One-time TV chef Pete Evans has opened up about his brutal fall from grace after being cancelled and viciously trolled about ‘wanting to kill babies’ – and how it is key to his enduring bond with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The former My Kitchen Rules host said he quickly went from being ‘the boy next door’ to being ridiculed as an oddball conspiracy theorist after speaking out against big pharma and processed foods.
‘The real sort of attacks that happened to me was when I started to talk about dietary principles, right?’ Evans said in an extraordinary interview with hit radio hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie ‘O’ Henderson.
‘I was the boy next door on television and then, all of a sudden, I said, “You can actually potentially improve your health if you eat organic, have some great quality meat and seafood, avoid sort of the processed foods”.
‘As soon as I started to say that, and the books became number one bestsellers… that’s when the attacks started to happen because … it disrupts the systems that are in place to keep people sick.
‘It’s like, “We’ve got to stop this, we’ve got to stop this right now”.’
Evans agreed with Sandilands’ suggestion that ‘big corporations were going, how are we going to shut this bloke up?’.
He said his cancellation was driven by the same commercial entities now targeting RFK Jr following his selection by Donald Trump as US health secretary.
‘100% [that’s what happened], just like they’re doing with Bobby,’ he said.
Pete Evans and Robert F Kennedy Jr have forged a firm friendship and are releasing a new cookbook together in a bid to help tackle America’s dire childhood obesity epidemic
The chef opened up about his brutal fall from grace to Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson
Kennedy is one of Donald Trump’s most trusted allies and is his pick for US health secretary
Kennedy, who has vowed to overhaul America’s health organisations if his nomination is confirmed by the Senate, wants to focus on fixing the nation’s childhood obesity epidemic in part by better educating people about healthy eating.
‘It’s a bloody good idea and it’s so simple, it’s common sense,’ Evans said.
‘Bobby’s been celebrated over the years – he was, you know, Time’s Hero of the Year when he cleaned up New York’s waterways system – and he’s won huge lawsuits against chemical companies.
‘So he was once the darling … until he touched pretty much children’s health and that sort of disrupts the system, so to speak, that’s in place.’
Evans’ comments came after Daily Mail Australia this week revealed the axed TV presenter and chef had teamed up with Kennedy to release a new culinary guide aimed at children.
The Evans-penned cookbook, Healthy Food for Healthy Kids, boasts it will include 120 ‘paleo- and keto-friendly meals that your kid will love’ when it is published by Kennedy’s activist group the Children’s Health Defense on January 28.
Evans credited his close friend RFK Jr with personally lining up the deal after announcing the upcoming launch to his 41,000 followers on the Telegram messaging app.
Opening up about the high-profile collaboration, he said he was the one who took the idea of working on a cookbook together to Kennedy.
Evans this week credited Kennedy with personally hooking him up with a publishing deal for his latest cookbook targeting children’s unhealthy eating habits
The chef was once one of Australia’s most bankable stars, raking in $800,000 a year fronting hit reality show My Kitchen Rules on Channel Seven alongside co-host Manu Feildel
‘I asked [RFK Jr], I said, “I’d love to work with Children’s Health Defense,” which is the non-profit he set up,’ he told Sandilands and Henderson.
‘I said, “I’ve got so many recipes [but] I’ve been cancelled in Australia – can we work together with Children’s Health Defense to put out a book to help parents?”‘
The release will mark Evan’s first return to culinary writing since his former publisher, Pan MacMillan, scrapped his book deal amid his brutal cancellation.
It also comes after his last similarly themed recipe book aimed at children, Bubba Yum Yum: The Paleo Way, was met with widespread controversy, and had its publishing house release scrapped, amid claims it promoted a restrictive and potentially deadly diet.
Evans said he had been forced to self-publish the book, co-written with nutritionist Helen Padarin and blogger Charlotte Carr, after his critics leapt on one recipe for a ‘baby building bone broth’.
‘Let me just clarify one thing…we’ve always promoted breast milk as being the best milk for children,’ Evans said.
‘But they (the media) decided to run that “Pete wants to feed children bone broth instead of breast milk”, so straightaway there’s a lie there.
‘Once they squeeze that toothpaste out of the tube, it’s very hard to put it back in because even today people go, “Oh, he’s that guy that wants to kill babies because he doesn’t want them to have breast milk”.
Evans’ upcoming back marks the former TV star’s returning to culinary writing
Being cancelled made Evans appreciate his ‘wonderful life’ with wife Nicola even more
‘Drink breast milk if you can…there was a recipe in the book that we featured that was from Sally Fallon’s book called Nourishing Traditions, which has been around for so long, and we were looking for an alternative to formula for children that couldn’t take breast milk or formula.
‘Is there anything else that we can give to a baby? We actually reduced the amount of liver [in the recipe] because that was the questionable thing.
‘It’s just another option or a solution for people that are looking to keep their baby alive.’
Evans had both his Facebook and Instagram accounts deleted by the social media giant after it accused him of ‘repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines’ at the height of the pandemic.
But the fallen star said he had never tried – nor wanted – to influence other people’s thought processes.
‘The last thing I want to do is force anybody to think in a certain way,’ he said.
‘That’s the last thing I would ever do. I firmly believe that everybody has free will of choice as long as it’s not hurting anybody else.
‘I’m just saying be aware, educate yourself.’
The axed TV chef says he has also been inspired by Trump’s words of wisdom
Although Evans’ ‘cancellation’ has cost him dearly, he credited it with helping him appreciate and value what was truly important.
‘I have a wonderful life: I have a beautiful wife, wonderful children, healthy children,’ he said.
‘I like what Trump once said, you know, sometimes you’ve got to lose everything to either come back, but also just to see things for how they are.
‘And I’ve always trusted this process and I think: trust, surrender, accept – and stick to your core values, which I always have.
‘Part of it from my point of view is sometimes you have to go through it to see it and feel it.
‘We have to trust our own intuition, our own instructs.’
As for his future, Evans said he was focussing on his upcoming cookbook with Kennedy for the moment but had not ruled out attempting a post-cancellation comeback in his home country down the track.
‘What’s going to happen over the next decade is people are going to start asking more questions,’ he told Sandilands and Henderson.
‘With all the technological advances that have happened in science and medicine, why are so many people sick?
‘And I honestly believe there is a simple solution to this, you know: have some great food…and education has to be a part of that.
‘The tide is turning…you never know, we might do another book here or whatever here in Australia.’
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