career. Today, 38% of teens, American teens are diabetic or pre diabetic. And you know, autism is another good example. There was a national, there was a study on autism and epidemiological, the largest epidemiological study ever done in 1970. And they were looking for the incident of autism. The incident rates and the rate they came down with was 0.8 per 10,000. So less than 1 in every 10,000. Today it's 1 in every 31 kids. California is 1 in 19 kids, 1 in 12.5 boys. And so you think of all the lives that have been ruined by this and you know, we're looking at a whole generation of kids now that's damaged. It's hard to find a kid that is not suffering from either obesity or some other chronic disease. All these autoimmune diseases you see particularly in girls. And then there's all these emotional problems, many of which are food related. And you know, it's now been very well established that there's A, there's a gut to brain connection, and there's a researcher at Harvard called Chris Palmer who is actually dramatically reducing the impacts of schizophrenia simply by changing to a keto diet. You know, the symptoms go down by 30%. There's a lot of other studies out now that show that people with bipolar disorder can lose their diagnoses by changing their diet. And we know it's connected to, for example, food diets are very well documented or connected to adhd. And, you know, when they do these studies in prisons, which there are many, many of them that you can find on the Internet, the. When they switch from prison typical prison food to real food, violence level goes down by 40 or 50%. The use of restraints in juvenile detention facilities go down by 75%. The incident rates, all of these metrics for, you know, depression and anxiety and violence drop dramatically. When you start giving people good food. You know, those are important signals to what we should be doing right now.

[Lauren Bostic]

So we've wanted you on here for a long time, and I know we've had it on and off the schedule. And what we're so excited about this conversation is I really don't look at this as a red versus blue issue. I look, I look at this as a, as an American issue. I look at this as a, as a health issue. We've been, you know, we've talked on this show for years about the importance of taking care of yourself. When you, you look back with everything you've learned over the years, where did

[Michael Bostic]

America start to get off the tracks with our health?

[Lauren Bostic]

Because if, you know, you see those old videos of people working out and in shape and lower cases of diabetes

[Michael Bostic]

and obesity, can you pinpoint a period of time when it got off the rails?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, I think you had this explosion of chronic disease really happen in the mid-1990s. I was peripherally involved with the tobacco litigation in the late 1980s. And during that time, the tobacco companies were the wealthiest companies, cash rich companies on earth, more than oil, more than anybody else. But they saw the writing on the wall. They saw the regulatory headwinds that they were going to face. They saw the litigation risks their customers were turning against them. So they began diversifying and they diversified into the food industry. So by 1995, the two biggest food companies in the world were arguing J. Reynolds and Philip Morris, which are both cigarette companies. And they transferred thousands of scientists who were engaged in making tobacco more addictive to figure out ways to make food addictive. And by adding salts and sugars and developing all of this ultra processed food and highly refined carbohydrates and putting in chemically lab created chemicals that would hijack your brain and make you insatiable. If you smell a strawberry aroma from your food, your mind thinks it's strawberries and they want to eat it, but there's no nutrients in it, it's a chemical. And so when it gets to your stomach, your stomach is saying I need more. And you just keep stuffing stuff into your pie hole. And you never really get full when you're eating that stuff. If you eat a protein meal, you're full. It's really hard to get obese if you're just eating protein and. But if you're eating it's nutrient dense. But if you're eating ultra processed food, you're gonna be, you're almost certainly gonna get overweight. So that's one of the things that happened. And then the food industry also captured FDA around that time.

[Lauren Bostic]

And what do you mean captured fda?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Well, you know, they began controlling fda. So it's called the industry capture or agency captures. When the agency becomes a sock puppet for the industry it's supposed to regulate. It's a dynamic that's in place with most industries from the financial industry to even like the military. Right. It becomes the contractors figure out ways to dictate policy. And the big industries, the big polluters control EPA and a lot of the state environmental agencies. So it happens with every agency. But it really became pronounced at fda and then. And the pharmaceutical industry controls cdc. We had, we had dietary guidelines and a couple things happened. One is in 1958 we passed a law, the FDA began regulating the ingredients in food. There was a whole lot of new ingredients. After World War II, the chemical industry was getting involved in food and they developed. So they started in 58 regulating it. But they said any new ingredient that you add, you have to show safety studies for before you add it, which makes a lot of sense. They said there are certain ingredients that are just generally recognized as safe. G R A S grass. And they developed a loophole that said for those ingredients like vinegar and salt, stuff that's been used through, you know, for millennia, you don't have to show a safety study. The industry hijacked that term and applied it to all new chemicals. So they gradually got in control of it. They got an agreement with FDA that they never had to show any safety study they could self affirm. They could say, we checked whether this.

[Lauren Bostic]

So what's an example of an ingredient or a chemical that maybe gets through gr that people think is safe, that is not safe and unregulated.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I mean food dies would be, you know, those kind of things. We now have, I mean look at the back of any processed food and it's all those names that you can't pronounce. Those are all the ingredients and we now have in this country we don't even know how many ingredients because FDA wasn't even counting them. But there's probably around 10,000 ingredients in our food and Europe has only 400. Wow. And all of the, those, the rest of the 10,000 are illegal. So our food became the most chemically laden with all of these, you know, ingredients that had slipped through the grass loophole. And we're changing that now. We've changed the grass loopholes so that we've closed it. So the new ingredients have to show safety studies. And then we're going back to all the old ingredients and we're saying show us your safety study. You know, we're going to tell Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts. You need to show us the safety study that showed that show that showed you convinced you at a 15 year old girl can safely drink a Coca Cola or a iced coffee that has 115 grams of sugar in it. I don't think they're gonna be able to do that.

[Lauren Bostic]

No, it's great. I mean we drop our kid off at school sometime and there's, there's Starbucks nearby and I see some of these young kids with like these and listen, not passing judgment on the parents, but

[Michael Bostic]

I just know what's in those drinks

[Lauren Bostic]

and there's so much sugar and there's these little bodies and I think, I don't think anyone's trying to do any harm. They assume that if it's being sold that it's okay.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, I mean it's addictive. It hijacks your brain. Sugar is, sugar is as addictive as crack. It's very, very bad for you. I mean it grows tumors, but it just, it destroys your mitochondria and your, your, your metabolic process. So it's, it is, these chemicals are a, are weapons of mass destruction against, against the human metabolic process. And they're destroying our kid's metabolism and all of these kids are metabolically injured.

