Secretary of State Marco Rubio said his brief stint on the keto diet left him so irritable he would have been ready to declare war had he been secretary of state at the time.
“I did, at one time, maybe four, five years ago, I tried this thing called keto. And you just eat all this protein. And so you go through this massive withdrawal from sugar and carbohydrates. For the first 72 hours, it was a near psychotic event for me,” Rubio said on The Katie Miller Podcast Tuesday.
Rubio’s comments come as he discussed his eating habits and the broader “Make America Healthy Again” movement associated with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“It’s like if I did this in this job, I would be in it ‘Mr. President, we must bomb, you know, Paraguay,’ and it’s like, why? I don’t know, I’m just really mad. I haven’t had any sugar,” Rubio said.
“I’m not against this diet. I’m not asking that we ban it. I encourage people to try it. I’m just saying it’s not for everyone. That’s what I’m saying,” Rubio added.
Rubio recalled trying the low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet several years ago and said the initial adjustment was particularly difficult. Rubio also made clear that he has little interest in adopting Kennedy’s diet, which emphasizes foods such as meat and fermented vegetables, but noted that he encourages people to try it.
LMAO! Marco Rubio just dropped this hilarious response to Sec. RFK Jr.’s diet
Q: Have you adopted RFK’s diet of red meat and fermented vegetables?
RUBIO: “No! This is a CRAZY diet. This is a diet that consists of eating sauerkraut and meat. Now you understand like this is… pic.twitter.com/qgaMNjsIhu
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 11, 2026
“No, this is a crazy diet. This is a diet that consists of eating sauerkraut and meat. Now you understand, like this is not a sustainable thing,” Rubio said. “I’m not going to travel the world with a cooler full of sauerkraut. It’s ridiculous. I can’t do it.”
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Rubio noted he still backs the push for healthier eating habits, despite his own struggles with the diet, saying, “I’m in favor of MAHA. Like, I think people should be healthy.”
Rubio’s wife, Jeanette Christina Dousdebes Rubio, who joined him for the interview, also weighed in, describing her husband as someone who enjoys foods that would generally be excluded from restrictive diets. Rubio praised Pop-Tarts, calling them “one of the great American innovations in the history of the world.”