“We’ve RFK’d our fries,” the chief operating officer of American fast food chain Steak ’n Shake proudly proclaimed, as he announced that the 90-year-old company would begin cooking chips in beef tallow rather than seed oils.
At any other point in history, a recipe change like this would be unremarkable. But it was emblematic of a major shift in America’s food industry under Donald Trump.
Restaurants across the US are ditching seed oils such as rapeseed and canola in favour of beef tallow – or dripping – and other traditional fats amid concerns over their alleged impact on health.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, known as RFK, Trump’s new health secretary, has claimed that seed oils are “poisoning” the nation’s populace and “betraying” its children, calling them “one of the most unhealthy ingredients that we have in foods”.
Kennedy’s unfounded claims have confounded nutritionists and other experts, the majority of whom insist seed oils are perfectly safe. But that has done little to quash a burgeoning backlash.
“I think in general our country is hopefully waking up a little bit to seeing that there are too many people that are sick, and trying to look into the reasons why,” says Nicole Davis, the regional president of Blue Collar Restaurants, which runs a dozen restaurants in Wyoming and Montana. The company swapped seed oil for beef tallow at the end of 2024.
Credit: Fox News
Beef tallow used to be the go-to frying fat for brands such as McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s, and is often associated with the explosion of the American fast food sector in the 1950s. Over the decades that followed, most switched to cheaper seed oils.
“I’d love to move away from seed oils in my restaurants, but it’s a balancing act,” adds Kurt Zdesar, whose restaurant group, Chotto Matte, has sites in San Francisco and Miami.
“We serve a diverse clientele including vegans, vegetarians and those with religious dietary needs, so using beef tallow would exclude many. If I owned a fried chicken shop where 100pc of the menu was fried, I’d seriously consider using it.”
However, as more and more restaurants swap oils for tallow, there are questions around whether supply will be able to meet demand. US soybean oil production was about 15bn pounds last year, compared to about 1bn pounds of beef tallow.
“[If] somebody wants to use beef tallow, that’s great, but there’s also not near enough to replace all of the seed oils,” said Caleb Ragland, the president of the American Soybean Association, told the Wall Street Journal this month.
Davis fears the market will be flooded with the cheapest varieties possible as a result.
“You do have companies now jumping on the tallow bandwagon, but they’re using a really low quality,” says Davis. She says tallow is more expensive than seed oils for her business, but that it lasts longer in fryers and has improved the taste of many dishes too.
Seed-oil scepticism didn’t begin with Kennedy. Many food industry have been critical of their use for some time. “I’ve been aware of the benefits of beef tallow and the concerns around seed oils since about 2011,” says Zdesar.
“We need to trust that our governments and institutions are working in our best interests, but the FDA and other regulatory bodies have often been influenced by lobbyists pushing their products, sometimes at the expense of public health.
“We all know, deep down, that what we eat profoundly affects our health.”
Yet it is Trump’s appointment of Kennedy – a longstanding critic of what he regards as unhealthy eating, and a well-known opponent of vaccinations – that has lit a fire under the movement and brought it more into the mainstream.
“There’s been a massive shift in the last six months, and I think a lot of it has to come from these big public figures,” says Davis. “President Trump endorsed RFK Jr and stood behind him and believed in the things he said, and it’s very much in the news now.”
However, she says: “It’s not even a political thing to me. Why wouldn’t we want to be as healthy as we can? I want my children to thrive and be healthy, and I don’t want to those chemicals going into their bodies.
“So I’m excited to see if we can get some changes made.”
By appointing Robert F Kennedy Jr as health secretary, Donald Trump has prompted a shift in attitudes towards eating – Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP
Seed oils are not the only food in Kennedy’s crosshairs.
He has vowed to clamp down on dyes and colourings in food, backed a ban on certain ultra-processed foods in school cafeterias in Arizona and campaigned to ban people from using food stamps to buy sugary sodas.
His rejection of ultra-processed foods has long been echoed by other figures commonly associated with the Maga movement, such as the “anti-woke” author Jordan Peterson and the podcast host Joe Rogan.
Both Peterson and Rogan have, for instance, endorsed the so-called “carnivore diet”, under which only consumption of animal products such as meat, eggs, seafood and dairy is permitted and processed foods are strictly prohibited – although Rogan admitted the diet gave him “explosive uber-diarrhoea”.
Proponents of the diet say it gives them more energy and mental clarity, with some even claiming it has cured them of autoimmune disease symptoms. Recent reports suggest it is now more popular than the low-carbohydrate, high-fat keto diet which became popular in the 2010s.
“People have lost all this weight, and they’re feeling lots better. We don’t have all the answers, but if this is helping people, why not? We have an obesity epidemic here in the States,” says Phillip Meece, the founder of Carnivore Bar, which sells meal replacement bars made from 100pc beef.
Meece believes the carnivore movement is drawing from a longing for a simpler, more “ancestral” type of eating among consumers.
“It’s also a keen observation that something we’re doing in modernity is exacerbating the chronic health issue, especially here in the States – we’re ground zero for how to wreck your health,” he says.
However, scientists are less enthusiastic about some of the ways in which America’s approach to food is changing. Some warn there are dangers of consuming high-fat foods like beef tallow and eating too much red meat.
“Going back to beef tallow like in the 1950s would be going back to a time when heart disease mortality rates were five times higher,” says Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard University.
“Many factors have contributed to the reduction in heart disease, but the shift to higher intake of polyunsaturated fat intake (about three to four times higher now in the US) has been an important factor.
“Unfortunately this has become partly a political issue, which it should not be. It is a matter of science and health.”
Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health, suggests the backlash against seed oils and processed foods can in part be seen as a reaction to the boom in vegan diets in the latter half of the 2010s.
Often associated with liberal or Left-leaning politics, plant-based foods have fallen in popularity in recent years at the same time as America has shifted towards the political Right.
Prof Nestle points to comments by Brooke Rollins, Trump’s new US department of agriculture secretary, who promised in March to root out “Leftist ideologies” from government dietary guidelines.
“It took me a while to understand what she meant, but it must be plants. In this way of thinking, plant-forward diets are Leftist and meat diets are Rightist,” she says. “To me, this is mind-boggling.”
Alejandro Morgan, the owner of vegan restaurant Wildseed in San Francisco, agrees. “Unfortunately everything gets politicised nowadays,” he says “There has been a debate on this for many years, but it feels like before it was more based on science.
“It is harder to find a non-seed oil for cooking that is affordable when you do vegan cooking. I am almost afraid to say I am pro-seed oils – with moderation, like everything in life – because I may get accused of being funded by ‘big seed oils companies’,” he adds.
Prof Nestle says she supports Kennedy’s aim of making America healthy again. However, she argues that a truly comprehensive plan to do so would involve making healthy food “available, accessible and affordable” to all. This could involve restrictions on marketing, portion sizes and even taxes on unhealthy food and drink, rather than just ditching seed oils and eating more meat.
“I don’t see RFK Jr saying much about that, except for getting sodas and candy out of [food stamp schemes]. That too is nowhere near enough to deal with the fact that 75pc of American adults are overweight or obese,” she says.
“To make American healthy again, means eating less. And eating less is very bad for business.”
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