What Mike Tyson Gets Right (and Wrong) About Food and Health Equity

In April 2026, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched The Secretary Kennedy Podcast, a government-backed platform designed to bring public health conversations directly to the public. On its surface, the pitch is compelling: cut through bureaucracy, speak plainly, and confront the chronic disease crisis head-on.

The show blends legitimate public health concerns with sweeping claims about government failure, industry capture, and simple, scalable solutions. That combination is potent. It resonates with a public that is increasingly skeptical of institutions. It also risks flattening complex, evidence-heavy issues into stories that feel true, even when they overreach.

So, rather than dismissing it or accepting it at face value, we are doing something more useful.

In this piece, we take in a deep dive into the conversation in what we hope will be a limited series. We walk through the conversation and pause at key moments. Our comments will be interjected and highlighted in this green-ish color.

Rather than dismiss the conversation outright, it is more useful to unpack what is being said and examine where policy rhetoric helps or harm.

Mike Tyson: Real food’s the only way to go, and that’s real. That’s the only way to go is real food. It’s been evident, it’s been proven to us what happens to people that eat rotten food. Their life expectation is not long at all.

Secretary Kennedy: Welcome back to the Secretary Kennedy Podcast today. It’s my great honor and pleasure to have one of my heroes, Mike Tyson. Iron Mike Tyson, one of the most fierce fighters and feared ring fighters in human history. Thank you. The undefeated heavyweight champion of the world, 44kos.

Mike Tyson: Undisputed, undisputed.

Secretary Kennedy: Undisputed. I went on Mike’s podcast, I don’t know a decade ago. I knew that he was a pigeon fancier. I had been raising, breeding, and racing Hungarian homie pigeons from when I was seven years old, so it was a huge part of my life. We ended up spending a lot of the podcasts talking about that. And you told me at that time that one of your first fights was over pigeons.

Mike Tyson: My first fight, actually my first fight I ever had was over a pigeon.

Secretary Kennedy: Can you tell what happened? Was this up in Catskill or in

Mike Tyson: Brooklyn? Brooklyn. Brooklyn, New York. I was 10 years old and I had a bunch of pigeons. My mother had a bunch of boyfriends and her boyfriends gave me money, so I bought a bunch of pigeons. And I let one of my friends know, and he talked to some other guys, and they came over and they bullied me, and they took one of my pigeons. And I was asking the guy, “Please give me my bird bag.” And he was calling me all nasty, “I’m giving you birth. You want your bird back?” And he ran my bird’s head off. And this guy was interesting. He hit me, he poured the blood on me. They hit me in the face with the dead pigeon. And one of my friends said, “Mike, you better fight him.” And I was scared to death. I didn’t fought nobody. He was older.

So I fought and I won. And ever since then, I fought every day. Every day I fought. Yeah.

Secretary Kennedy: But when I heard you talking about the pigeons, because you’re so fierce in the ring, but the gentleness and kindness and open heart comes out and your love for these animals.

Mike Tyson: Hey, listen, I had them so long. Sometimes I forget why I love them so much. I just had them since I was 10 years old. Sometimes I forget. I don’t know why I love him so much. I just loved him. And anybody that has pigeons, I dn’t mean to interrupt. Anyone that has pigeons, they understand how I feel.

Secretary Kennedy: Yeah. And you’ve been through everything like me. You’ve been through ups and downs in your lives. And there must have been times in your life that you were just soul crushed.

Mike Tyson: Absolutely. But I had a mentor named Customato, and he always instilled in me never to give up. Never. It’s never no matter what.

Secretary Kennedy: And so that’s what

Mike Tyson: Kept you awful. Yeah, pretty much my attitude. Yeah. He gave me a lifestyle. He gave me discipline to be on diet so I won’t have to be obese anymore. I really miss him.

Secretary Kennedy: Oh, you were obese when you were a kid?

Mike Tyson: Yeah, people used to pick on me all the time because I didn’t have a lifestyle. I just ate food all day. I come from a neighborhood where processed food is a delicacy, ultra processed food. It’s a delicacy.

What Tyson is describing isn’t just culture, it’s structural constraint. In many low-income communities, ultra-processed food becomes normalized not because of preference, but because of limited access, affordability, and targeted marketing. Public health research consistently shows that environments saturated with cheap, calorie-dense foods and lacking full-service grocery stores create conditions where “choice” is constrained. Framing this as an individual lifestyle issue risks overlooking the policy and economic systems that shape what is available in the first place.

