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Food Safety Matters
Ep. 209. Helena Bottemiller Evich: The MAHA Effect on American Food Policy
00:51:45
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hello everyone and welcome to Food Safety Matters, the podcast for food safety professionals. I'm Stacey Acheson, publisher of Food Safety Magazine, and it's just me today, which you know is how it goes for this first episode of the year. But longtime listeners know that this makes me so happy because I get to be the one to wish you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous new year. Well, 2026 is off to another fast start, but the podcast gods were definitely smiling on us when we invited acclaimed food policy journalist Helena Bottmiller Evic to be our first guest of the year to take a look back on A Year of maha, the Make America Healthy Again movement. Adrienne interviewed Halina last week just after the Department of Health and Human Services and USDA announced their new dietary guidelines, which have a lot of interest with our audience, so I know that you'll enjoy their discussion. In addition to the new dietary guidelines, they discuss the current state of food and nutrition policy under the MAHA agenda and predictions for its future. Also microbiological versus Chemical safety, infant formula, the state of fda, and other topics. Before I hand off to the interview, I want to remind you to register for the Food Safety Summit Conference and Expo produced by Food Safety magazine and that's being held May 11th through the 15th in Rosemont, Illinois. Early bird discounts apply, as well as a very special discount for our podcast audience. And to claim that, just use the code FSMATTERS20 when you register to get an extra 20% off of registration fees. So go to foodsafetysummit.com check out the excellent agenda that we've got lined up for you and we look forward to seeing you there. All right, now back to the business at hand. Today's guest, Helina Bottmiller Evic is the founder and editor in chief of Food Fix. She previously led coverage of food and agriculture at Politico for nearly a decade, winning numerous awards for her work, including a prestigious George Polk Award for a series on climate change and two James Beard Awards for features on nutrition and science. In 2022, she was a James Beard Award finalist for A Deep Dive on Diet related diseases and COVID 19. Halyna is also a sought after speaker and commentator on food issues, appearing on cnn, msnbc, cbs, BBC and npr, among others. Her work is widely cited in the media and has also been published in the Columbia Journalism Review and on NBC News. So with no further ado, here's their discussion.
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B
Well, welcome to the podcast, Helena. It's great to have you on finally.
- [03:02]
C
I am so glad to Be here. Longtime listener, big time fan.
- [03:06]
B
Well, thank you. We loved hearing you're a longtime listener and a fan and we certainly are fan of yours and have been following you for a long time. And you know, it's interesting because we're recording this interview on a very busy day for food journalists. You know, as, as you and I know, the Department of Health and Human Services and USDA issued kind of a surprise release of the revised dietary guidelines for Americans today. And those are originally supposed to come out last summer. So even though it's a, it's been a long time coming, they got released earlier than we thought. And you've been following this week that they were going to come out, you know, and reporting that before anybody else as well, which is pretty cool. Now, you've been covering this topic of the DGAs and many others in food policy through your own publication, food F since mid 2022 and before that with Politico. And my first question for you is, what are your thoughts on today's release of the DGAs and the changes they recommend, and especially when it comes to things like health and safety concerns, ultra processed or highly processed foods, added sugars, things like that?
- [04:12]
C
Yeah, today was really crazy if, if anyone listening gets Food Fix in their inbox. They got a couple of emails from me today. They're still yet some more emails to come. Yeah, so it was a crazy day. Basically. HHS and USDA actually unveiled the dietary guidelines at the White House. It was pretty high level. You actually had the White House press secretary doing the briefing in the briefing room. And I think the administration really sees this as a win, like they want to tout it. They launched a new website called realfood.gov which is very slick and has all these graphics. We have a new food pyramid which is upside down and looks a lot different from the old food pyramid, which of course we haven't actually had a food pyramid since 2011, but I'll set that one aside. You know, we've had my plate for a while, but a lot of people don't know what that is. So these are really big changes. We saw really big changes in the rhetoric from the government. I think the, the biggest, like takeaway was essentially that the government is telling people to move away from highly processed packaged foods, which, you know, are the vast majority of the US Food supp apply. So that message right there is, I think, clearly being communicated and is a big deal. Not everyone agrees with that message. And there's a lot of details within the guidelines that, I mean I think in some ways it's sort of a mixed bag. Like a lot of experts would pick, I don't know, maybe 80% of it and go, yeah, the guidelines are, makes sense. They're science based. This makes sense. You know, more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, trying to focus on whole foods. But once you get into the details, there's so much fighting over like saturated fat. For example, the, the administration is saying that they're ending the war on saturated fat. That's what they call it this. But they didn't actually change the recommendation which is that people should try to do 10% or less of their cat or fewer of their calories from saturated fat. So the message that, you know, whole fat dairy's back. The message that, you know, we should really be focusing on protein which obviously is a big win for the meat industry. Like all of that message is being put out there by top officials. But if you actually look at some of the nitty gritty policy, it didn't change as much as, as really I think some people were expecting. It did significantly increase the recommendations for protein consumption. So just in general that you're supposed to focus on more, more on protein. I don't know anyone who's been on Instagram lately hears nothing about any other nutrient other than protein. So I think maybe that messaging ship has already sailed. But it really, I think made a splash. Some experts hate it. Some groups were complaining today. You also saw some really interesting medical and health groups praising this as common sense. So it's been a really interesting day.
