Lifestyle
RFK Jr. touts french fries and casts doubt on vaccines in first month
WASHINGTON (AP) — There sat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, at a Steak ’n Shake with Fox News host Sean Hannity, raving about the fries.
“Steak ’n Shake has been great, we’re very grateful for them,” Kennedy said, in between nibbles of fries that the Midwestern franchise recently announced would be cooked in beef tallow instead of common cooking oils that Kennedy claims — contrary to advice from nutritionists — are bad for Americans’ diet.
It’s the kind of endorsement that doctors have implored him to make about the childhood vaccines used to prevent deadly diseases, like measles as outbreaks worsened in Texas and New Mexico during his first month in office.
The secretary of Health and Human Services has, instead, raised doubts about vaccines, most recently saying in his interview with Hannity that the shots cause “deaths every year,” although he later added that vaccinations should be encouraged.
In his first month in office, Kennedy, who vowed to “Make America Healthy Again,” has delivered an inconsistent message that has the nation’s top infectious diseases specialists worried that his tepid recommendations will undermine access to long-proven, life-saving vaccines.
Public health agencies cancel vaccine meetings, research under Kennedy’s watch
During his first address to thousands of workers at the federal public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the Food and Drug Administration, Kennedy promised to “investigate” the childhood vaccine schedule. Days later, the CDC canceled a public meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Panel, a group of doctors and scientists who make recommendations on vaccines. That meeting has not been rescheduled.
In another case, a canceled public meeting of vaccine advisers who make recommendations on the flu vaccine every year for the FDA also has not been given a new date. This week, the National Institutes for Health, also under Kennedy’s purview, began canceling funding for some research on vaccines.
The CDC also is preparing to research autism and vaccines, planning to “leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement. Agency officials did not comment further for this article.
Numerous studies have concluded that there is no link between the two, a fact the agency states on its website. And studying it again could take money from other research including into finding the true cause of autism, noted Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, as he questioned National Institutes of Health director nominee Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
When Bhattacharya suggested more studies could be worthwhile because some may believe there’s a link, Cassidy retorted: “There’s people who disagree the world is round.”
“What (Kennedy) is trying to do is scare about the safety of vaccines,” Dr. Paul Offit, an FDA vaccine adviser and infectious disease doctor at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said of Kennedy’s first month in office. “It shouldn’t surprise anybody. His agenda has always been to get vaccines off the market, or to make them less available.”
Offit worries that the cancellation of the FDA’s flu vaccine meeting, held every March for at least 30 years, is just the beginning. The committee’s June meeting to recommend the COVID-19 vaccine’s formulation has also not been scheduled, he said.
Democrats and Republicans pushed back when Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA nominee, wouldn’t commit to rescheduling the committee’s flu meeting .
“What is lost is the transparency,” said Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate health committee and is also a physician.
Kennedy rejects ‘anti-vaccine’ label but still echoes the movement
During his senate confirmation hearings earlier this year, Kennedy seemed to say he would not undermine vaccines. “I support vaccines. I support the childhood schedule,” he said. He promised Cassidy, who was unsettled about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine work, that he would not change existing vaccine recommendations.
But in the hearings he also repeatedly refused to acknowledge scientific consensus that childhood vaccines don’t cause autism and that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives, and he falsely asserted the government has no good vaccine safety monitoring.
And since his confirmation, Kennedy has repeated his skeptical views of vaccines in interviews and other public statements.
He’s sent “mixed messages” on vaccine safety, even though the U.S. has “the most elaborate vaccine adverse event surveillance system in the world,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University. Serious problems, including death, are very rare and the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks, he said.
“A simple way to describe this to the average person is the serious adverse events generally occur at a rate of 1 to a few cases per million doses of vaccine,” he said. “That’s a needle in a haystack.”
In an opinion piece on FoxNews.com earlier this month, Kennedy said the measles outbreak in West Texas that left a six-year old child dead was a “call to action” but stopped short of recommending that people receive the vaccine that prevents 97% of cases. Despite the U.S. registering its first measles death in a decade, Kennedy has repeatedly downplayed this year’s outbreaks, noting that when he was a child “everybody got measles.”