[Unidentified Male Host]

You flipped the pyramid, which is a big deal. Why was it flipped the other way to begin with?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I mean again, the food pyramid was also hijacked. The dietary guidelines were hijacked and they were hijacked by big companies like Procter and Gamble. And oftentimes with the Collusion of the American Heart association, which was taking all this money from Pepsi and Coke, which make a lot of processed foods. And so they told the country that it was bad to eat proteins and saturated fats, which they didn't have any good science for. And it pushed the pyramid towards ultra processed food and highly refined carbohydrates. So today, 70% of American children, or our children's diet is the average American kid. 70% of their calories are coming from ultra processed food. And it's just poison. It's not food at all. It's poison. And, and that's because that, the way they had, I mean, the entire food. When I came in, I was supposed to, I came in a year ago, a year and two weeks ago yesterday, a week later, I was given the Biden food pyramid to publish. And they had worked on it for four years. It was hundreds of pages long. It was incomprehensible and it was, it had been written by food industry lobbyists and it was, it reflected the mercantile impulses that put Fruit Loops at the top of the food pyramid. Fruit Loops is not a food. And yet it was at the top of the food pyramid. And so, you know, what we did is we threw out the Biden recommendations, dietary guidelines, and we worked for 11 months. We brought in Mark Hyman and we brought in the best nutritionists in the country from the best universities in the country, and we put them all in a room and said, you know, we need science based guidelines. And so all of our dietary guidelines are cited and sourced multiple sources. And the food pyramid is a reflection of the new dietary guidelines. And our new dietary guidelines are, instead of being hundreds of pages long, they're less than 10 pages long. And you can summarize them in three words, eat real food. So that's, you know, people should be eating food. It's, most of the items that are in your food today, in ultra processed food are not food. They're something else.

[Michael Bostic]

Can you talk about why this is

[Lauren Bostic]

all also such a big deal? So I think people, you know, we grew up seeing the food pyramid in school. It'd be in like the textbook and you'd study it. But we had someone recently on the show that said the reason this is such, you can correct me if I'm wrong, it is such a big deal, is that the food pyramid and the way that these dietary guidelines are set also dictate what food children get in schools that are funded by government. It dictates, you know, what programs you know, and food people are able to get access to. Is that correct? Is that why this is?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah. I mean, the government pays for huge amounts. The USDA alone spends $405 million a day on food subsidies. So now those food subsidies go to the SNAP program. They go to school lunches, they go to wix, they go to Head Start, they go to Indian health services. And those foods are now all gonna have to change because they're gonna have to reflect. You know, they're gonna. We're not gonna be buying stuff that's

[Lauren Bostic]

not food because this is the source material that everything basically has to evolve based on that.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

And then, you know, you have millions of military meals every day. And also the VA and all that's changing, and it's already changing. And I had a guy on my podcast this week called Robert Irvine, and he's a chef. And he's the chef. He was a television chef. Really interesting guy. He came out of the British Navy and he was the chef of the British Navy. He then became a very successful television chef. And he has now been retained by Pete Hegseth, redo all the military meals. So he's already open at five bases. By the end of this month, he'll be in 20 bases. And the soldiers in those bases were not eating the military food. It was so bad. It's appalling, is unspeakable. And they were going and using their meager paychecks to pay for fast food on the base. And the fast food is not cheap.

[Lauren Bostic]

They were going. Not even. They were just.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

They were going across the street to, you know, to the fast food.

[Lauren Bostic]

It was so bad that they didn't jump.

[Michael Bostic]

It wasn't like they were jumping.

[Lauren Bostic]

It was fast food.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, they were going to fast food. And the fast food is not cheap. A Big Mac meal cost 12 to $14. You can feed your whole family really good food. Mark Hyman's new book has a menu and it has a, you know, a section in it where the book is called Food Fix, where he shows you how to eat Americans, how to eat for $10 a day, three meals a day, really good, tasty, delicious, wholesome, real food. If you cook at home, good food is much less expensive than if you eat at fast food anyway. Robert Irvine is making locally sourced, high quality food, not even frozen. And one of the points he made to me, he said a Frozen salmon costs $9. A fresh salmon cost 6. A lot of times the better food is much cheaper if you're willing to cook it yourself. And if the military is spending, has allocated $18.50 a day per soldier. That's what they spend on food. He's feeding the soldiers three good meals a day for $10. And what he says, we don't need more money, we just need to be smarter about how we buy and how we cook.

[Unidentified Female Host]

What do you eat for breakfast?

[Unidentified Male Host]

What'd you eat for breakfast?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Today I eat, today I had steak and I had, I had yogurt. I eat grass fed milk on top or cream on top yogurt and that. I have a very restricted diet that I've been on for about, I don't know, 250 days. But it's a carnivore diet with ferments. So it's carnivore. And then the only other thing I eat is ferments. So sauerkraut, kimchi, any kind of fermented vegetable, which there's a huge selection in most grocery stores. A lot of yogurt.

[Unidentified Male Host]

Michael's going to steal my sauerkraut after this episode. I got a bunch of sauerkraut from the farmer's market and he's going to go in and eat it.

[Unidentified Female Host]

Because you just said that.

[Lauren Bostic]

Yep, I'm going to change my diet. With everything you've seen whitage, is this more like it's not a, is it

[Michael Bostic]

a strict carnivore diet or is it.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

It's very strict because it's carnivore. It's you know, meat with.

[Michael Bostic]

So no carbs.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

No, no carbs.

[Lauren Bostic]

No carbs.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

But you know, I'll tell you what happened. I had a five different people over a two week period telling me, you got to see this Dr. Sean Kaufman, who's a military doctor, who's a lieutenant colonel in the military. And they said, because he will get rid of your visceral fat. And I was like, I don't think I have any visceral fat because I have a very low BMI, like under 10. And so I said, well, you know, why would I have fat inside of me if I've got a low bmi? The people who told me this were just a very eclectic group of people. One was the chief of the state troopers in Oklahoma and then another was a woman who owns a little healthcare company, manufacturing company or health food manufacturing company in San Diego. Another was a billionaire woman from Los Angeles and they didn't know each other and they all told me the same guy. I called him and he said, you got to do a full body mri. I probably wouldn't have seen him if I had to do the full body mri, but I'd already done one. So I sent him the copies of that, sort of in preparation for this job. I did one and I sent him a copy of that. He then got on a zoom with me and he showed me my heart was covered with visceral fat, my liver was covered with visceral fat. All of my visceral was covered with. And he said, if you don't already have atrial fibrillations, you're going to have them. And I had had atrial fibrillations every day for four months. And he told me a lot of other bad stuff that was going to happen to me. So he said, I can get rid of it all within 90 days. And he said, you do this diet. So I did the diet for 30 days. Then I did another full body MRI and it. My visceral fat had gone down by 40%.