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B
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it is interesting that we didn't see for example the saturated fat Recommendations change because Dr. Makari had indicated that that would probably be a thing that changed also I think, you know, with that kind of inverted pyramid that we, we see from the original food food pyramid that we remember that we saw growing up as kids. Oh yeah. You know that the, the recommended serving size or serving levels of carbohydrates and grains are now significantly smaller than what they were. So just nutritionally it's interesting. But then also, you know the, some of the, the language and the reporting around this when the DGAs were released, you know, saying like please avoid highly processed foods, which it's interesting they use that term too I think because yes, you know, we've got the debate about, you know, okay, they USDA and FDA issued the RFI last summer for we needed to find ultra processed foods. But now it's just kind of like yeah, yeah, yeah, but now it's kind of like, well, let's put that on the shelf right now and just call the bad stuff the quote. I'm using air quotes here, the bad stu. Highly processed foods. So I thought it was kind of a little bit of what appears to be a little bit of an interesting circumvention just with the UPS debate. But you know, they're essentially saying, you know, try to use good sense and eat foods that are, you know, like have one or two ingredients on the label which, you know, vegetables and fruits, which they're. And meat, which they're really touting. A lot of those things are, you know, do fall into that category. So it's very interesting thing to see.
- [08:49]
C
So it's, it's fascinating. And honestly the semantics here, I think, you know, us, those of us in wonk world and food policy world, you know, have thought so much about this term ultra processed food and what it means and whether, you know, we don't really have a definition for it. There's obviously Nova, which comes out of Brazil, but there's a lot of pushback on that because it just includes so many foods. And it does, it really, you know, it doesn't really take into account the nutritional profile of a food. So when you look at the government trying to define it, because they haven't yet, it was this very awkward in between where they're going to tell the American public to basically stay away from these foods. But we haven't defined what exactly we're talking about. But if you look in the document for all the food policy wonks out there, you can go into the appendix or the supplementary materials, there's about a 400 page document that came out with the shorter, you know, six page dietary guidelines. And there actually is the definition for highly processed foods in there. And actually I could read it too because I. Oh wait, no, I got out of all my windows. I always have a million tabs open. But it's interesting to go in there and look at what that definition is and then, you know, what does it tell us about? I think it refers to like refined grains and it kind of gives us a hint of maybe where this government is going in terms of defining ultra processed foods. But we're now, we now have two different acronyms. We've got UPF and we've got hpf.
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B
Yeah.
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C
So like, what are we doing? I mean, it's kind of confusing. However, I think you are totally right that like the overall message is being sent. Like what Secretary Kennedy said from the White House briefing room today was eat real Food that, you know, it's like Michael Pollan, simple, right? What does he say? Eat real food, not too much. Poor Michael Pollan, I'm gonna butcher his. Eat real food, not too much. Am I getting that right? Anyway, simple. You know, I do think that the overall message is relatively simple, which, you know, folks in the food industry, this is a nightmare for them. This is a huge L for the consumer packaged goods industry. I mean, it's a huge messaging push to try to get consumers to move away from packaged foods. So we'll see if it moves the needle. The other thing here is that, like, most consumers don't follow the dietary guidelines. You know, we're not really meeting them. I do think they're very important in terms of how consumers think they should be eating. They do nudge overall trends, for sure. I'm not saying they're not important. They are, but most people don't follow them, so. Well, it'll be interesting to see what kind of impact this has.
