In the Trump administration’s campaign to promote healthy eating, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has not stopped at his slogan urging people to “eat real food” to prevent disease.
In recent speeches and podcast appearances, the nation’s health secretary also has claimed that diet can “cure” schizophrenia and diabetes and allow people to rid themselves of bipolar disorder diagnoses. Researchers say the comments overstate current evidence about the real and promising role that food can play in managing illness.
“Food is medicine, and you can heal yourself with a good diet,” Kennedy said on comedian Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” podcast in February.
The talking point aligns with an idea from Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” allies that has gotten some bipartisan support: The role of food in health deserves more attention.
Scientists agree that diet can contribute to some diseases and also can be valuable in treating them. But public health advocates say Kennedy’s exaggerations are part of a pattern in which he cherry-picks and misrepresents scientific research, a tendency that he has regularly applied to vaccine science, enraging doctors.
It is the latest example of Kennedy being “incredibly careless and irresponsible” in talking about health issues, said Kayla Hancock, director of a public health project at the advocacy group Protect Our Care.
Dr. Theresa Miskimen Rivera, president of the American Psychiatric Association, fears the language could drive patients to self-medicate with food alone.
“The concern always is that people can have hope and they might interpret that as, ‘Well, I don’t need medication. I do not need treatment. I just need to follow the diet,’” Rivera said.
In an early February speech at the Tennessee Capitol, Kennedy cited the work of Dr. Christopher Palmer, a Harvard Medical School researcher who in 2019 wrote about two patients with schizophrenia who experienced remission of their symptoms following a high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet.
Kennedy said that Palmer had “cured schizophrenia using keto diets.”
Palmer has called that inaccurate. He told The Associated Press that “as much as I wish we had cures for mental illness or other chronic diseases, it is important that we use more precise language.” Palmer prefers the word “remission.”
During the same speech, and later on Joe Rogan's podcast, Kennedy referred to studies “where people lose their bipolar diagnosis by changing their diet.” He said “there’s a big paper about to come out" showing results.
Kennedy spokesman Andrew Nixon said those comments referred to a “growing body of research” on the issue, including a University of California, Los Angeles, study investigating the effect of a keto diet on teenagers with bipolar disorder.
That study is still recruiting patients and will not be completed until March 2027, according to a posting on a federal website. Any publication would come months after that.
Rivera, of the American Psychiatric Association, said Kennedy’s claims exaggerate the evidence. Studies testing the role of the ketogenic diet on mental health conditions have been small, anecdotal or pilot studies, she said. Many did not include a control group of patients following a regular diet.
“At this point, it’s premature. We cannot draw definitive conclusions,” Rivera said. “There is not enough evidence to recommend a specific diet or as a standalone, without medication such as antipsychotics or mood stabilizers.”
It is true that research into the effects of ketogenic and other diets on psychiatric disorders is accelerating, Palmer said. He said 20 controlled clinical trials using the keto diet for severe mental illness are underway, with results of two trials set for publication within the next year.
Palmer said he is “very enthusiastic” about diet as a promising therapy for serious psychiatric disorders, but that patients with mental illness should still talk with their doctors.
“I want to implore patients: Please do not stop your medications on your own,” he said. “Please do not even try a ketogenic diet on your own as a treatment for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.”
Kennedy’s comments on Von’s podcast that “most diabetes can be cured through diet” also have been scrutinized. Some experts say the health secretary overstated the role of diet.
Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disorder, cannot be cured by diet alone, said Dr. Willa Hsueh, an Ohio State University endocrinologist and researcher. A healthy diet and exercise are keys to managing Type 2 diabetes, but it can be difficult to use those tools alone to reverse the disorder, she said.
“The secretary is not wrong that it can work," Hsueh said. "But it’s not common for people to cure themselves ... by diet alone.”
Others defended Kennedy’s claims about the disease that affects 40 million people in the United States.
Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, said a healthy diet could help “most individuals” with Type 2 diabetes lower their blood sugar levels, reverse symptoms and allow them to stop taking medications for the condition.
“Whether you consider that a cure or remission, that’s medical speak, right?” Mozaffarian said.
He acknowledged that Kennedy is not “always perfectly precise in the terminology and there could be risks to that.” But he welcomed the high-level focus on the role of diet in improving chronic disease.
“I’d rather exaggerate and get some attention and action than keep doing what we’re doing, which is have millions of Americans suffering from diet-related diseases,” Mozaffarian said.
Mark Gorton, president of the Kennedy-aligned MAHA Institute, said he was not familiar with the studies Kennedy referenced, but that nutrition has been “an incredibly overlooked area in our medical system for decades.”
“I think to the extent that it is possible, we should be prioritizing focusing on diet and getting back to living healthy rather than taking sick people and medicating them forever, which is the current way our system works,” Gorton said.
Kody Green, a mental health advocate with schizophrenia, said that he supports healthy eating, but that he needed psychiatric medications. He worries that Kennedy's comments could deter schizophrenia patients from trying drugs that are already stigmatized.
“For some people, maybe food can help with the issues they have, but schizophrenia is a very serious mental illness,” Green said. "Until further research is done, making claims like that can be really dangerous to people in my community.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
FILE - Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrives before President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
The Strait of Hormuz is, by some accounts, named for a Zoroastrian deity destined to emerge victorious after a 9,000-year standoff with an adversary.
Iran's leaders feel their own victory is at hand and won't require the same epic patience.