[Unidentified Female Host]

Wow.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

In just 30 days, I also lost 20 pounds, which I didn't want to lose, but I lost a lot. And I was actually worried about the amount of weight I was losing. He said, don't worry, it's all the interstitial visceral fat in your muscles that you're losing, and then your muscles will come back. And that's what happened. I regained all the 20 pounds back in muscle. And so, you know, I, and my age of fibrillations completely disappeared. And I haven't even had a skipped heartbeat since then. To take a little. For me that, you know, the diet is very successful and I don't, you know, I'm not saying it would be successful for everybody. You know, we're all different, our metabolism is all different, but for me, it worked very well.

[Michael Bostic]

No.

[Lauren Bostic]

And I think this is the stuff people want to know, especially for someone like yourself who gets access to so many things and gets to speak to so many people that have all this information to take a little bit of a turn, I think, you know, we look at you and we're inspired because you, you and I, I share videos of you to my dad all the time. I saw you today, you were doing some leg presses in the gym, getting after it. What is your typical fitness routine look like? And have you always been into weightlifting, health and fitness? Has that been like a lifelong pursuit?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Pretty much. I've always, I mean, I played sports in college, I rode for a year and I did rugby for three years. And I've always stayed in shape. So I just, I work out every day, you know, not for a long time, like 40 minutes, but I Do I do? Wait, I do. And I have four different routines and I just rotate.

[Michael Bostic]

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[Lauren Bostic]

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[Michael Bostic]

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[Lauren Bostic]

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[Michael Bostic]

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[Unidentified Female Host]

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[Unidentified Male Host]

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[Unidentified Male Host]

When you look back at this past year, what do you think has been your biggest win and a win for our country?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I think the biggest, I would say too, the dietary guidelines I think are really going to be transformative in a generational way. And then I think the MFN most favored nation drug pricing is also, you know, a really stellar achievement for our, you know, for the president, for all of us. But you know, I was, we negotiated that at my agency and that we had the highest priced drugs in the world in our country. So we have only 4.2% of the world's population, but we provide 70% of the revenue, 70% of the profits for the pharmaceutical industry. They charge us more than anybody else. A year ago you could get the list price for Ozempic in this country was 1300, $150. You could get the same product in any pharmacy in London for $88. And that's true with, across the board, with all the brand drugs, you would pay 2, 3, 4, 5, even 15 times more for the same product in this country as you would in Europe. And you know, this is something that every president has complained about that discrepancy. President Clinton did, President Bush, President Obama, President Biden, they all said, we need to fix this. Nobody did anything. And it was a high priority for President Trump. He called me almost every day, he called Dr. Oz almost every day and said, where are you? Where are you? It seemed insurmountable, but he said, I will. Because he also didn't want to bankrupt the companies. We had the leverage to force them because we buy all these drugs on Medicaid and Medicare, force them to lower their drug price, at least for those programs. But we, you know, we didn't want to bankrupt the companies and because we want the innovation to continue there, you know, those are, it's the epicenter of innovation US Pharmaceutical industry. He also wanted those drug companies to onshore their production because during COVID we saw how dangerous it was that all of our medication was coming from abroad

[Lauren Bostic]

because we were dependent on other countries.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, because all the drugs were being produced in other countries. And the API, which is the, you know, the feedstock ingredients for the drug still are being produced. But now we were able to negotiate with and using the leverage of tariffs as Trump forced the European countries to raise their drug prices and so they raised theirs a little so we can lower ours a lot because there's a lot more Europeans than there are Americans. And because of that, the drug companies also agreed to onshore their production. So, you know, Eli Lilly is building six new plants here, including a huge one in Texas. Novo Nordisk is building, I think more new plants in North Carolina, all over the country, Merck, Pfizer, they're all building, they're all on shoring now. The whole drug industry is now moving to the United States because of President Trump's leadership and because the tariffs. And at the same time, we now have the lowest drug price in the world. We got guarantees from them that whatever the lowest price they're charging Europeans, we get that price or lower. And Americans today can go on Trump Rx and they can get for the, they're now, I don't know, like 40 drugs on Trump Rx, the most popular drugs. And you can get those, including IVF drugs, including GLPs like Wegovia and Ozempic and the other GLPs you can get at the lowest price on Trumprx. And it's very, very easy to use. And we're going to be adding more and more all the time.

[Lauren Bostic]

So speaking of bankrupting, not wanting to bankrupt the companies, obviously a lot of people are paying attention right now to the farms and the things that we're spraying on our crops. And I know there was this recent announcement as it relates to glyphates and pesticides and you're not, from what I've seen, don't seem so happy with some of the decisions. But I would wonder if we know that these materials and these compounds are hurting us and harming us and causing problems and we're aware that they're making

[Michael Bostic]

us sicker, what's the long term solution

[Lauren Bostic]

