Andre Rush has some ideas on how to make President-elect Donald Trump eat healthier even as the 78-year-old has become famous for his love of fast food and well-done steaks with ketchup.
Rush, who spoke to Politico, is a chef who worked in the White House during Trump’s first term as well as during the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama.
He says that Trump tries to be healthier and the chef encourages his successors in the White House kitchen to push him by “manipulating his diet.”
Rush said that Trump may need to decrease his dependency on fast food, noting that he’s now eight years older than when he first came into office.
“I would try to incorporate as many healthy food items as I possibly could. Especially because he’s known for not drinking water,” Rush told Politico. “He’s always been on his soda trip. That’s all he drinks, 24/7. He’s been living off it and says, ‘It hasn’t hurt me yet.’ But that’s a cliche we all go through until it hurts you.”
“I would think about maybe adding a flavoring — whether it’s the orange, lime or lemon — into his water to make it go down quicker,” he added.
The chef said Obama was the easiest to cook for.
“They had the garden and wanted to get everything from the garden,” Rush told the outlet. “The hardest was Trump. There was not a lot of diversity to it. As a chef, you want to be able to explore and have more fun. With him and [Melania Trump], it was black and white.”
Rush went into more detail regarding how Trump’s diet could be manipulated to be healthier. If the president-elect requested a burger, Rush said, “Instead of doing full grounds, I’ll go half and half with turkey and put a little bit more [flavor] profiles inside of it. If he wants bacon on it, instead of pork, I’d use beef bacon, which is more crispy and more healthy.”
“I’d make sweet potato fries or battered fries made out of vegetables with a homemade dipping sauce,” he added. “There are a couple different ways I would manipulate his diet. You can take some risks by putting a couple little extra things on a plate, even if it’s not asked for.”
Rush said Trump “does try to eat healthy” and that Clinton “ate just as many burgers.”
The chef added that once a chef gets to know a president better, you can begin to “manipulate” the diet.
“You have to be political on that. You can’t just go in hard-charging,” he said.
“I get to know the principals first, and let them know me, put eyes on me so they can say, ‘Okay, he must know what he’s doing and why he’s doing it,’” he added.
Rush urged current White House chefs to get to know Trump’s “psyche so you can understand why he eats, what he eats, and what he does.”
Trump doesn’t eat a lot of foods, because he’s not “used to it,” the chef added.
Rush also told Politico that Trump doesn’t snack and that the rumors about his button to call for someone to bring him a Diet Coke were accurate.