Secretary Kennedy: So everybody was eating it in your neighborhood. Yeah. And your coach, did he get you off of that?

Mike Tyson: Well, he gave me a lifestyle to stay in shape. The consciousness, whatever, vanity, sustained shape.

Secretary Kennedy: And you seem like a guy sometimes that has a lot of anger, but you also seem to have a kind of peace with yourself.

Mike Tyson: Well, I do, but when I know I’m not at my best as far as my condition and weight, then I get angry at myself. My wife may get a period. My kids may hear it, but yeah, I’m very conscious about my appearance now.

Secretary Kennedy: And we have your beautiful wife here at Kichi. Yes, she

Mike Tyson: Is. Yes, she is.

Secretary Kennedy: And she seems like a very peaceful person.

Mike Tyson: Yes. Yes. Herself, she’s been through a transformation and she’s in great shape.

Secretary Kennedy: Tell us about your sister. You shared that on

Mike Tyson: That hat.

Secretary Kennedy: This really heartbreaking story.

Mike Tyson: Yeah, it was, but the lesson. I learned a lot from it. She was my sister, my best friend, but she didn’t have a lifestyle. She didn’t know about processed food because that’s all we ate, was processed food because we didn’t have no money to buy food. We’re the kind of family that knock on the neighbor’s door. You have any food? Crazy. Well, I’m starting to bother me now. But that was my lifestyle.

This moment highlights the lived reality of food insecurity, which affects millions of households in the United States. Food insecurity is not just about hunger; it is about instability, stress, and long-term health consequences. Communities facing chronic economic hardship are more likely to rely on inexpensive, highly processed foods, increasing risk for obesity, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. Public health approaches must center not just on nutrition education, but on economic justice, stable housing, and income supports.

Secretary Kennedy: And your struggle with weight and that struggle to overcome the track? Yeah, people

Mike Tyson: Always tease me about my weight. It was always like that. But like I said, for my manager, because of Gastamato gave me a lifestyle. And I have a relationship with food. Sometimes it gets kind of, I don’t know, precurious sometimes, because if I’m not in good shape, I won’t eat. I ain’t won’t eat nothing. If I’m not the weight I want to be, it’s just so subconscious I won’t eat.

Secretary Kennedy: So did Gastamato bring you up to Catskill, New York?

Mike Tyson: Yes.

Secretary Kennedy: He took you out of Brooklyn. Yeah,

Mike Tyson: He took me out of Brooklyn 12.

Secretary Kennedy: Were you in Bed-Stuy?

Mike Tyson: Brownville.

Secretary Kennedy: Okay.

Mike Tyson: Brownsville.

Secretary Kennedy: And how old were you when you went to Catskill?

Mike Tyson: 12.

Secretary Kennedy: And were there other kids with you? Other

Mike Tyson: Fighters there too. All of them was on diet. Even the professional fight. They all had to make weight for diet. So that was my lifestyle, making weight all the time. Running, training, fast and eating. That became my lifestyle.

Secretary Kennedy: And that’s like in my backyard in the Hudson Valley. Did you go to Catskill High School? I

Mike Tyson: Went to Catskill High School, Catskill Junior High School. I lived there for eight years.

Secretary Kennedy: And what was that like?

Mike Tyson: It was very slow. Even the guys that came from New York City, people that came, they wanted a slower lifestyle. And it wasn’t like New York. I go down to New York once a week or something to get into some amateur boxing matches and stuff. That’s the only reason I stayed up there, lived there for eight years, and I started my boxing career.

Secretary Kennedy: And when you were training, were you focusing on food at that point?

Mike Tyson: I always had a peculiar relationship with food. I was afraid of food because I was afraid of obesity. Seeing that in your family and most of my mother friends, my sister friends all day, they were obese as well. It was just a neighborhood where it was, what they call the revolving door. It was our culture to be fat. We made excuses for it as well.

Secretary Kennedy: What can we do about people in Bed-Stuy now and those other … Because they’re food deserts. It’s hard. Yes,

Mike Tyson: It

Secretary Kennedy: Is. I worked in Bed-Stuy because my father started Bed-Stuy Restoration. I’m from Bed-Stuy.

Mike Tyson: I born in Bed-Stuy.

Secretary Kennedy: And do you know Restoration Plaza at part of Bed-Stuy?

Mike Tyson: What’s neighborhood?

Secretary Kennedy: It’s Atlantic Avenue, New York. I know

Mike Tyson: Atlantic Avenue very well. I lived

Secretary Kennedy: On

Mike Tyson: Atlantic Avenue.

