Fermented food is the latest trend in the halls of the White House. Members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet are reportedly walking around with jars of sauerkraut in the hopes that it will give them glowing skin and smaller waists.
The Wall Street Journal’s Liz Essley Whyte said Today, It’s Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram that “Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Vice President JD Vance are all at this meat-and-sauerkraut dinner.”
So, should we all be eating jars of sauerkraut? Or it’s just yeast New Florsheims?
The following is part of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s a lot more in the full podcast, so take a listen Today, It’s Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Is there a name for this diet?
Kennedy calls it a carnivore diet. I think people mean different things when they say that, but for him, it includes a lot of yogurt, a lot of kimchi or sauerkraut, a lot of steak, a lot of eggs. Kennedy now travels with sauerkraut. His wife has said that she has asked him to carry it in her purse, and she has said, “I really can’t,” which are surprising words. They all seem to think their skin is glowing, and people online have commented that JD Vance looks great.
Are we sure it’s not Wegovy?
We don’t know that publicly, but we do know that he eats eggs, sauerkraut, pickles, blackberries and raspberries for lunch very often – and beef and lamb with sauerkraut for dinner. Then, when he’s in the Second Air Force, he eats a beef snack and maybe a hamburger and cheese, no bun, with a side of fermented vegetables.
Now that you mention the full spectrum of the JD Vance diet, it kind of reminds me of their new food pyramid. Is this part of it?
Earlier this year, Kennedy and other health officials like to say they flipped the food pyramid. They recommended more fruits and vegetables, red meat – which was controversial – and whole grains, and whole milk, that kind of thing. They also, and for the first time in the national dietary guidelines, recommended fermented foods, which was certainly accepted by many people, and they thought that was a good part of this, even if they were worried about the recommendations of red meat, because they could introduce more heart risk and the risk of bad cholesterol.
How widespread is this in the White House? Does it go all the way up, to the president?
Based on what we’ve seen of his recent public diet, I don’t think so. At the Knicks game, he was eating pizza and fries, and, you know, he still has his Diet Coke button on his desk where he just pushes it and the Diet Coke comes. Kennedy said, immediately he said on the podcast about him, “I don’t know how he lives.”
Does the science back this up, or is this some kind of hoax that fermentation can make your skin healthier and help you lose weight?
I don’t think there are many good studies that specifically show that sauerkraut can help you lose weight, but there have been a number of studies that have shown health benefits. Researchers generally agree that sauerkraut and other fermented foods can help with digestion and inflammation. There was a 2025 study from UC Davis that suggested fermented cabbage can protect your gut and protect against disease. Basically, they found that intestinal cells do well with sauerkraut. They help maintain the integrity of those intestinal cells. And, in general, that has many other health effects. The main scientists, nutritionists, are fermented vegetables. This is not something that is seriously debated.
Many people in the scientific community realize that there is a lot of good science about the importance of your gut in your overall health. The part of the diet that is more controversial is the focus on red meat. Obviously, that comes with some heart risk and some cholesterol risk. That’s why when the new dietary guidelines came out and recommended more than that for Americans, that part, in particular, made some nutritionists a little upset.
Do you think fermented foods can help people with this parasite that gives you explosive diarrhea?
I personally haven’t seen any studies on whether fermented foods help with flare-ups, but let me know if you do.