to protect Americans from these chemicals?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, I mean, the problem is the eo, the executive order was a disappointment to me. What the executive order does, there's two things that are happening. One is an executive order that said we're going to onshore glyphosate production to this country and also the production of elemental phosphorus, which are both foundational to our current farm system. And the other is a, that the US Government intervened behalf of the industry in a, in a Supreme Court case that is, that is debating whether or not there's federal preemption so that when the EPA label says it's safe, can plaintiffs in state court cases still bring case against that? And it effectively gives immunity from liability for in state court Cases against, you know, to these companies. That's something that is anathema to everything that I've stood for. I don't think that we should be giving any corporation immunity from liability. But President Trump is looking at a, an issue that is existential for American farming. American farmers are already in deep trouble. For example, 98% of the corn that, 97% of the corn that we produce in this country is, uses glyphosate, 98% of the soy. And if you didn't, if we didn't have glyphosate, if you banned it overnight, it would, it would throw our entire food system into people and people would starve. I mean, it would literally be catastrophe. The cataclysm. According to the industry, The Chinese controlled 99% of glyphosate production. And what President Trump said is that is in the Pentagon reached out to him on this. That is a huge national security vulnerability. They could actually starve us to death. And that is a vulnerability that we can't afford. And so he was responding to, you know, a serious, real national security threat. President Trump. And then on the other hand, you have the company that's making glyphosate bear, which is threatening because they've paid $11 billion in a case that I brought, and they have another $7.6 billion settlement for some more cases. And they have 65,000 more cases, more coming every day. They're threatening to leave the industry if they did that, that the industry again would collapse. President Trump is acting to force all those eventualities and he also understands that this is not a good long term solution. This is a bridge solution until we can transition off of glyphosate. We have to do that in a way that is going to protect the farmers. Farmers are the most hard working people in this country. They are critical to our, not only to our food, but to our culture, to, you know, the whole basis for American democracy came out of the pastoral areas in this country in the wilderness. And if we lose those, those rural areas in the country, you know, America is I, we lose our food supply for one. And most farmers in this country are losing money seven out of 10 years and there's no kids, kids now moving onto farms. And so we've got to figure out a way to solve the farm, the farmer's problem, to not coerce them, to offer them alternatives. And there are a lot of really, really compelling alternatives in the future. And in fact, I spoke to a bunch of farmers this week. We're using a new Technology, that was a laser technology. It's an attachment that they drag behind a attractor and it shoots lasers at all the weeds in every stage of their lives. So even when they're invisible to the human eye, it can find them and kill them. And it's being widely used now in vegetable fields in this country. And they are. And it's very, very economical. In fact. They pay back the machine. The machine costs a million dollars. They pay back the machine. One of the farmers I talked to said she paid back the machine in nine months. And the reason for that is she's spending fifteen hundred dollars a month on pesticides and on human labor. This woman owns the biggest onion fields in Texas. She has 8,000 acre onion field in South Texas. And she bought three of the machines. And she's spending, before she got those machines, she was spending $1,500 an acre on pesticides and labor. And now she spends $300. She's saving over $1,000 an acre, one fifth of a thousand dollars. And the onions are ready three weeks early, which is another huge deal for farmers. And her productivity per acre is up by 30%. These kind of technologies and many, many other of technologies and also safer pesticides that are on the horizon. And we're now putting huge investments at President Trump's orders into figuring out ways that we can get. He didn't create this problem, but, you know, he's dealing with a problem that other people created over the past 60 years, dealing it in a way that protects our national security and at the same time allows us, gives an off ramp to farmers who want to transition.

[Unidentified Male Host]

Do you guys have fun working together?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, I love working with the President. He's, he's just enormously entertaining. And, you know, he is a brilliant mind and I think he understands the uses of power better than any other president, at least in my lifetime and probably in our history.

[Lauren Bostic]

Well, I think what's, what's apparent to everybody is that there's clear issues in this country in many areas. And what it's felt like as someone who's out of politics and who just watches from afar is it feels like it's kind of like, well, this is the way we've always done things, so we're just going to keep doing it this way. And, and as you're talking, it feels like a lot of what you are doing is trying to get us back

[Michael Bostic]

on the right track.

[Lauren Bostic]

It's correcting a lot of those processes that maybe started not with ill intention or maybe some did, but are clearly

[Michael Bostic]

not working for us because we have

[Lauren Bostic]

real data to show that we're getting sicker and sicker. Like some of the stats you rattled off in the beginning. We have three young children. It's, it's, it's alarming for parents. Right. Like, we're kind of on the cusp where we were born in that early period of the 90s and kind of have matured. But, you know, over the years, you just, you see things that we never saw as small children.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah.

[Lauren Bostic]

And it's scary.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Well, you know, I grew up. I had 11 siblings and around somewhere around 70 first cousins. I never knew anybody with diabetes. I never knew anybody with an autoimmune disease. I never knew anybody with a food allergy. I. Of all the thousands of people that I met, I never knew anybody with autism. And I was raised at the forefront of the movement for rights for people with intellectual disabilities. My aunt, Unit Shriver, my godmother, started Special Olympics. I worked in Special Olympics before it was Special Olympics, when I was still Camp Shriver, from when I was 8 years old as a hugger and a coach every. Every week. And I never saw a kid with autism. And I went to. I worked in a state school for people with intellectual disabilities called wasaiah. Com when I was in high school for 200 hours. And I never saw anybody look like that. And all of a sudden, they're everywhere and people. And, you know, many of the kids are high functioning, but then there's about 30% of them have lives that are really difficult.

[Unidentified Male Host]

What do you hope to instill in your own children when it comes to health and wellness?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Well, my kids, I think, pay attention. I have one of my kids who's 23 years old is on the same diet that I am. And I don't try to force anything on them, but if they're eating something stupid, I say stupid. But, you know, I think they pay attention to their health. You know, they're all athletes and they all, they all want to stay strong and stay healthy.

[Lauren Bostic]

Speaking of your family and your extended family, what is it like to grow up in a family with that kind of name and legacy? Did you feel a pressure as a young man growing up? Did it feel normal? Did it feel different?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I mean, to me, it's what I knew. So I didn't, you know, I, I wasn't thinking, oh, this is really unusual. The whole time I was like, okay, this is, you know, this is my life. And I was surrounded by a lot of love and, you know, really big family. Not only My family, but then, you know, 29 cousins, and we were all raised, like, almost a single family because we're all lived right now, you know, in the same compound with each other. And, you know, it was really a magical, wonderful childhood. And there were tragedies, but there was also, you know, it's not like a kid in the ghetto who lose a parent to gunfire and then, you know, is left without any resources. We had resources, and we were surrounded by people with love. So, you know, I don't. I never felt burdened. I felt like I was pretty lucky.

[Lauren Bostic]

It was just what you knew, just normal childhood for you.

[Unidentified Male Host]

Yeah, there's a lot of mothers listening. I'm a mother. And we want to know about the infant formula requirements. Why has that not been updated since 1998?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

For the same reasons. You know, the industry was powerful and the agency was incompetent, was inept. It wasn't doing its job. And we are. Right now, we're doing a couple of things. One is we're doing, for the first time, we're looking at the ingredients of baby formula that are not listed. In other words, contaminants. PFAS is heavy metals, pesticides. We're looking at, you know, how much of those are in each formula. Those studies will be released in April. We started those studies a year ago. And then we're also doing the first update on the. On the nutrition standards, because we know a lot more about nutrition now, about infant nutrition than we did in 1998. But the formulas, as they are, do not reflect that new knowledge. And we know there's a lot of things that should be in there, and there's probably some things that shouldn't be in there. And so we're going to do a complete. We're doing a complete review of those, and we'll soon come out with new guidance.

[Unidentified Male Host]

It seems like that would be the first place to start because it's almost the foundation of the child's life. That's so crazy that as an infant, they're exposed to heavy metals and pesticides and they don't even know it.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, I mean, the safest thing, people who can do it should breastfeed. Best thing that you can do for your infant. A lot of women can't do that for one reason or another. And those women should have access to safe formula. And that's, of course, is the most important. Their brain is growing at that time, their body is growing at that time, and their brain is absorbing contaminants at a rate that it will Never do again because it's building itself. And so you don't want those kind of contaminants to be part of the building blocks of babies brains.