This year’s cases — reported at 250 — are on track to far outpace last year’s reports of 286 measles infections.
Pediatricians are fielding more questions from confused parents in their exam rooms, said Dr. Susan Kressly. Worried about reports of cancelled vaccine meetings, they’re wondering about their access to next year’s flu vaccines. Others are asking if they should get doses of the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine earlier. Kressly said there’s a clear message the government can send to help stop the rising case count.
“The only way to stop an outbreak is increased coordinated positive messaging around vaccinating,” Kressly said.
The CDC has assisted with vaccination efforts in West Texas. But Kennedy himself has publicly advocated for an alternative treatment for measles: Vitamin A. Under his watch, the CDC’s guidance was updated to say that Vitamin A should be given to children with severe measles and prescribed in doses under a doctor’s supervision.
Vitamin A supplementation has been recommended for decades to reduce pneumonia and death in malnourished children in developing countries, but the benefits in well-nourished children in countries like the U.S. are less clear.
“We need to use Vitamin A for those kids who are unlucky enough to get measles,” said Dr. Andy Pavia, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of Utah. “But it can’t prevent measles and it can only provide some help in reducing the severity.”
When administered correctly, using Vitamin A in kids with severe measles will “do no harm,” Pavia said. But if improperly done, high doses of Vitamin A can be toxic and deadly.
Kennedy’s supporters celebrate success on the food front during first month
Abrupt staffing changes have also dominated Kennedy’s first weeks in office, with CDC pick Dave Weldon withdrawing from the nomination mere minutes before his hearing, Kennedy’s top HHS spokesman quitting two weeks into the job and the Food and Drug Administration’s newly minted chief counsel departing 48 hours into the position.
Trump and Kennedy’s supporters, however, have dismissed concerns about the rocky start.
His newfound platform as health secretary and talk of healthier foods is already affecting change in the American diet, advisers close to Kennedy and Trump have claimed on social media.
They credit Kennedy with prompting Republican legislators to introduce bills in Utah and Texas that would seek to ban soda in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, for example. And then there’s Steak ‘n Shake’s new fries.
“RFK Jr. just ate Steak ’n Shake on live TV, the fast food joint that’s bravely frying everything in beef tallow,” conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk said this week in a tweet. “This is the way.”
In fact, nutrition science experts say that decades of research show that consuming plant-based oils lowers the risk of heart disease and that there is no evidence to indicate that beef tallow is healthier than seed oils.
On Wednesday, after a meeting with a handful of executives from the nation’s largest food manufactures, Kennedy released a slickly-produced video that promised more change would be on the way, saying companies were taking his “MAHA” movement seriously.
“They understand they have a new sheriff in town,” Kennedy said.
He did not share any details about what was discussed at the meeting.
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Associated Press writers Matthew Perrone and Mike Stobbe contributed.
LONDON (AP) — “Doctor Who” and Eurovision unite for an evening of music and intergalactic adventure on Saturday — all thanks to Russell T Davies.
Before fans tune in for the annual song contest, they can enjoy Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor and Varada Sethu’s Belinda Chandra attending the Interstellar Song Contest in an episode of the sci-fi series.
In real life, the Eurovision Song Contest is an annual musical competition and TV event that sees 37 countries compete for a crystal microphone trophy over a four-hour live broadcast. In the interstellar version, aliens from 40 different worlds vie to win, also by singing.
Davies says it took three years to pull it off the doubleheader because they had to work with the BBC to set the schedule and storylines in stone to ensure a perfect alignment.
Britain’s Sam Ryder took a “Space Man” to Eurovision before, in 2022. Now, Gatwa will read out the U.K.’s jury scores during the song contest’s grand final, held this year in Basel, Switzerland.
Talking to The Associated Press, Davies says that both Eurovision and “Doctor Who” share the DNA of old-fashioned Saturday night television, making the combination “irresistible.”
This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: Do you feel that Eurovision and “Doctor Who” naturally share a kind of fandom?
DAVIES: I almost think every episode of “Doctor Who” is a great big celebration, sort of noise and color and spectacle, and that sums up Eurovision as well. In pitching this to Disney+ as well it’s like, “Look we’re going out in 60 of your territories” and Eurovision itself has a viewing figure that some years is bigger than the Super Bowl. There’s not many shows that can say that on planet Earth.