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B
Absolutely. And you know, just for our listeners out there, this supplement or the appendix that Halia was referring to, so it does acknowledge in there, while there is currently no consensus definition for highly processed or ultra processed food foods, it mentions the joint usda, fda, rfi. Yeah. Trying to establish. And it says for the purposes of this report, highly processed foods are defined as any food, beverage or engineered food, like item. That's an interesting term that's made primarily from substances extracted from food, so like refined sugars, grains, starches or oils and. Or containing industrially manufactured chemical additives. And then the next thing it says, which is interesting, you mentioned the NOVA classification classification. It also acknowledges that the most used definition in the, in this domain is the NOVA classification. But then it doesn't kind of give any, you know, any more after that. But yeah, so, I mean, it's, it's interesting they establish a definition in here, kind of a very broad general definition for highly processed foods. But as far as that official USDA FDA ultra processed foods definition, we'll have to wait for that, I think. Yeah.
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C
And I mean, again, that, that definition you just read, the food industry hates that. It hates it. I mean, this is, I mean, in a way, they've been telegraphing this for a long, long time. For many months, you said since last summer, they've been saying we're going to tell everyone to eat, you know, move away from ultra processed food. So I think in that way, almost like the shock factor has worn off a bit for the industry. Like they've had a long time to know this is coming, but still, when you step back, like, it's a pretty. It's a pretty big departure from where. From where the government's been. Yeah.
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B
Truly interesting day. So I want to go back for a second to your previous work with Politico. Now. In April of 2022, you published a bombshell report on the structural, cultural, and political reasons for dysfunction within the food side of FDA and how the agency was basically failing Americans on food safety and nutrition. And one of the things your report really honed in on was and brought national attention to FDA about was the Abbott Nutrition infant formula chronobacter outbreak and supply shortage that was happening at the time. And this outbreak, as we know, ultimately led to the reorganization of the Human Foods Program, and that happened in October 2024. That was recommended by the Reagan Udall Foundation's independent evaluation of the. The agency. That kind of takes us up to today. So after the onset of the second Trump administration, additional reorganization of the Human Foods program, also mass layoffs of agency personnel, and the introduction of Operation Stork Speed to help reform infant formula standards. We're in the midst of another infant formula outbreak, and this time it's infant botulism associated with Bihart formula. So I guess my question for you is, does it feel. Feel like we've kind of come full circle here, or do you think the structural changes at FDA that we have seen over the past couple of years have made a difference in how the agency addresses food safety and foodborne illness?
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C
Yeah, it's a great question. And I will say that when news of the Bihart botulism situation came out, I physically felt like I was back in the. The throes of the infant formula crisis. Like, that was such an intense time. I was on the phone with parents who were sobbing either because they couldn't find formula or because their child had been sickened and they thought it was the formula. I mean, it was just a horrible time. So when I saw this, I went, oh, no. Oh, my gosh, here we go again. But the good news is with this situation, I mean, it's a. It's a horrible situation. But the good news, the silver Lin, we are not facing a supply shortage. And that was really important that, you know, FDA made that very clear from the jump. I think it was communicated very well to try to make sure that people didn't panic and didn't, like, go out and, you know, buy up a bunch of formula, which would be the natural response for, you know, for parents. So in I Think the messaging and all of that was handled, you know, in a. In a way that made sense. You know, there's just so many differences between that situation and the botulism outbreak that we have been going through. I think when you look at FDA right now, compared to where we were then, it's clear that we have a single leader. We didn't have that. I have never talked to anyone who doesn't think that has helped. Just having a clear decision maker, having a leader in charge. And now Kyle Diamantes, he seems like he has, you know, a fair amount of political support or, you know, he's like, they let him go on Fox News the other day. I mean, like, he's able to be out there. I think having a clear decision maker matters a lot. We don't know as much about the timeline. I have not had the bandwidth to, like, go back and really do the, like, forensic analysis of, like, who knew what when. So it's a little bit hard for me to compare, like, I mean, with the. With the Abbott situation. They literally missed a whistleblower complaint, you know, and, I mean, it was bad. Like, it was sent to several top officials. I mean, it was just such a failure on so many levels. And so in this case, I have seen no evidence that we are at that, you know, in that same realm. And so there's some similarities, but there's some key differences. I think FDA right now faces a lot of different problems. You mentioned the layoffs, the staffing. They're trying to do Operation Stork speed, which I think there's a lot of, like, political support to do that. But you need staff, you need experts, you need bandwidth. And they're trying to. Yeah, they're trying to take on a lot of, you know, food additive oversight work. I mean, they. Caltiamontas has been very clear that they don't have, like, limitless resources to. To do all this work. And so, I mean, I think the resource constraints are the same, but the leadership in terms of decision making, I think, is more clear than it. Than it was back during that time. So many of the problems, though, that I think have plagued FDA's foods program are still an issue today. The funding situation hasn't gotten any better. Diamantis has been saying, I don't know if you've heard him use the stat recently, but he's been bringing it up more in different speeches or media appearances. He notes that, you know, FDA Foods has this very expansive mandate. I mean, the U.S. foods, the U.S. food supply, or the U.S. food market is among the. You know, is the biggest in the world. Hundreds of thousands of facilities, like a huge, huge job. And the budget for the foods program, he says, is, like, smaller than the Dallas school district.