[Lauren Bostic]

We talk on this show about a

[Michael Bostic]

lot of kind of niche health topics all the time.

[Lauren Bostic]

And sometimes, dare I say we get labeled woo woo by maybe publications that are not as nice to us. But I heard you talking one time about EMFs and a lot of people are kind of like, oh, is this real? Is it not real?

[Michael Bostic]

Are these waves causing us harm?

[Lauren Bostic]

From your perspective, is this a real thing? And do we have to be aware of EMFs and Wi Fi and.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, I mean the studies on that are overwhelming. In fact, you know, I was the attorney in litigation in front of the court of Appeals in Washington D.C. on this issue and the court agreed with our position. We gave over 10,000 studies to the court and the court ordered FCC to redo its guidelines. And so right now we're working on studies on, you know, to make recommendations for what they should be. But we have the worst guideline. The guidelines that we have are based upon thermal effect, which means they don't kick in until the phone literally begins to raise the temperature inside of your brain or your body. So it's microwaving you. But before that, long before that happens, it is affecting DNA, it is affecting the, it's making pervious your blood brain barrier. It causes all kinds of effects. In fact there's studies by a guy called George Carlo who was hired by the industry actually to defend cell phones. And George Carlo produced all of these studies that show that kids who, children who use cell phones for even 10 minutes, their brain, their EEGs don't return to normal for at least 12 hours. I mean it's frightening when you start reading it. What I tell parents is don't ever let, and what I do with my kids is I say I don't let them put the cell phone next to their head. Ever put it on speaker or you

[Lauren Bostic]

know, what about like wired headphones? Not the, not the Bluetooth.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I'm not sure how good those are. It's better than holding the cell phone next to your head.

[Lauren Bostic]

And what about the little Bluetooth earphones? None of those either.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

So I don't know if those also transmitted.

[Lauren Bostic]

I think the cell phone to the head is the thing.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

But you should not put your cell phone next to your head. You should also give them a break from the cell phone or 12 hours. So if it's, or for eight or nine hours a day, particularly when you sleep, you Know, your kid should not be sleeping on a cell phone next to their head, which they all do, by the way.

[Unidentified Male Host]

I'm so happy that you said this, because there's a debate in our house right now. He wants to plug the cell phone in, in the room.

[Michael Bostic]

I want to put it across the room.

[Unidentified Male Host]

It doesn't matter. I don't want it in the room. I want it out of the room. And so what I've been doing is every night I wake up while he's sleeping and I unplug it.

[Michael Bostic]

What's that company?

[Lauren Bostic]

We just bought an actual.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Like, you're a good mom.

[Michael Bostic]

See, no, she's a great mom. We bought recently one of those old

[Lauren Bostic]

analog clocks that's just like a base, like an old basic clock.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I don't know. Kids don't know what it is.

[Lauren Bostic]

Yeah, and. Yeah, exactly. And it just has a basic alarm. So. Yeah, I mean, this. Paul Saladino was recently talking about this. I think it was the San Francisco Giants and their stadiums right next to some good big cell plant or something. And they said he basically pulled this correlation where they have by average the most injuries of any NFL team statistically. And he was like, listen, maybe it's not directly from that, but it's the breakdown of the mitochondria of the cell cells, and so they're more susceptible to it. That's interesting.

[Unidentified Male Host]

What's your most controversial take? What do people get so mad at that you don't even understand why they get so mad?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Oh, I. I wouldn't even say. Because there are. People are angry all the time at almost everything that I do. And, you know, I think most of the things that people are angry about are things that I never actually said or positions that I never took. You know, as soon as anything I say gets out in the media, it's. It's distorted. And that's just part of, you know, the job. It's part of my life for the last 20 years. There's. There's almost nothing I do that is not regarded as controversial.

[Lauren Bostic]

Well, I think what we appreciate with you is. And now that we're meeting you in person, it's. It's kind of like. Like what you see is what you get. You're plain spoken. You have real answers. You obviously have the knowledge. And there's clearly an issue going on when it comes to our health in this country. And so, you know, I really have. And I've been vocal about this. I really think this is a bipartisan issue that everybody should be excited about, which is like cleaning up the health and the healthcare in this country. Right. It affects everybody. It affects future generations. I cared about this immensely prior to having children, but now that we have three children, I can care about it even more. And I think, you know, there's a

[Michael Bostic]

lot of parents out there that are

[Lauren Bostic]

seeing what's going on with sicknesses and illness with their kids and they, you know, they're frankly frustrated and fed up and they, and we look to our government officials to that we elect to fix this for us. Right. Because we want our kids to live

[Michael Bostic]

the healthiest, best life possible.

[Lauren Bostic]

And I think that, that, that should just be an issue everybody cares about.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, one would think, like you said, it shouldn't be a partisan issue. Also, there's no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children. But, you know, people may get partisan. I mean, we have SNAP waivers now. You know, we've asked all the states to file them and there's 25 states that have, have filed them. And that's, those are waivers where the state requests from the government to allow it to ban certain foods from being purchased with food stamp money. And so about 10 to 18% of food stamp money is used on sodas, 10% on sodas, sugar, sodas was the worst thing you can do to a kid. Candy, potato chips and junk food. And so the states can apply to say, we're not going to pay for those anymore. If you want to drink a soda, you should be able to. We live in the United States. You should of is freedom of choice. But the federal taxpayer should not be paying for it because we're paying 63 million kids who are the poorest kids who get food stamps. And those kids then drink that Coke, they get diabetes and 78% of them end up on Medicaid. So we're paying to make them sick and then we're paying for their lifetime treatment. And it's not a good system. And, but you know, when we asked, when we requested for the states file SNAP waivers, the red states all did it, Almost all did it. The only two blue states did it because they see it as a Trump program. And you know what I'm saying to them, this has nothing to do with Donald Trump. It's just your kids. You gotta love your kids more than you hate Donald Trump. You gotta be able to distinguish between, you know, things that are good for you and just make sense, common sense, and, you know, and remove that from your hatred of Donald Trump.

[Lauren Bostic]

One thing that we were talking about in preparation for this show with the team is we wonder about this dynamic, whether it's, you know, Trump, Biden, blue, red, behind the scenes, when you guys are in closed door sessions with, you know, Democrats, Republicans, together, is it cordial? Are you guys getting along, trying to solve this or is it like, hey, we just, we're all on one side and we just got, it's, it's got to be this way all the time. I think from the outside. And if you pay attention to the media, a lot of Americans just feel like you guys are at each other's

[Michael Bostic]

throats all the time.