AP: How much fun did you have with the lore of Eurovision?
DAVIES: It’s enormous fun. It could be said if you’ve never seen a single Eurovision Song Contest in your life, you can still come along and watch this. It’s the kind of thing we’d have made up for a “Doctor Who” story anyway.
One day I’ll do that “ABBA Voyage” story where the holograms come to life and start killing people. That’s the best idea ever. We’ve got to do that one then. Can you imagine? That would be just amazing. I think there might be some copyright problems with that but we’d overcome them.
The actual pitch for the story to Juno (Dawson), who wrote it, was Eurovision meets “Die Hard.” So as you will see, the moment it starts, there’s trouble, someone’s out to sabotage it. There are villains behind the scenes trying to disrupt the program. All chaos is let loose and the rest of the episode is spent saving people’s lives after that.
AP: How about the songs?
DAVIES: I think there’s four songs in total (by Murray Gold). Obviously we don’t get to all 40 planets with their songs, but it was a very big production. We had to hive this off into its own production unit. There are scenes in the television gallery, where 40 different monitors have output of 40 different screens. And that’s all been fed in live. That’s not done with green screen afterwards, that’s all stuff they’d already shot. Crowds, acts, rehearsals, backstage, presenters, all of that stuff, playing onto that set, so it’s terribly complicated.
“Doctor Who” showrunner Russell T. Davies explains why an intergalactic spin on the Eurovision Song Contest was an irresistible storyline for Season 2’s May 17 episode. (May 13)
AP: Is this the most expensive episode of “Doctor Who”?
DAVIES: Frankly, they’re all expensive. It was a lot, yes. It had to be planned very far in advance, more than any. Once you plan something carefully, then it costs less just because you’re not busking. We allocate each story more or less the same amount of money. So I think it ends up costing as much as the others, but it just looks so good because they had so much time to plan it.
AP: Am I allowed to ask how much an episode normally costs?
DAVIES: We never say that. I don’t know why, but we just don’t ever do it. I don’t think they’d tell me. I’d faint.
This image released by Disney shows Christina Rotondo from “Doctor Who” Season 2. (BBC Studios/Disney/Bad Wolf via AP)
AP: Are you planning to watch Eurovision this year?
DAVIES: Yes, I will be. This will be a great night. I always sit and watch “Doctor Who” — I’m old-fashioned — on its old-fashioned BBC One transmission at 7 o’clock at night.
I know people who have Eurovision parties, which I’ve never gone to actually. Look at my life, it’s devoted to television. I can’t bear other people talking over it. That would just be a nightmare. So I will be sitting in. I’ll get some nice dinner. I’ll be a very happy man.
AP: Have you got any favorites for this year?
DAVIES: I would like to go on a date with the man from Cyprus (Theo Evan). He’s beautiful. I do like the U.K. entry this year (“What the Hell Just Happened?” by Remember Monday). I have a theory it’s being underestimated in Great Britain. Just because we’re so used to losing. We’ve won five times, everyone. But this country gets a bit cynical about Eurovision sometimes. But I love our song. I think it’s got a very memorable chorus.
U.S. retail egg prices fell in April from the record-high prices they hit earlier this year, according to government data released Tuesday.
The average price for a dozen Grade A eggs declined to $5.12 last month after reaching a record $6.23 in March, according to the Consumer Price Index. It was the first month-to-month drop in egg prices since October 2024.
Overall, the average price of eggs of all sizes fell 12.7%, the steepest monthly decline since March 1984.
While wholesale egg prices have been coming down for a while, it was unclear how much store prices would decrease in April because consumer demand is usually high around Easter and Passover.
Still, retail egg prices remain near historic highs as a persistent outbreak of bird flu wipes out flocks of egg-laying hens. The April average price for a dozen large eggs was 79% higher than the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported for the same month a year ago, when the price averaged $2.86 per dozen.
Bird flu has killed more than 169 million birds since early 2022. Any time a bird gets sick, the entire flock is killed to help keep bird flu from spreading. Once a flock is slaughtered, it can take as long as a year to clean a farm and raise new birds to egg-laying age.