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B
That's an interesting stat. Yeah.
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C
And I mean, that just kind of. It kind of just like, hits home. I think it's a very effective stat because it hits home. Just like the fact that the foods program, I don't think, has ever been funded at the level that would be commensurate with the job American consumers already expect and assume that FDA is doing. And that is just a fundamental problem. And that's not to say that there are not cultural issues, leadership issues, like, all of that is. Is real, but the. The resource constraints are just such a fundamental. They're just such a fundamental problem. So I think, you know, that's just something that needs to be fixed at some point. I don't know what the number is. I don't know what the solution is. Even the Trump administration came in and asked for more money for the FDA's foods program. They're trying to cut a lot. This was, like, during Doge, and they came out with a budget that was like, we need to increase the budget at FDA Foods.
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A
That.
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C
That should tell you something, I think.
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B
Yeah, I guess I'm kind of not surprised by that, just because, you know, from the outset, Secretary Kennedy has stated that he, you know, wants to see certain changes in the food supply. And. And, you know, so, I mean, if you're gonna be taking additives and colors and other things out of food and repl them with, you know, reformulating essentially, then, you know, that's gonna. That's gonna take some time. And then, of course, you know, he's a big proponent also of just making a healthier food supply. Well, making a healthier food supply requires a lot of different things and a lot of cooperation from different angles.
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C
But, I mean, it's a big job. Like, they gotta. They gotta figure out, like, yeah. What grass substances are even on the market. They don't have a list, Right. Yeah, you know, just some of these basic things, again, that you go back to, like, consumers assume. Of course, FDA knows these things and has much more oversight on it than they actually do. So, yeah, I do think it makes sense, considering the focus. But it, again, should just be a reminder that even a administration that's come in and been, I think, more focused on shrinking the size of government and also trying to be more deregulatory still was like, yeah, we need to bolster this program. Yep.
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B
Yeah, absolutely. And I kind of want to dig in deeper into the Trump administration's impact on food policy, food safety, and nutrition. And, you know, both of us have discussed at length throughout our media the Make America Healthy Again, or Maha movement, and how that's been a politically charged game changer for American food policy. You know, Robert F. Kennedy aligned himself with Donald Trump back in August of 2024 to create that Maha movement. And we've seen the movement take on some unexpected food safety and nutrition concerns through two major policy reports, new regulations and guidelines, and also industry coercion. And MAHA seems to have pretty significant grassroots support from concerned Americans, especially parents on both sides of the aisle. Now, you've been tracking this movement closely from a food policy perspective for some time now, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on how MAHA gained so much traction so quickly inside the Trump camp and among the American public. And also if you've seen any dissent or divide within the movement over the.