[Lauren Bostic]

And I wonder if it's actually really like that.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I mean, with me, I, with me, it's not even congenial and private for most, with most of them, I mean, a couple of them it is, but I was friends with all of these guys for my whole life. I've known Bernie Sanders for 40 years.

[Lauren Bostic]

You were a Democrat for a long time.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, for my whole life.

[Lauren Bostic]

Yeah.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

So I think they are probably for that reason they're particularly vitriolic against me.

[Lauren Bostic]

But like, you switch teams.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah. I mean, most of these people, I, you know, were my friends. Yeah. It's not, it's not the kind of congeniality that you would hope for.

[Michael Bostic]

Hey guys, did you hear the food pyramid was recently flipped upside down with full milk fat and butter at the top? Yes, you heard that right. It ends up that taking milk fat out of diets for the past 50 years has not helped us. In fact, as shared on realfood.gov 50% of Americans have pre diabetes or diabetes, which is terrible. And 75% of adults report having at least one chronic condition. This is why I love talking about fatty 15 in their C15 supplement. There's fascinating research on a super fat and butter and cow's milk called C15 which is emerging as a foundational nutrient. We need to stay healthy at all ages. Kids need health it, we need it. Our parents need it. Everyone needs it. We had Stephanie Van Watson, the founder of Fatty 15, on this podcast twice now talking about her breakthrough discovery with C15 and the formulation of fatty 15 products. And since we've done that, we have not looked back. It's quickly become part of our daily supplementation routine. We take it every single day. We love it. Inflammation is down, we're feeling good. We have more energy and here's why. C15 and specifically fatty 15 works by physically strengthening ourselves cells against breakdown and delivers an impressive 36 plus cellular benefits that support our metabolic, cognitive, immune and liver health. In fact, 70% of fatty 15 customers report seeing or feeling better within 16 weeks.

[Lauren Bostic]

I know I do.

[Michael Bostic]

And this week they're launching Sugar Free Fatty 15 Gummies for Kids. We are for sure going to be grabbing that for our kids.

[Lauren Bostic]

So check them out.

[Michael Bostic]

Fatty 15 is on a darn good mission to support healthy aging for all. The purpose of this half a movement to optimize your C15 levels and support your long term health and wellness at all ages and stages. You you can get an additional 15% off your 90 day subscription starter kit by going to fatty15.com skinny and using code Skinny at checkout. Did we mention Apple Mint gummies? Check them out. Let's talk about Kion's Essential Aminos Lauren and I have had the founder of Kion on our podcast three to four times.

[Lauren Bostic]

I can't remember how many times now,

[Michael Bostic]

but we love talking to Angela. I highly suggest you just search Kion Skinny Confidential to check out those episodes. And here's why. Kion aminos have quickly become a staple in our routines. We take them in the morning, we take them when we're working out, and we take them in the evening. And here's why. They can be up to six times more effective than whey or food based proteins gram per gram. And what a lot of people don't realize is Kion aminos deliver all nine essential amino acids in the exact ratio your body needs to build and repair muscle without the excess calories fillers the digestion load of whole protein or protein powder. So like I said, when we're on the go, when we're working out, when we're just moving out throughout the day, we're always taking our Kion aminos. We put it in our water to flavor it up up and we feel great because we're getting the essential amino acids. So many people don't get these in their diet and they definitely don't supplement them. So they're missing out on the benefits of essential amino acids. For those that are maybe eating less or in a calorie deficit, your body breaks down muscle faster and doesn't respond to whole protein in the same way. Taking Kion aminos helps preserve lean muscle so you can lose fat and get leaner, not weaker. And here's the other great thing. Your body absorbs them within minutes. No cooking, no digestion delay or bloating. Perfect for real life. So when we're on the go, when we're traveling, when we're in the gym, we're always taking our aminos. I think this helps with the metabolism. It helps with Muscle synthesis. It helps maintain muscle. We work so hard in the gym, we don't want to lose it.

[Lauren Bostic]

So check them out.

[Michael Bostic]

Of course we have an incredible offer. Not just for the aminos, but everything on Kion site. They make an incredible coffee. They make great creatine, but definitely get the amino acids. My favorite is the mango flavor. Also check the lemon and lime. Visit getkion.com skinny for 20% off again, that's getkion K-I-O-N.com skinny for 20% off

[Unidentified Female Host]

I am big on protein. Who isn't?

[Unidentified Male Host]

But I like to know about where

[Unidentified Female Host]

my protein, specifically the powder is coming from. And the protein powder that I give my kids, that I love too, is a little trick.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Okay.

[Unidentified Female Host]

I use Paleo Valley's chocolate bone broth protein powder. It's so good. The ingredients are amazing. And I tell my kids that it's chocolate water. And they are convinced that this is chocolate water. They are so convinced that they asked for it. So it's an amazing hack for them to get 20 grams of protein. Another thing I'll do you guys is I'll get raw chocolate milk from the farmer's market and then I'll do a scoop of Elio Valley's chocolate bone broth protein in the chocolate milk. So there are multiple ways to get crafty with this.

Okay, you gotta try it.

It's some of the best protein on the market. I've interviewed the founder twice. I like told her what a genuine fan I am. They also have amazing beef sticks and organ complex. If you want to get into the organ arena like me, this is a

good way to start.

Try the organ complex.

[Unidentified Male Host]

Okay.

[Unidentified Female Host]

Get some beef sticks, put them in your purse and up your protein.

[Unidentified Male Host]

It is so easy. I am so passionate about this brand

[Unidentified Female Host]

because they are so ethical when it comes to ingredients. They really care and that's what I like. So head to paleovalley.com skinny or use code skinny at checkout for 20% off your first purchase. That's paleovalley.com skinny or Use code skinny at checkout.

