The White House appears to have been duped by an April Fools’ Day post about the fast-food burger chain In-N-Out.
On Monday, the White House issued a press release touting the changes that food companies have made during President Donald Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” push. One of these changes, the White House said, was that In-N-Out “transitioned to 100% beef tallow.”
The restaurant, however, has not transitioned to beef tallow, which is rendered beef fat. The White House linked back to an April 1 tweet from a fan account for the restaurant, which was labelled an April Fools’ Day prank.
“It’s official. In-N-Out will be transitioning to 100% pure beef tallow,” the account wrote. “The change is set to become effective on 05/01/2025 at all In-N-Out locations.”
In a reply post minutes later, the account posted an “April Fools” GIF with the caption: “Before this gets out of hand.”
The White House did correctly claim that In-N-Out made changes to its recipes after the Food and Drug Administration’s announced it will phase out the use of petroleum-based synthetic dyes in the nation’s food supply.
The White House has since removed the beef tallow reference from its website, but the original line can still be seen in an email sent to reporters on Monday afternoon.
When contacted for comment, White House spokesperson Kush Desai told The Independent: “The media’s obsession with covering anything but the facts, like how the Trump administration is working with companies, including In-N-Out, to remove artificial ingredients from our food supply, is exactly why public trust in the press has plummeted to record lows.”
In-N-Out Chief Operating Officer Denny Warnick acknowledged the White House’s error in a statement to The Independent.
“Information was recently published in error stating that In-N-Out Burger has transitioned to beef tallow for cooking French fries,” Warnick said. “We continue to work on an upgrade to our current sunflower oil, however we have not yet made a change.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is leading Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, has long promoted beef tallow as an alternative to canola oil and other seed oils. Last Thanksgiving, he even posted a video of himself deep-frying a turkey in beef tallow.
“This is how we cook the MAHA way,” Kennedy said in the video.
Other restaurants have heeded Kennedy’s concerns about seed oils. Fast food chain Steak ‘n Shake announced it would begin cooking its shoestring fries in beef tallow in January, while salad chain Sweetgreen has eliminated seed oils from its menus.
Kennedy, who has long promoted anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and spread misinformation about COVID-19, was confirmed to his cabinet position in February. He’s faced widespread criticism since, including for a flagship health commission report released in May that appeared to contain fake citations.
The outlet NOTUS found that several cited studies did not exist, while a follow-up investigation by The Washington Post revealed some citations were generated by artificial intelligence. At the time, the Department of Health and Human Services said the report suffered from “minor citation and formatting errors,” which had since been corrected.
Editor’s Note: This article has been amended to reflect that the April Fools’ joke was posted on X by an In-N-Out fan account, and not by the company.
