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by Helena Bottemiller Evich
From Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” to Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign, America is in the midst of a food and nutrition policy awakening. Why are diet-related disease rates so high in the U.S.? What are the potential solutions? What does the science say? Award-winning journalist Helena Bottemiller Evich cuts through the noise to help us understand what’s really happening with our food system and our plates.
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- 1 weeks ago34 min
The case for defining ultra-processed foods with Dariush Mozaffarian and Lindsey Smith Taillie
The Trump administration says it wants to formally define ultra-processed foods — a move that could have big implications for food policy in the future. More than a year into the process, however, this effort has hit roadblocks at the White House amid major opposition from the food industry.My guests this week have been at the center of the push to get the definition out. Dariush Mozaffarian is a cardiologist, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, and author of the new book Food Is Medicine. Lindsey Smith Taillie is a nutrition epidemiologist at UNC Chapel Hill, co-director of the Global Food Research Program, and co-chair of an expert panel that came up with a consensus definition earlier this year.Both experts want to see the federal government move forward on this. A formal definition would give the USDA, the military, FDA, and the states a common starting point for policies relating to school meals, food labels, and procurement (and so much more).Highlights:– Why “ultra-processed” is still so confusing, and where the Nova classification came from– The case for defining UPFs around cosmetic additives, with exemptions for foods that meet FDA’s “healthy” definition– Inside the expert panel that turned a room full of opinions into a consensus definition– What happened to the draft definition that was supposed to come out in August– What Calley Means’ resignation says about the MAHA agenda– The growing patchwork of state UPF laws, and why industry should want a federal standard– What the trans fat ban and Chile’s food policies suggest about industry warnings of economic doomWhere to find Dariush Mozaffarian:Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts UniversityFood Is Medicine, Dariush’s new bookLinkedInWhere to find Lindsey Smith Taillie:Unjunked (Substack)Global Food Research Program at UNCLinkedInMentioned in this episode:Ultraprocessed Foods in the U.S.: Recommended Definitions and Policies, Healthy Eating Research expert panel reportNutrition experts press White House to release ultra-processed food definition (STAT)MAHA’s Calley Means resigns as a top RFK Jr. health adviser days before the midterm elections (AP via The Philadelphia Inquirer)Stay in touch:Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.Send ideas and feedback to info@foodfix.coCheck out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.
- 3 weeks ago43 min
Rep. Chellie Pingree on why Democrats should work with MAHA
Seventy-three Republicans and 207 Democrats voted last April to successfully strip a pesticide liability shield out of the farm bill. The provision would have protected Bayer from billions in lawsuits over glyphosate and cancer, and ag interests fought hard to keep it in the legislation. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) says she’s never seen a win like it.It was a case where strange bedfellows teamed up and won big. MAHA activists and Democrats don’t agree on much, and many Democrats want nothing to do with the movement. Pingree has spent years working on food and farm issues, often feeling like she didn’t have much backup, and she sees the MAHA moment as a chance to finally win some of the bigger policy fights.Pingree has represented Maine’s 1st District since 2009 and sits on both the House Appropriations and Agriculture Committees. She was a certified organic farmer long before food policy was a rising political issue. Pingree does not align with the entire MAHA agenda (particularly not on vaccines), but she argues that Democrats should work with MAHA activists wherever their priorities overlap. Now she’s trying to convince her fellow Democrats that sitting this one out is a mistake.Highlights:– How a back-to-the-land homesteader and organic farmer ended up in Congress– Why she decided to work with MAHA activists– The new congressional “Fix Our Food” caucus she’s building to get more colleagues engaged– Why food and ag issues are going mainstream, and the unlikely candidates talking about cancer and water quality in Iowa– Her read on the midterms and what might come next– Why the farm bill is stalled in the Senate, and whether Congress can still get big things done– Her invitation to listeners: send her your policy ideas via email!Where to find Rep. Chellie Pingree:Official websiteContact Rep. PingreeInstagramFacebookBlueskyXMentioned in this episode:House votes to strip pesticide liability protections from the farm billCongress reaches new level of dysfunction with farm bill, food safety failures (Food Fix)Real Organic ProjectStay in touch:Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.Send ideas and feedback to info@foodfix.coCheck out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.