Introducing the Skinny Confidential ice roller. Reimagined. Think sleeker lines, a softer pink, a custom buttery dust bag and a silver roller. Not pink anymore that is ice cold. I wanted to do a zhuzh on the iconic ice roller. I wanted to update it. This ice roller for me has always been more than just a tool. It's about helping us de puff and sculpt and calm the skin in a way that feels intentional. And I wanted the ice roller to Feel evolved. It's changed. You've changed. So, yes, the new gorgeous, stunning, beautiful ice roller is still going to do the same things. It reduces puffiness and redness in your face. I used it this morning before I put on my makeup. It definitely helps with the under eye bags. Of course, it helps boost circulation and radiance. I just feel like it really helps stimulate blood flow and gives me that tighter, more radiant skin. And then it also is known to give you a smoother, tighter looking skin. So what I like to do is I like to combine facial massage with, with cold therapy. And this really helps give you a really nice foundation before you even apply your skin care. This ice roller for me is a full circle moment. I think that a lot of you bought the ice roller, you know, five, six years ago when we launched it, and now I am launching something that feels more in alignment with where you're at. It's so beautiful, you guys. Like, it's just, just softer and more effortless in every way. And I really put my own touches on every single little step from the packaging to the colors to how it feels to even the roller. It's all been elevated just for you. So the ritual, the Lauren ritual is you do cold therapy to help fight inflammation. You roll it, you glide it across your face. I put it on my jawline, my neck, I roll it down. Your skin is just going to appear smoother and tighter before you go in for the kill with the skincare and the makeup, don't skip the cold therapy. The new ice roller is an upgrade designed to meet the standards of today. And I hope you guys love it as much as I do. This is the beauty tool that started it all redesigned to evolve with you. I'm showing it on YouTube too. If you're on YouTube, if you're seeing me visually get it, why it's hot at shop. Skinnyconfidential.com that's shopskinnyconfidential.com Is there anything that

[Unidentified Male Host]

changed when you stepped inside the government for you, anything you changed your thinking on?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Well, I mean, I think the big shock to me was how crooked it was inside. Inefficient. The agency, the agency was, was not doing its job at all. I mean, our, you know, it was, it's the biggest agency in the history of any government than any time in the history of the human race. And it's the biggest agency in our government. And it has the, it's. If you looked at just the money we spend, it's the number six economy in the world. It's 20% of the United States economy and it's the biggest economy in the world. 6 biggest economy in the world. So they got all this money. We have the worst health of any population. Their job is to make us healthy. And nobody was feeling accountability for that. It was. And then there was just huge amounts of fraud that were, you know, I mean, we're getting there. We're allowing $100 billion a year to be stolen from Medicaid, Medicare alone, 100 billion at least.

[Lauren Bostic]

Why is that not more widely reported on?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Well, I mean, I don't think that the mainstream media reports on anything that is really relevant to, you know, what's important, what's happening and particularly if it's something that is going to make Democrats look bad. And you know, I'm very, I'm not partisan person, but I, one of the things that I found out from people in my agency was they were ordered by the Biden White House not to do program integrity, in other words, not to enforce against fraud. And they said they were told we want to focus on only enrollment and getting more and more people into the system.

[Lauren Bostic]

So wait, if they caught somebody doing fraud, don't prosecute them?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, even the fraudulent claims that came in that they knew were fraudulent, they were paying.

[Lauren Bostic]

But wouldn't that system incentivize more people to commit fraud?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Of course it does. And these entire industries have grown up now. I mean, I'll give you an example. And they're run a lot of times by other nations. For example, in a red state, Florida, there is a giant industry for durable medical equipment. So wheelchairs and knee braces and that kind of thing. And there's more durable medical equipment companies and Florida than the whole nation combined. And, but none of them are actually making anything. In fact, we found a hotel that had like 129 rooms and each one of them was a different medical, durable medical equipment company. And they steal the patient ID for Americans and then they claim that they've sold them a wheelchair or a knee brace and they're making $5 million a month. Month.

[Lauren Bostic]

They just take the money and don't produce anything. They're not.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

They take the money and send it

[Lauren Bostic]

to Cuba and that's tax money.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, it's all our money from my, you know, my programs. And it's easy to spot. You could, anybody could spot it, but they just weren't doing it. And the same thing is, is true. I mean, I can give you hundreds of examples. But Los Angeles, there's more hospice companies than the Entire nation combined. They're mainly operated by Russian mobsters. And they claim to be taking care of people who are dying and charging the federal government in their homes. So it's home care. So they're providing nurses to somebody who is dying in their own home. And it's all fraudulent. You know what the mortality rate is for these Russian hospices in Los Angeles? They have a 100 survival rate. Nobody ever dies. So they're in a hospice. They're just build eternally. And the people don't actually exist. They, you know, they're just patient IDs that they've stolen. The same was true with the, you know, the Somali mob in Minnesota, which, you know, they. It used to be that like 30 years ago, Medicaid and Medicare paid if you got a medical procedure. So if you had a hernia operation, we would pay for the hospital, the doctors, the nurses, the material. We could tell what we were paying for. Because you had a scar on you, you had a licensed nurse, licensed doctors, and they went through the process. Then we started paying for patient support and for elderly support. So if you are somebody who has some kind of disability, including just old age, and your family would normally buy you groceries, now we pay your family to buy you groceries. We pay somebody to take you to your hospital visit. We pay somebody to balance your checkbook. Look, well, that is just an enormous opportunity for fraud. And we pay people to take care of children with autism. So if you have six family members, the mob would come to you and say, we'll get a doctor to say that each one of those has autism. And then we will pay people. We'll get people and pay them to take care of them. But the care is not actually happening. Nobody actually shows up. Up were getting billed for it. And that money was going back to Somalia and to Boko Haram and other terrorist groups. You know, hundreds of millions of dollars. We were expecting the autism rate. You know, the autism care program in Minneapolis should have cost us about $3 million a year. It was costing us 400 million a year.

[Lauren Bostic]

Whoa.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

That was all stolen money. Today, the number one job in New York is home care. So it's. It's people doing things that a family member would normally do. I, you know, drive the grandmother around, buy her groceries, et cetera. Now they can charge the federal government for it. And, you know, it was well intentioned because people said if we, you know, this, this, the grandma keeps going back to the emergency room every time she gets a little sick or she gets hungry or whatever. And if we had somebody taking care of her at home, she wouldn't go to the emergency room, and we'll save money. So they made that system, it's called a waiver system, with the good intentions that it would be good to take care of people in their own homes instead of send them to the hospital. But what happened is it was immediately abused. So now, like I say, the number one job in New York. York, of all the jobs in New York, of all the industries that that state has, number one occupation is home care. And. And they're doing things that a family member used to do.

[Lauren Bostic]

What's frustrating about this is if anybody starts to. It sounds like if people start to work on this problem immediately, people can say, hey, you're taking care away from the sick. Which is like. It's like, no, we got to root

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

the opposite of that. We're making sure that the people who actually. These programs were designed to have the money, because when you take that money away from, it comes from somebody else. And the programs are, you know, are, you know, we need the money for the people who are needy. Really need, deserve it. Yeah.

[Unidentified Male Host]

I have to ask you.

[Unidentified Female Host]

Sorry, to switch gears, but about your wife.

