RFK Jr. Responds to CNN Claiming His $5 Salmon Meal Costs $70 — If You Put a ‘Squirt of Ketchup' on a Bur

Apparently, even a salmon cake can start a food fight. A dinner billed as an affordable family meal has now become an argument over whether the price of a recipe should include everything you have to buy at the grocery store — or only the portion that actually lands on the plate. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined California chef Andrew Gruel on the recently launched "The Real Food Show" to make crispy wild Alaskan salmon cakes with an apple, white bean and greens salad. Produced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy and Gruel put the cost at $19.64 for a family of four, or less than $5 per serving. Then CNN went grocery shopping. Don't Miss: CNN Put the $5 Dinner to the Test On Aug. 19, CNN correspondent Tom Foreman tested the recipe on "Erin Burnett OutFront," buying the same ingredients and choosing the lowest prices he could find at a major grocery chain. His total came to $70.54. Trending The biggest differences came down to how the ingredients were counted. The show priced 1.5 pounds of wild-caught sockeye salmon at $8.99. Foreman said the cheapest comparable frozen salmon he found cost more than $24. The recipe counted a portion of a red onion at 8 cents, while buying the whole onion cost more than a dollar. Two tablespoons of avocado mayonnaise were priced at 40 cents, while the full container cost more than $11. "They're only pricing parts of it. And grocery stores don't sell things that way," Foreman said. He prepared the meal and called it tasty and healthy, but argued that someone couldn't walk into a store with $20 and leave with everything needed to make it. That distinction is landing at a time when food isn't exactly getting cheaper. Bureau of Labor Statistic data show food-away-from-home prices rose 3.4% over the year through July, while limited-service meals rose 3.3%. Trending: AI Doesn't Run On Chips Alone. This Startup Is Building The Energy Storage Technology Behind The Power Demand. Kennedy Had a Different Way of Counting "Trump Derangement Syndrome has so debilitated @ErinBurnett that she has abandoned both common sense and basic arithmetic," Kennedy wrote in a post on X on Aug. 21. "CNN wants us to incorporate the full package price of every ingredient, regardless of what is used in the recipe," he added. "If you put a squirt of ketchup on your burger, would you be surprised if the restaurant charged you for the whole bottle?" he wrote. Kennedy's argument is that "The Real Food Show" uses recipe costing — the amount of each ingredient that actually goes into the dish. "The Real Food Show uses standard recipe costing: we count what the recipe actually uses," Kennedy wrote. "The rest stays in your kitchen for the next meal — and the meals after that." And that's really the heart of the disagreement. So Is It a $5 Meal or a $70 Grocery Trip? Both numbers can be accurate, depending on what's being measured. If the question is how much of the food purchased gets consumed by four people in that particular meal, the show's portion-based calculation answers it. If the question is how much money someone needs to walk into a grocery store and buy every ingredient from scratch, CNN's $70.54 answers a different question. Kennedy's ketchup comparison makes the point from his side. A person doesn't consume an entire bottle of ketchup because they used a squirt. The bottle is still sitting in the refrigerator, ready for the next burger. But the shopper still has to pay for the bottle before getting that first squirt. Stretching a Dollar Beyond the Grocery Aisle Kennedy's message is that families can stretch their dollars by cooking at home, buying ingredients that can be used across multiple meals and avoiding the premium attached to prepared food. That same idea can apply to building wealth, too. Someone trying to make a tight budget go further isn't necessarily in a position to buy a rental house, put down 20% or deal with a leaky roof at 2 a.m. But real estate investing doesn't always require owning an entire property. Arrived lets people purchase fractional shares of rental properties starting at $100, giving investors a way to get exposure to real estate without buying a whole house or managing tenants themselves. The platform handles the property operations, while investors can potentially earn rental income and benefit from property appreciation, depending on the investment. A hundred dollars obviously isn't going to buy a house. But the point is similar to Kennedy's recipe math — small amounts can be put to work rather than disappearing after one transaction. The difference is that a salmon dinner gets eaten. An investment can potentially keep working after dinner is over. Read Next: Still Wondering Where Your Money Goes Each Month? 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