Secretary Kennedy: And my father started a project there in 1966, and it’s still there today. That’s a community development project, and they built a skating rink. But we built the first grocery store there. And before we built that pathway, our pathmark, people in Bed-Stuy had to go 75 blocks to buy groceries. My mother had to ride three different buses with grocery bags. So it’s hard in those neighborhoods to get good food. Yeah,

The term “food desert” is often used here, but many public health experts now argue that “food apartheid” is a more accurate description. These patterns are not accidental. They are the result of decades of disinvestment, redlining, and corporate decision-making that have shaped which communities receive resources and which do not. Addressing this issue requires more than inspiration or education. It requires policy interventions that incentivize equitable food access, support local food systems, and redistribute resources.

Mike Tyson: That’s why because we used to help ladies carry their bags to their house and their cars and stuff. I remember when we were younger.

Secretary Kennedy: What do you think that we can do to inspire people in those neighborhoods to start eating better?

Mike Tyson: Hey, listen, we need more mentors. We need mentors and showing them how to eat and have proper diets and to take care of themselves. People always say that’s one of the evil sins, vanity, but wow, sometimes we need a little vanity to take care of ourselves and have more self-love. That’s what it all comes down to about how you care about your appearance.

Mentorship and role modeling can be powerful, but they are not sufficient on their own. Public health evidence shows that behavior change is most sustainable when environments support it. Without affordable healthy food, safe spaces for physical activity, and stable economic conditions, even the best mentorship efforts face structural limits. Effective interventions must combine individual-level support with systems-level change.

Secretary Kennedy: And do you feel that way now that you have-

Mike Tyson: Absolutely. I’m so apparent. Pretty much I’m so conscious of my appearance because of that, because of obesity.

Secretary Kennedy: Well, let me just ask you about the stuff I’m curious about, because I got put in prison when I was … In the summer of 2001, I was sober, but I did a protest in Puerto Rico. I was representing the island of Puerto Rico suing the United States Navy, and they put me in maximum obscurity prison for the summer of 2001, and the food in that prison was really bad.

Mike Tyson: Listen, yeah. What do you say? Airplane food and hospital food, huh? Yeah. The worst

Secretary Kennedy: In the

Mike Tyson: World.

Secretary Kennedy: Well, yesterday I learned that at the price that the federal prison system pays for food for prisoners is about 60 cents a day.

Mike Tyson: And what can you buy with 60 cents?

Secretary Kennedy: Candy.

Mike Tyson: Sugar.

Secretary Kennedy: Candy, sugar. And anything with a long shelf life. And that’s what they said to us.

This exchange underscores a critical but often overlooked issue: nutrition in institutional settings. Incarcerated populations are disproportionately low-income and people of color, and the quality of food provided in prisons reflects broader inequities in how society values different lives. Poor nutrition in these settings contributes to chronic disease, mental health challenges, and reentry barriers. Improving food quality in prisons is not just a matter of health, it is a matter of dignity and human rights.

Mike Tyson: Some donuts too. When I was in prison and on the commissary, we had donuts, sugar, potato chips, nothing healthy. Maybe the healthiest thing there was the contaminated soup that we ate, over salted soup. But it was all horrible stuff. Now that I think about it, it was great back there because I was eating it, but back then it was just horrible food.

While the relationship between nutrition and behavior is supported by emerging research, violence in prisons is driven by a complex set of structural factors, including overcrowding, lack of programming, trauma exposure, and systemic neglect. Nutrition may play a role, but focusing solely on food oversimplifies a deeply rooted systems issue. A public health approach would consider the full ecosystem of incarceration conditions.

Secretary Kennedy: And that makes people angry.

Mike Tyson: Yeah, that’s why it’s violent in prison, because of the food that they’re feeding them. That’s why you see everybody’s getting stabbed and cut for no reason. It’s small, little incidents. People want to fight it and kill people. And that’s what it is because the ultra process food. My belief. Yeah, my belief.

Secretary Kennedy: Well, it’s true. I mean, there’s a lot of studies now, and anybody can go on Google and look them up. There are studies that show that when you improve the food in the prison, when you start giving the prisoners real food, the level of violence drops by 50%. Disciplinary problems drop by 50%. In juvenile detention facilities, the use of restraints drops by 70%.