[Unidentified Male Host]

Your wife was on the show.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

What are the wellness practices that you guys do together?

[Unidentified Female Host]

A big switch.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

We are really. We couldn't be more different, which I think is one of the reasons we. We get along. But she does yoga, she does Pilates, and she's basically a vegetarian, kind of a pescatarian. And so, you know, we have to meet, cook different meals. There's nothing that she likes to eat that I want to eat and vice versa.

[Unidentified Female Host]

That sounds like marriage.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah.

[Unidentified Male Host]

I gotta ask you about the jeans. The jeans, cold plunging, the jeans working out. This is like, become a brand. What's going on with the jeans?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yes. Well, originally, I.

[Lauren Bostic]

Am I cold, plunging?

[Michael Bostic]

Wrong.

[Lauren Bostic]

Do I need to be wearing jeans?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Please don't. Originally, I, you know, I would go. I was just on a busy schedule always, so I would. I'd go hiking with my dogs in the morning, and then I would go straight to the gym in my jeans. And, you know, it was just a convenience to work out. And then when I was campaigning, a couple of people took pictures of me in the gym wearing jeans. And then, I don't know, then I just got in too deep.

[Lauren Bostic]

You are in pretty deep now.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

So. Yeah. And, you know, when we did it, I did that with Kid Rock. I did it kind of as a gag, but it worked. I mean, you know, it's the.

[Lauren Bostic]

The video Went nuts.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

The video went nuts. So. And it's what we want it to happen is that people, you know, get inspired to work out so in whatever, whatever clothing they want.

[Unidentified Male Host]

But who's better at cold plunging?

[Unidentified Female Host]

You or Kid Rock?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I'm sure he is. I don't have a cold plunge in my house. And he's got it.

[Unidentified Female Host]

He's better.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

It's not a skill that I think you actually develop. It's just like, okay, I'm gonna do this.

[Unidentified Male Host]

I'm pretty gnarly. I could come in jeans. I'm pretty good at challenging.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Bobby, how long do you stay in there?

[Unidentified Male Host]

I could stay in there for four minutes.

[Lauren Bostic]

She could stay on, but I could

[Unidentified Female Host]

do three sets of four.

So I could do four.

[Unidentified Male Host]

Sauna, four sauna, four.

[Lauren Bostic]

Women have higher.

[Unidentified Male Host]

I'm glad for punishment with that.

[Lauren Bostic]

Can we talk real quick about some cutting edge health practices? We have a lot of people that

[Michael Bostic]

come on and they talk about peptides, they talk about hormones.

[Lauren Bostic]

Where do you see this space going from a regulatory perspective? I think there's a lot of people getting interested in GLP and, you know, in hormone replacement, but there's a lot of hesitation because people don't know if it's efficacious, if it's safe, who to

[Michael Bostic]

trust, who not to trust.

[Lauren Bostic]

And I guess from, from the seat that you sit in, what would you tell people?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Well, I mean, with the GLP is now the companies are producing. It was a, there was a shortage of GLPs for a while. And so you had the compounding pharmacies make it because they could legally make it during the shortage. Now there's no shortage. And not only that, but the price has now dropped dramatically. And so the. I, I think you're going to not see. And we're also now enforcing against the compounders who are doing mass marketing, which they're not legally allowed to do anyway. The compounders are supposed to be for doctors who prescribe an individual patient a unique formulation of that particular molecule.

[Michael Bostic]

That specific patient.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, that they, that the patient can't get off the shelf because the shelf, it'll make it in 50 milligrams or 10 milligrams. And let's say you need 30 milligrams. The compounder will make it like that. And if you have certain allergies, he'll make it with a twist so that that, you know, doesn't provoke an allergic reaction. So I think GLPs people are going to be getting from the manufacturers that's the safest Thing because the API plants that actually make the components of that GLP are inspected by the fda. They're mainly in China or India. We inspect them with peptides. That market was thrown into chaos because the Biden administration illegally moved 19 peptides to category two. And category two says don't, do not formulate.

[Lauren Bostic]

So it is that like a BPC157, all those things?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, those were moved. And so you had ethical compounders who were buying legal API from FDA inspected plants. We shut them all down and we created a black market where people are sending, are selling, supposedly selling for research purposes and for animal purposes and they're, but they're marketing to be humans through influencers. And that's illegal. You can't do that. And so, and we have created this multi billion dollar black market. And what I'm working on now is trying to move those so that they will be available to the public and they'll be available from, you know, through ethical Safeway compounders who are buying them from FDA inspected.

[Lauren Bostic]

So if people right now have maybe seen, especially like for the audience, if they've seen maybe these influencer people talking about this and they're worried about like, what would you tell those people to be cautious about right now while you guys are transitioning?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Well, if you're buying the peptides from a, from, you know, a research grade peptide or an animal peptide, you have no idea what you're getting because the plant is definitely not inspected. And you know, we've looked at some, some of them and they're not, they're not what they say they are.

[Lauren Bostic]

Okay.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Oh, you have no idea what you're

[Lauren Bostic]

getting with everything you guys are hand handling right now. What criticism do you think has been fair as it relates to what you guys are working on, if any?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I think we've done a, a good job. I don't, I don't think, I think most of the criticism is again, about stuff that we didn't do or it's, it's, you know, it's a lot of noise. I mean, you know, I would love to talk to somebody who is, you know, who wants to criticize me about some position that I supposedly have. Because I think most of the time they go away saying, oh, okay, well, this makes a lot of sense.

[Lauren Bostic]

Well, I will say you, you come prepared. So if they, I think a lot of people are nervous about that debate.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Was Terry Black's barbecue good, good yesterday? Well, I went three days in a row, so I guess it was good.

[Unidentified Female Host]

Oh my God.

[Unidentified Male Host]

I got to tell my parents to go three days in a row is it's pretty good.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Okay.

[Unidentified Female Host]

What's your order?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

We got a selection of, you know, the ribs and the brisket, the whole, the whole, the whole nine yards.

[Lauren Bostic]

Last question. When you look back on what you're

[Michael Bostic]

trying to accomplish here years from now,

[Lauren Bostic]

what are you hoping that you accomplish? What do you want the big takeaway to be, and what do you want the MAHA movement to have?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I mean, my objective for 20 years has been to end the chronic disease epidemic, and I think we're going to make a dent in it in the next three years, a big dent.

[Lauren Bostic]

SECRETARY ROBERT KENNEDY jr. Thank you for doing this. You're great. Appreciate you, man.

[Unidentified Male Host]

Thank you.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Thank you very much.