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C
Past year, you know, it is one of the more fascinating, maybe the most fascinating political story that I have followed in the 15 years that I've been reporting on food policy. When Kennedy endorsed Trump on stage in August of, I guess, 2024, there were literal fireworks. Like, they had pyrotechnics, you know, going and there. The crowd just went wild. And, like, if you go back and you watch that moment on stage, I think it's actually like a very telling moment. And I've talk to people who were, who were there who describe it as a very big moment because it essentially allowed the Trump campaign operation to see how much energy there was for some of these ideas for not just Kennedy himself, but the ideas of Maha. Like, they talked about getting toxins out of the food supply, like, there, there. And I, you know, I covered the first Trump administration. There was zero mention of that. It was a very deregulatory focus. Like, this was not part of the. The platform at all. And what they saw was grassroots energy. They saw it as a way to get some more support with women, some independent voters, young voters. There were folks, there's a sliver of the electorate who this really was an animating issue. And, you know, it's my understanding that within the Trump orbit, they give the Kennedy alliance, the Maha like alliance, a lot of credit for the win in 2024. And so this now, what we're living now, which is that, you know, Kennedy is at the top of HHS, which controls some like 2 trillion in American healthcare spending. Of course, FDA and CDC and all these key agencies. We're really seeing, I think the result of essentially the Trump campaign, like figuring out that there was grassroots energy here. And it's fascinating. It's basically given rise to this new sort of populist, very pro regulatory strain within the right, like it is now. The right has now granted permission to like before things like banning ultra processed foods and school meals. Like if you look at the polling on getting synthetic food dyes out of food, packaged food, it's like the same on the left and the right. It's overwhelmingly popular among Democrats, Republicans and independents. And so that's, and I think that's new. Like we didn't have great polling on synthetic food dyes over the last, you know, decade or two. But it really seems like the big change here is that the right, like part of the MAGA base has been lit up on this and is now pushing for Maha or MAGA to actually implement some of this stuff. And, and Maha, I should say is like really big. It's not just food. Like I focus on the food thing. So.
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B
Right.
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C
You know, that's the nutrition stuff, the food additive stuff, like grass reform. But there's also all sorts of other stuff. Raw milk legalization, that's a big thing. Fluoride, anti fluoride. Being concerned about fluoride in the food, in the water supply. There's people who don't like microwaves, there's a lot of concern about chemtrails. Don't even ask me what that. I don't even know what that is.
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A
Right.
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C
But like there's a lot of these other issues that like feed into it. Of course a huge part of it is concerns about vaccines. The anti vaccine advocates are part of it. So like it's moms, it's dads, it's like processed food concerns, it's fluoride. It's all these different things woven together. And when you look at the food stuff, what's interesting about that is it pulls the best. The vaccine stuff is still very polarizing, does not poll very well overall though they are definitely increasing in support among Republicans. But food pulls so well. The Maha food ideas pull so, so well. So it's just been fascinating to watch. Like the political landscape has shifted a lot in the last 18 months. Two years. Yeah.
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B
And you know, I think it's really interesting because a lot of the ideas that the Maha movement are pushing with just with regard to the food supply, we kind of saw, you know, from a, from a regulatory or a legislative perspective, kind of saw Some of that kicking off back in 2023 with the California Food Safety act. And that was the first legislation of its kind that was pushed through saying, hey, we're not going to have certain things in the food supply in California anymore. Anymore. And then we've seen both blue and red states copy that legislation and now we have kind of patchwork quilt of it.
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C
You know, there's, there's a crazy patchwork right now. Although, yeah, you bring up California, California loves to throw shade at Maha to basically be like, we were Maha before Maha existed, which is like, you know, fair. That's true technically. But if, I don't know if you've seen that, like Governor Gavin or, oh my God, it's been a long day. Governor Newsom, he, he like put out a statement that was basically like, we're actually taking action. Like in Washington, they're not doing anything. Like he's kind of trolling like RFK to be like, in California, like, we're actually defining ultra processed foods and like pushing them out of school meals. Like, they kind of got into a little bit of a, a back and forth about it. So. Which also is interesting that you have folks on the left and the right seeing this as a winning issue. Right. They see this as a popular issue that they can like. Yeah, they can, they can push for. And I think a lot of the Maha state legislation, they don't always like to be seen as lumped in with California. But there's just no question that so many of these ideas started on the left and were kind of crunchy granola. You know, California coded things like, it's just no longer. I think that's the big thing. It's no longer left coded. Some of this stuff is just, it's just broken out of that, that political sort of binary and it's a little bit more non partisan or cross partisan now.
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B
Yeah, no, absolutely.
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A
And that's.