That can have an effect on the egg supply because massive egg farms may have millions of birds. Outbreaks on two farms in Ohio and South Dakota last month affected more than 927,000 egg-laying hens.
Lowering egg prices has been a particular focus of President Donald Trump. In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would invest $1 billion to help farmers improve their biosecurity measures to fight bird flu.
The U.S. has also increased imports of eggs from South Korea, Turkey, Brazil and other countries. According to Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute Sector Manager Kevin Bergquist, the volume of egg and egg product imports increased 77.5% during the first three months of the year compared to the same period a year ago.
The antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating Cal-Maine Foods, the largest U.S. egg producer, which supplies around 20% of America’s eggs. Cal-Maine confirmed the investigation in early April..
Ridgeland, Mississippi-based Cal-Maine said its net income more than tripled to $508.5 million in its most recent quarter, which ended March 1.
For many, the return of the spring garden brings with it a sneezy, itchy, foggy-headed feeling that hits the moment a warm breeze stirs up invisible trouble. I’m fortunate not to suffer much, but my blue car turned a chartreuse shade of yellow last week, and a $32 car wash provided results that lasted only two hours. Sigh.
These seasonal allergies often go by the old-fashioned name hay fever, but it’s not the hay that causes misery for so many, it’s the pollen.
And not just any pollen, but the nearly weightless kind that floats up our noses and engages our immune systems. Trees, weeds, grasses and even some of our favorite flowers are culprits.
But pollen isn’t all bad. It’s essential to the reproduction of plants, the survival of insects and the entire food web. We humans could not survive without it, so we absolutely shouldn’t avoid high-pollen plants as a general rule. However, if you’re an allergy sufferer who has had to forgo planting a garden due to health reasons, plants that release the least pollen may enable you to smell the flowers.
Plants that might bring sneezes
Allergy-inducing plants are those that rely on wind rather than bees or butterflies to spread their pollen. Ragweed, which strikes in late summer and early fall, gets the most notoriety, but its springtime counterparts can be at least as irritating.
Trees most likely to cause symptoms include birch (Betula), catawba (Catalba), cypress (Cupressus), elm (Ulmus), hickory/pecan (Carya), oak (Quercus), sycamore (Platanus) and walnut (Juglans), according to the Ogren Plant Allergy Scale (OPALS), created by horticulturist Thomas Ogren and published in his 2020 book, “The Allergy-Fighting Garden.”
This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.
Palm trees, too — but only the males. In fact, female trees don’t produce pollen at all, so seek them out when possible.
Grasses can irritate eyes and sinuses, too. The scale ranks Bermuda (except sterile male varieties), Johnson, Kentucky, orchard, sweet vernal and timothy grasses among the highest for allergens.
Weeds like ragweed, curly dock, lamb’s quarters, pigweed, plantain, sheep sorrel and sagebrush are also big pollen producers, Ogren found.
Not all plants are irritating to allergy sufferers
On the other hand, plants with “double” flowers or heavier pollen that doesn’t travel far are less likely to release much pollen.
Among trees, apricot (Prunus armeniaca), fig (Ficus), fir (Abies), fruiting pear (Pyrus), fruiting plum (Prunus domestica, Prunus insititia), redbud (Cerus), serviceberry (Amelanchier laevis), female ash (Fraxinus), female box elder (Acer negundo), female cottonwood/poplar (Populus), female maple (Acer), female palm (Arecaceae) and female willow (Salix) are easier on the respiratory system.
St. Augustine and sterile male Bermuda are safer bets in the grass department.
As for flowers, you’ve got options: Begonia, female clematis, columbine, crocus, daffodil, delphinium, hibiscus, impatiens, iris, bird of paradise, pansy, petunia, phlox, poppy, snapdragon, tulip, verbena and zinnia are friends. Roses, too — especially tightly packed, dense-petaled varieties, which exude even less pollen than those with single or semi-double flowers (rose allergies are more often fragrance-related than due to pollen, according to Ogren).
And if you suffer from seasonal allergies, keeping windows closed and getting someone else to mow the lawn will also help to nip your symptoms in the bud.
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Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.
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For more AP gardening stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/gardening.
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