- Sep 30, 202643 min
Media roundtable: MAHA meets the midterms with Liz Essley Whyte, Chelsea Cirruzzo, and Marcia Brown
This week, we have a great media roundtable with Marcia Brown, who covers food and agriculture at Politico; Chelsea Cirruzzo, Washington correspondent at STAT; and Liz Essley Whyte, health policy reporter at the Wall Street Journal. All three have broken big MAHA-related stories this year, and heading into the midterms, they’re watching whether this movement still has the political clout it had in 2024.We talk about how each of these reporters ended up covering MAHA, how their outlets approach covering the movement and the Trump administration, and so much more.Highlights: – Why HHS moved $12 million out of the Office of Minority Health as Secretary Kennedy's security costs climbed from $10 million to $17 million – Zach Lahn, the anti-Big Ag Republican running for Iowa governor, and his relationship with Kennedy – Whether MAHA can deliver votes in the midterms after falling short on parts of its national agenda – USDA winding down its cyclospora research during one of the largest outbreaks in recent history, and why "boring" ag research matters – What FDA nominee Heidi Overton, new HHS leadership, and Trump's renewed vaccine push mean – Where MAHA finds a political home next, as some Democrats start courting it – New "real food" stocking standards for SNAP retailers, and what they could mean for where people can use their SNAP benefitsWhere to find Marcia Brown:PoliticoSubstackXBlueskyWhere to find Chelsea Cirruzzo:STATXLinkedInWhere to find Liz Essley Whyte:XBlueskyLinkedInMentioned in this episode:RFK Jr.'s Enhanced Security Was Funded With Money From Minority Health Office (Wall Street Journal)RFK Jr. sees mutual political benefit in MAHA boosting MAGA (STAT)USDA cyclospora research projects shelved amid funding cuts and relocations (Politico)Heidi Overton's FDA confirmation hearing (STAT)Stay in touch:Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.Send ideas and feedback to info@foodfix.coCheck out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.
- Sep 16, 202652 min
The decade-long fight to get SNAP online with Nick Green
A long list of investors said no to Nick Green and his co-founders as they were trying to get Thrive Market off the ground. They were rejected so many times they eventually turned to the people who understood the problem they were trying to solve: moms, wellness influencers, and anyone else whose life had been shaped by not having a decent grocery store nearby.Twelve years later, their persistence paid off. Thrive Market has grown into a profitable, membership-based online grocer with 1.7 million paying members, hundreds of millions in annual sales, and a reputation as the Whole Foods-meets-Costco of e-commerce. Thrive Market was also an early advocate of piloting SNAP EBT benefits for online grocery purchases, pioneering a decade-long fight to take the policy nationwide.Nick Green is a co-founder and CEO of Thrive Market. We talk about that long SNAP fight, what's happening to enrollment right now as millions of households drop off the program, and Nick's case for why the market might be a faster route to change compared to policymaking.Highlights:The nearly decade-long fight to get SNAP EBT accepted onlineWhat the GOP reconciliation package changes for SNAP beneficiaries and statesWhy Thrive bans more than 1,000 ingredientsHow the company thinks about glyphosate, additives, and the murky definition of "ultra-processed."Where Nick thinks the private market can move faster than government on food dye and additive rulesWhere to find Nick Green:LinkedInThrive MarketThrive Market on InstagramMentioned in this episode:USDA SNAP Online Purchasing PilotThrive Market becomes first online-only retailer to accept SNAP EBTStay in touch:Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.Send ideas and feedback to info@foodfix.coCheck out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.