They are betting that military pressure will ultimately force the United States to accept their control over the crucial waterway for global energy — and that time is on their side.
They know about the diminishing stockpiles of key U.S. weapons such as advanced missile interceptors. They know the war is deeply unpopular with Americans. They know that as long as the strait is largely closed, the price of gas and other goods will stay high ahead of U.S. congressional elections in November. They know that trying to open it by force would be costly and may require American ground troops. They know their Houthi allies in Yemen could widen the war and disrupt another major trade route.
By that logic, U.S. President Donald Trump has no choice but to capitulate.
But Iran's strategy carries risks.
Trump points to strikes that have decimated Iran's top leadership, navy and air force. He alternates between threatening escalation and saying talks are going well. Iran's own economy has been battered, in part because of a U.S. blockade. Iranians rose up in mass protests just months ago and could do so again.
And Iran's leaders need only look to how Trump's “short-term excursion” to the Middle East has bogged down to be reminded that wars rarely turn out as expected.
Iran says it is close to reaching a deal with Oman to manage the strait, which runs between the two countries. But it would be conditioned on the U.S. lifting its blockade, so even if there are no direct negotiations — as Iran says — Trump would have to approve.
It's unclear whether the deal would allow Iran to charge fees. But it would formalize its control over what had been an open international waterway before the war, one that carried a fifth of the world's traded oil and gas.
Abdolreza Davari, an analyst who once advised former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Iran's effective control of the strait has given it leverage with the U.S. and regional countries that can help guarantee its security.
“More than revenue from the strait, Iran wants to confirm its management and sovereignty over the strait,” he said by phone from Tehran.
Formal control over even part of the strait would be a clear win for Iran and a loss for the U.S., which has yet to accomplish some of its various and shifting goals in the war.
It would also deal a blow to global norms on freedom of navigation and set a precedent that much of the world would find disturbing — that nations can shut down trade choke points at will.
China, which buys oil from Iran and has influence over it, said as recently as May that “normal and safe passage” through the strait should be restored.
To borrow a phrase from Trump's own theory of geopolitics, Iran believes it holds the cards.
“They started the war, but its end was never with them. We always decide for ourselves when it ends," Mahdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Iran's chief negotiator, posted on social media. “Iran is going after the enemy’s defeat — not an agreement.”
He said a surprise Iranian attack on Jordan in July “compensated” for a drop in oil prices. That contributed to the collapse of an interim agreement reached in June that had offered significant concessions to Iran, including a U.S. waiver to sell oil internationally and the promise of broader sanctions relief.
Iran has repeatedly said the Strait of Hormuz will not go back to being an open waterway, and that it will keep attacking ships trying to transit without its permission. Iran's joint military command has called it an “unbreakable red line.”
“For Iran, the Strait of Hormuz has become a strategic lever for deterrence, maintaining the regional balance of power, and reshaping the security rules in the Persian Gulf," said Mostafa Najafi, a Tehran-based security analyst.
That poses a major obstacle to ending the war, much less resolving the even more complex, long-standing dispute over Iran's nuclear program.
"The atomic issue, because of the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, has been pushed to the side, and in reality, that is in Iran’s interests,” said Rahman Ghahremanpour, an Iran-based analyst. Control of the strait would give Iran leverage if the nuclear talks resume, he added.
The economic fallout from the war has spread worldwide but is particularly acute in Iran.
U.S. and Israeli strikes have pummeled its industrial base. The U.S. blockade has choked off much of its oil exports. Iranians are grappling with triple-digit food inflation. Trump has repeatedly threatened major strikes on civilian infrastructure like water and electricity.
In December, a currency crisis sparked some of the biggest anti-government protests in the 47-year history of the Islamic Republic. Authorities responded with a bloody crackdown in which thousands were killed and tens of thousands detained.
Many in Iran, including those close to its moderate President Masoud Pezeshkian, fear it may go too far.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, who as foreign minister helped negotiate the 2015 nuclear deal, wrote in a recent essay that Iran's achievements in the war had opened “an exceptional window for diplomacy.” But he warned that if it doesn't strike a deal soon, then “economic recovery will be difficult, and the possibility of internal unrest or renewed aggression, especially after the U.S. elections, cannot be ruled out.”
The war has already been marked by surprises.
After the first wave of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Feb. 28 killed Iran's supreme leader and other top officials, Trump suggested it would be over in a matter of weeks.
Instead, the conflict has emboldened Iran's leaders and mobilized their supporters. Tehran is using the strait “to show that it has not been defeated," Ghahremanpour said. "It can increase its legitimacy at home.”
But the strategy could also backfire. Iran's resilience has limits and there are concerns that an economic crash could trigger unrest. “Iran cannot continue with this strategy forever, and at a certain point, in reality, it has to reach a deal with America," he said.
But Davari said that for now, Iran can withstand the pressure. "It’s unlikely, despite the difficulties of the economic situation, that Iran will retreat from its positions," he said.
Associated Press reporter Hend Kortam in Cairo contributed.
Krauss has reported from across the Middle East for more than 20 years, including postings in Cairo, Baghdad and Jerusalem. Radjy is a Cairo-based journalist who has reported on Iran for over a decade.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Women walk past a banner showing portraits of the late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, left, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, center, and the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the U.S. and Israel strike on Feb. 28, under a bridge in northern Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Aug. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
People spend time at a beach as commercial vessels are anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)
