{"id":5949,"date":"2026-08-02T09:10:53","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T09:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=5949"},"modified":"2026-08-02T09:10:53","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T09:10:53","slug":"the-fastest-way-to-make-america-healthier-isnt-another-drug-its-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=5949","title":{"rendered":"The fastest way to make America healthier isn’t another drug \u2014 it\u2019s dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The quickest way we can make America healthier, starting today, is to cook more food in our own kitchens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Teen lifeguard reveals near-death battle to save boy from crushing California waves<\/a><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t for next year or after Congress passes another bill; it\u2019s today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The more often people cook at home, the healthier they eat and the lower their risk of obesity, Type 2 diabetes and a portfolio of other chronic diseases. Imagine if every American family replaced just one takeout dinner each week with a home-cooked meal made from real ingredients.<\/p>\n

Somewhere along the way, we stopped teaching Americans how to cook.<\/p>\n

Schools ripped out home economics classes and kitchens, as families got busier. Real food became extinct while convenience became king. Instead of learning how to roast a chicken or scramble an egg, generations grew up learning how to peel back plastic lids, hunt for $1 menus and press the microwave button.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What was the inevitable result? We traded cooking for convenience, and real food for products designed in laboratories \u2014 and America got sick.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Walk through the center aisles of almost any grocery store, and you\u2019ll find shelves lined with boxes whose ingredient labels read like a Tolstoy novel.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the healthiest parts of the store, the perimeter that stores the produce, meat, seafood, dairy and eggs, are often ignored because too many Americans have never been taught what to do with them. So they default to Lean Cuisine, drive-thrus and Hot Cheetos.<\/p>\n

I understand this because I lived it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I grew up in New Jersey with two hardworking parents. Dinner wasn\u2019t a family ritual; it was whatever could get on the table the fastest. The microwave was the family chef (chef Mike) and fast food or pizza filled in the gaps. I honestly didn\u2019t know eggs could be cooked any other way until I skipped school one day as a 12-year-old and stumbled onto PBS cooking shows.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Watching someone transform a handful of simple ingredients into an incredible meal completely changed how I looked at food.<\/p>\n

I was intimidated at first; then I started mixing ingredients. Within a few hours, I realized something that has shaped my entire career: Cooking isn\u2019t nearly as hard as we\u2019ve convinced ourselves it is.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we\u2019ve spent decades convincing people of the opposite.<\/p>\n

Television has turned cooking into competition. It\u2019s as if everyone is supposed to beat Bobby Flay, plate like Gordon Ramsay, or race the clock on reality shows. I hate to break it to you, but that\u2019s all produced. Cooking is actually simple.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I was excited when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked me to appear in the first episode of \u201cThe Real Food Show.\u201d<\/p>\n

The goal isn\u2019t to create a million Emerils. The goal is simple: to show Americans they can cook affordable, crave-worthy meals using real ingredients, and that those meals often cost less than relying on processed convenience foods.<\/p>\n

This conversation couldn\u2019t come at a more important time because for decades, our healthcare system has become exceptionally good at treating chronic disease \u2014 but we\u2019ve become far less effective at preventing it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rates of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and other diet-related illnesses continue to rise, especially among children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Exclusive | Family of hero teen lifeguard finalizing plans for White House visit after Trump praised miraculous beach rescue<\/a><\/p>\n

While no single food is a cure-all, we know that diets centered on minimally processed foods are associated with better long-term health. We don\u2019t just need better medicine; we need \u201chealthier\u201d habits. These habits thrive in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

My wife Lauren and I both work as chefs. We own restaurants and routinely work 70-hour weeks. Yet one thing remains non-negotiable for us: eating together as a family. Our kids help prep dinner (free labor) because kids who help prepare their own meals are more likely to eat them. It\u2019s as if they have equity in the dish, so they consume it all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They become curious about food, and build confidence in the kitchen. Most importantly, they\u2019re learning skills that will stay with them long after they\u2019ve forgotten what they scored on a spelling test.<\/p>\n

However, cooking together isn\u2019t just about nutrition; it\u2019s about slowing down long enough to share a meal with the people who matter most. To ask silly questions, watch the kids fight over the last taco. Food is the great unifier.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My own health journey reinforced this lesson. As a competitive endurance athlete, I bought into the conventional wisdom that loading up on processed carbohydrates and seed oils was the key to performance, eating almost no protein. Instead, I developed severe irritable bowel syndrome that sent me through years of doctors\u2019 appointments, medications and conflicting nutrition advice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ironically, the pain got so bad, I left college to work in kitchens because it was a safe place to be; for me the chaos was calm while hiding in the \u201cback of the house\u201d \u2014 no worries about my stomach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I learned more about food (going back to culinary school as well), I realized the answers to my health issues weren\u2019t coming from another prescription; they were coming from my kitchen.<\/p>\n

Food would fix me.<\/p>\n

Learning to cook didn\u2019t just give me a career; it gave me my health back.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

And that\u2019s why it\u2019s personal for me to share good food; it\u2019s why I became a chef. America doesn\u2019t need everyone to become a professional chef, nor do we need every family making elaborate three-course dinners.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But we do need more Americans to believe they can walk into a grocery store, buy real ingredients, make a meal, and save money doing so.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If \u201cThe Real Food Show\u201d convinces families to cook one more dinner each week, we\u2019ve accomplished something far more important than producing another cooking program. This administration has taken one small step toward making America healthier, one kitchen at a time.<\/p>\n

Andrew Gruel is a chef, television host and member of the Huntington Beach City Council.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Read more Kentucky child killer who stabbed sleeping boy to death released from prison as father slams judicial system<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chef Andrew Gruel joins RFK Jr. on “The Real Food Show” to explain why cooking simple, real meals at home is the key to making America healthier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nThe fastest way to make America healthier isn't another drug \u2014 it\u2019s dinner - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=5949\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The fastest way to make America healthier isn't another drug \u2014 it\u2019s dinner - 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