- Sep 2, 202651 min
What the cyclospora outbreak tells us about food safety in America, with Bill Marler
It's been a rough summer for anyone paying attention to food safety in America. Every few days, it seems, we see new headlines about new recalls and foodborne illness outbreaks. And the media is paying a lot more attention to them on the heels of the big summer cyclospora outbreak tied to iceberg lettuce (which is now the largest foodborne outbreak we’ve had in three decades!) What’s going on? Is this the Trump administration to blame here, or has the system been broken for a long time? And what can we eat?To sort through it, we sat down with Bill Marler, widely considered the top food safety plaintiff's attorney in the country (and a thorn in the food industry’s side). Marler is also the founder of Food Safety News (where Helena used to work pre-2013) and is an outspoken advocate for stronger food safety regulations in the U.S.Marler's read on the current moment isn't exactly what you'd expect from an outspoken, left-leaning lawyer who spends his days suing food companies: he blames not just this administration, but more so Congress's decades-long unwillingness to stay on top of food safety policy and the funding needed to make real reform a reality.Highlights:– Roughly 32,000 people (by state counts) have been sickened by cyclospora this summer, and CDC estimates suggest the real number could be dramatically higher– Why the CEO of Taylor Farms is calling Bill Marler these days– Why cyclospora is so much harder to trace than E. coli or Salmonella– Marler connects the dots between the FDA's delayed food traceability rule, agency staffing cuts, and how long it took to identify Taylor Farms as the source– Fifty infants were hospitalized for botulism linked to contaminated infant formula last November, and it still hasn't gotten a single congressional hearing– Helena and Bill's takes on personal risk: how they each shop for produceWhere to find Bill Marler:Marler Blogbillmarler.comMentioned in this episode:Food Safety NewsPoisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food (Netflix)Stay in touch:Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.Send ideas and feedback to info@foodfix.coCheck out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.
- Aug 19, 202649 min
What's on the tray in America's prisons with Daniel Rosen and Leslie Soble
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. often talks about reforming prison food in the same breath as school food, a genuinely unusual thing for a top health official to say. At the same time, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has quietly put out requests for information about outsourcing food service to the same private companies that serve colleges, elementary schools, and military bases. Are these two positions aligned? What would it take to actually improve food served in prisons? Why does it matter? We dive into all of it with two of the country’s top experts in prison food.Daniel Rosen co-founded the Carceral Nutrition Project after six years incarcerated in Virginia and Washington, D.C. Leslie Soble is a folklorist and ethnographer whose research became Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison, which just won a James Beard Award (Soble is also a founding board member of the Carceral Nutrition Project).Together, Rosen and Soble lay out what's actually on the tray, who's profiting from it, and why the whole "you did the crime, you do the time" doesn't actually make sense when you consider how to feed incarcerated people.Highlights:Prison and jail systems spend $1.50 to $2 a day feeding someone, a fraction of what the federal school lunch reimbursement coversThe wild imbalance between healthcare and food spending in correctional facilitiesHow privatization works (about a third of prison food service is outsourced)The science connecting better nutrition to lower violence in correctional facilitiesWhat the Trump administration is/isn’t doing to reform prison foodWhat national standards for prison food could actually look likeWhere to find Daniel Rosen and Leslie Soble:Carceral Nutrition ProjectEating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in PrisonAdditional Reading:"Private Food, Public Harm" — the CSPI/Carceral Nutrition Project report on privatized prison food serviceGesch et al. (2002) Gesch, C.B., Hammond, S.M., Hampson, S.E., Eves, A., & Crowder, M.J. "Influence of supplementary vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids on the antisocial behaviour of young adult prisoners." British Journal of Psychiatry, 181, 22–28. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.181.1.22Zaalberg et al. (2010) Zaalberg, A., Nijman, H., Bulten, E., Stroosma, L., & van der Staak, C. "Effects of nutritional supplements on aggression, rule-breaking, and psychopathology among young adult prisoners." Aggressive Behavior, 36(2), 117–126. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.20335Schoenthaler & Bier (2000) Schoenthaler, S.J., & Bier, I.D. "The effect of vitamin-mineral supplementation on juvenile delinquency among American schoolchildren." Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 6(1), 7–17. https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2000.6.7Schoenthaler sugar studies (1980s) Schoenthaler, S.J. (1983). "The Alabama Diet-Behavior Program." International Journal of Biosocial Research, 5(2), 79–87. (Pre-DOI era; search via Google Scholar)Systematic review: dietary/nutritional interventions on behaviour and mental health of prisoners (2024) — 933 studies screened, 11 included; found consistent ~30% reductions in violence across intervention types.Australian pilot RCT on dietary supplementation and aggression in adult male prisoners (2020) — feasibility study for a larger omega-3/multivitamin RCT; prisoners below the 6% omega-3 index threshold were 4.3× more likely to have elevated aggression scores.Omega-3 multi-centre RCT protocol (2021) — pre-registered protocol for a large-scale replication of the Gesch/Zaalberg findings.Gut microbiota and mental health in new inmates (2022, PubMed) — inmates showed higher anxiety/depression scores
