A low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet might cure schizophrenia and other psychological disorders, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy said during a speech in Nashville, Tennessee, on Wednesday that a ketogenic diet, more commonly known as keto, can cure schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
The brief comment in his 20-minute address, alongside Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, came as Kennedy touted the Trump administration’s new Dietary Guidelines for Americans document, which sets the food policy for federally funded nutrition programs such as food stamps and school lunches.
Kennedy said that a diet primarily consisting of ultraprocessed foods and refined carbohydrates “is killing” children.
“We now know that the things that you eat are driving mental illness in this country,” Kennedy said.
The secretary highlighted research from Harvard physician Christopher Palmer, saying that he has “cured schizophrenia using keto diets.”
Ketogenic diets, high-fat and low-carbohydrate, were refined by modern physicians starting in the 1920s as a treatment for epilepsy, mirroring the seizure-reducing effects of fasting.
Palmer, Director of the Metabolic and Mental Health Program at the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, published his first case study in 2019 involving two patients with schizophrenia whose symptoms were relieved by switching to a keto-based diet.
But he is more well-known for his 2022 book “Brain Energy,” in which he argued that mental disorders, ranging from anxiety and depression to PTSD and schizophrenia, are metabolic disorders of the brain.
A small pilot study in 2024 from Stanford Medicine, examining 21 adult patients diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, found that they had significant improvements in their mental illness symptoms after following a keto-based diet.
Research physicians at Massachusetts General Brigham in Boston are currently soliciting new patients to conduct a clinical trial on using keto diets for people with bipolar I disorder or schizoaffective disorder.
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The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, published in January, advise cutting out added refined sugars and increasing protein intake to levels nearly double what prior administrations have recommended.
“It’s not only affecting our physical health, it’s affecting our mental health as well, and we’re asking people now, eat real food,” Kennedy said. “I eat protein, eat fruit, eat vegetables, eat high, high, high fiber grades, and like Gov. Lee said, it’s just common sense, we’re trying to deliver common sense and good policy to the American people.”