Mike Tyson: I agree, because they treat them like animals. You can’t have that old school of prisoning people and jailing people. You have to have some kind of outlet. They have to have programs there for … They’re prepared for the outside world. You can’t even put a guy in there. He’s fighting and cutting and doing all this stuff, eating horrible food, then let him go. It’s like taking a wild tiger and all of a sudden hold him in a cave for 10 years, then let him out. What is he going to do? Kill people again. That’s been my experience with jail and all that stuff.

Secretary Kennedy: Yeah. I also, that summer that I spent in prison in Puerto Rico was the most relaxing summer I’ve ever had because I got to read books that I’ve been

Mike Tyson: Sitting on my show. Most prisoners are not rehabilitating. They’re dehabilitated people. They make them worse when they go outside to go commit another crime and come back in. That’s why they treat them like that for … It could have that revolving door effect.

Secretary Kennedy: Yeah.

Mike Tyson: Most people that’s been in prison always come back most of the life, to be in there for the rest of their lives.

Secretary Kennedy: So what is your message to the American people?

Mike Tyson: Hey, have some pride and take care of yourself and have some dignity and leave that ultra processed food alone. There’s no solution of stopping it. Everybody’s going to eat some of it, but if you’re going to eat it, try some moderation. You got family to take care of and you can’t die at what, 45 years old, 30 years old, you have kids to take care of. Because that’s what’s happening to them. There’s young people out here die. There’s not old people out here dying. Young people. Two of my friends both died 48, 50 years old, cancer. It’s living wild lives, drinking, not taking care of themselves. And that’s a process and it’s going to kill us. Ultra process.

Messages centered on personal responsibility can be motivating, but they can also obscure the unequal conditions people face. Not everyone has the same access to time, money, transportation, or safe environments to support healthy choices. Public health must balance empowering individuals with addressing the structural inequities that shape those choices. Without that balance, well-intentioned messages can unintentionally reinforce stigma rather than promote equity.

Secretary Kennedy: So the message is eat real food.

Mike Tyson: Real food’s the only way to go. And that’s real. That’s the only way to go is real food. It’s been evident. It’s been proven to us what happens to people that eat rotten food. Their life expectation is not long at all. If it’s long, it’s not healthy, it’s not good. They’re going to be sick most of their lives. Like my mother is sick most of their life because they get bad health.

And the rest of this is small talk.

Secretary Kennedy: What is your relationship with President Trump?

Mike Tyson: Wow, that’s interesting to say. Let me see how I go. I’ve known him since I was 17. I’ve been fighting with him since I was 18, 17. And he’s always been a guy. This is what I could say about him. If he’s with you, he’s with you. If he’s not, he’s not. But if he’s with you, he’s with you. He got your back 100%. That’s what I’ve learned from my relationship with him.

Secretary Kennedy: And when was the last time you talked to him?

Mike Tyson: I talked to him not too long ago. I was at the White House. No, I saw him at Melania at the review of that. I saw him there.

Secretary Kennedy: And so he sponsored some of your fights?

Mike Tyson: Yeah. Most of them. Yeah, most of my fights. Yeah.

Secretary Kennedy: And they were in Atlantic City.

Mike Tyson: Atlantic City, yes. Trump Plaza.

Secretary Kennedy: And what was the greatest fight that you had?

Mike Tyson: In Trump Plaza? Yeah. Michael Spinks broke all records. One of the first super fights of the ’80s.

Secretary Kennedy: And he was the Olympic champion.

Mike Tyson: Olympic champion, undisputed light heavyweight champion, heavyweight champion, Olympic champion. He’s a very colorful and decorated fighter.

Secretary Kennedy: Is he still around?

Mike Tyson: Yes, he’s still around. He’s just been married. He’s having a wonderful-

Secretary Kennedy: And you stay in touch with him?

Mike Tyson: Well, I see him periodically every now and then.

Secretary Kennedy: Yeah. Before I close out and say goodbye, can I get Kiki? Can you come on and get in the shot so people can see you? Ike, thank you very much. Mike, thank you for being with us. And thank you for your- Thank you,

Mike Tyson: Secretary.

Secretary Kennedy: … your willingness to stand up and fight for this issue.

Mike Tyson: This is my finest hour. Thank you for having me.

Secretary Kennedy: Thank you. You’re a real hero.

Mike Tyson: Thank you.

Secretary Kennedy: Produced by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

So, this conversation brings forward an important tension in public health: the interplay between personal agency and structural reality. Tyson’s story illustrates resilience and transformation, but it also reflects the broader systems that shape health outcomes across communities. Moving toward a healthier America will require not only individual change but sustained investment in equitable systems that make healthy choices accessible for everyone.