- Jul 22, 202649 min
Lessons from a 13-year old lobbying for gluten labeling, with Jon and Jax Bari
At the 2023 HHS Food Is Medicine Summit, one item on the buffet was considered safe for 10-year-old Jax Bari to eat: an apple.Everything else was a gamble because gluten isn't required on food labels in the U.S. the way it is in 87 other countries. For someone with celiac disease, that disclosure means a whole lot — a tiny bit of gluten can mean days of vomiting, diarrhea and severe pain.Jax is now 13, and he's still on a mission to convince Washington that gluten labeling should be mandatory. He and his dad, Jon Bari, founded the non-profit Celiac Journey, and have spent the past several years lobbying both the Biden and Trump administrations. They’ve filed a citizen petition with the FDA, met with lawmakers, and even cornered the FDA commissioner in an elevator — all in pursuit of one specific ask: add gluten to the FDA's list of major food allergens.Highlights:– Jax's advocacy started with a second-grade persuasive-letter assignment addressed to David Muir, which turned into national ABC News coverage and a White House invitation.– The FDA's January 2026 request for information on gluten labeling drew more than 6,000 public comments, with about 99.5% in support.– Per Jon Bari: The opposition includes the Consumer Brands Association and, more surprisingly, the Celiac Disease Foundation itself, which is funded by General Mills, the largest oat seller in the U.S.– Three possible paths forward are now on the table: Secretary Kennedy's existing rulemaking authority, a potential executive order, or new legislation, including the bipartisan Faster Act and the separately introduced Celiac Safety Act.Where to find Jon and Jax Bari:Celiac JourneyInstagram: @celiacjourneyInstagram: @glutenfreefinds_paMentioned in this episode:FDA Request for Information on gluten labeling (Federal Register)Celiac Safety Act of 2026, H.R. 9048 (Congress.gov)"The great sesame debacle" — Food FixJax Bari's David Muir/ABC News "World News Tonight" segmentStay in touch:Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.Send ideas and feedback to info@foodfix.coCheck out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.
- Jul 8, 202645 min
Inside the race to understand America’s growing food allergy epidemic with Ilana Golant
Ten percent of Americans are estimated to have food allergies — and that’s probably an undercount. The government hasn't updated its population data in nearly a decade, so the real figure could be more like 12 or even 15 percent.Despite the scale of food allergies, food allergy research gets a small fraction of the funding devoted to comparable chronic diseases — and the gap has stayed remarkably persistent even as public and political attention has increased.Ilana Golant, founder and CEO of the non-profit Food Allergy Fund, is on a mission to close this gap. Food allergies are common, so why are they being funded like a rare disease? Food Allergy Fund advocates for more federal research funding and also directly funds microbiome research, drug repurposing trials, and work to develop new AI diagnostic tools for allergy testing, among other research.Ilana didn't come to this work through a traditional public health career path — she came to it as a mom and also as a patient with food allergies.Highlights:– Why 75 percent of food allergy kids under 12 now have multiple food allergies, and what happened to "the peanut-allergic kid"– The funding gap between food allergies and comparable chronic diseases, broken down per patient– What early allergen introduction did and didn't do to change allergy rates for children– Inside the Food Allergy Fund's drug repurposing program and cutting edge microbiome research– Why so many food allergy clinical trials are now running in Australia instead of the U.S.– The growing problem of unlabeled allergens hiding in medications– How the sesame labeling law backfired, and ended up putting sesame in more foods, not fewer– Alpha-gal syndrome, ticks creeping into city parks, and the rise of adult-onset food allergiesWhere to find Ilana Golant:Food Allergy Fund websiteFood Allergy Fund on InstagramMentioned in this episode:The ADINA ActStay in touch:Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.Send ideas and feedback to info@foodfix.coCheck out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.
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About American Dish
From Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” to Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign, America is in the midst of a food and nutrition policy awakening. Why are diet-related disease rates so high in the U.S.? What are the potential solutions? What does the science say? Award-winning journalist Helena Bottemiller Evich cuts through the noise to help us understand what’s really happening with our food system and our plates.
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