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B
That goes back to what you said about these food issues within Maha polling. So. Well, is that, you know, I think people on both sides of the aisle, like, agree that they want to eat healthier, they want a healthier food that supply. There are things that we know that we've discovered, you know, over the past decades, this is not so great to be putting in our bodies. So. Yeah, but also there's a lot of nuance. You point that out too. But you know, under Secretary Kennedy, the Maha movement's taken on multiple food safety and nutrition concerns. You know, we talked about removing synthetic food dyes from the food supply, closing that Generally recognized as safe or grass ingredient loophole tackling the health harms posed by ultra processed foods or highly processed foods or whatever we're calling them now. And lots of other concerns. So I guess my next question would be for you. What, what do you see as Maha's major accomplishments since the Trump administration took office for the second time?
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C
Yeah, I, I really try to think about this a lot because the rhetoric has shifted so, so much like the rhetoric coming from top officials. Like I've been in the room where Kennedy has literally said we're being poisoned. Like he has said he suggested school meals are poisoning children. I mean, he's just very blunt and just unlike any other cabinet official I've covered. Right. In terms of the rhetoric. So the rhetoric has changed a ton. But if you actually look at the actions taken, not that much has actually changed. Okay, so like FDA's federal register, like regulations.gov, you go to FDA, like it's just, there's not a lot happening there. Grass reform, their grass reform proposed rule has gone to omb. We don't know when we'll see it. But that is a tangible, you know, policy proposal, regulatory change that is like moving forward, but we haven't seen it come out yet. So I think that is like a real thing on the horizon. On the USDA side, the one very significant policy change we've seen is allowing states to do SNAP restrictions. So SNAP purchase restrictions, which means that like actually 18 states now have been approved to ban certain things from their SNAP program within their state. So sugary drinks, or some are doing sugary drinks and candy. In Florida, they're doing sugary drinks, candy and like highly processed packaged desserts, but not baked in store desserts. So like it gets complicated really quickly.
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B
So that's a big change.
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C
I mean we're talking millions of people as of this month. And then other states, a few states are going have already implemented and then more states are rolling out this year. That is a really big change for, you know, millions of low income consumers that depend on snap. They are no longer able to buy certain foods with their EBT benefits. And that is a big policy change. What's interesting though is it's not a regulatory change. It didn't require putting something in the Federal Register, changing regulations. It was USDA changing its stance on approving state waivers. And so what I think we've seen is that in places where the administration can move without throwing out, they're proposing a lot of big regulations. They're starting to do those things Right.
- [32:57]
B
Yeah.
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C
But the big question, I think the big tension within Maha is how do you. How does this administration push forward what Maha expects without regulation? I think that's really, like, the fundamental tension here. Grass reform is a good example of where, like, there was no reasonable path forward for FDA to say we're going to tighten up food additive regulation without or, like, address food additives at all without looking at grass. I mean, there just was no way. And, you know, Kennedy made clear that was a priority very, very early. So I think that makes sense. There's a lot more tension over things. Like, I know there's tension within the food industry on grass reform, but it's nothing compared to the drama we're seeing on the EPA side. There's a ton of fighting over pesticide approvals and, you know, PFAS regulation and water and, like, phthalates. And I, I don't cover a lot of that. I don't cover EPA really very much. So I'm not as privy to it. But I've been watching Maha the movement, push back so strongly against Administrator Lee Zeldin anytime EPA comes out with something that's, like, seen as industry friendly. And the Maha moms are furious. And, like, he is trying to find ways to appease them now. So I think we're seeing some of the ways that the Maha movement is trying to flex its muscle. And so we're starting to see, like, what are the limits of the power there? Like, where can they show influence in Washington? They did succeed, the Maha advocates recently in helping members of Congress. They pressed to get some. They call it like the pesticide immunity shield language. There was a provision in a spending bill. As a writer anyway, not an expert in that whole saga, but basically the Maha advocates, you know, left and right, progressive groups, also push back. They pushed back so hard, they were able to get that pulled from the spending bill recently. So, you know, there's there's just a lot of, I think, tension inherent in the Maha MAGA alliance because maga, which predates Maha, did not care at all about these issues and actually was on the other side of them a lot. Like the very first thing Secretary Sonny Perdue, AG Secretary Sonny Perdue did when he came into office and the first Trump administration was like, roll back some of Michelle Obama's school meals regulations. Okay? That was the stance then. And he called it like, making school lunch great again or something. Now, fast forward to today. Today I saw the AG Secretary, Brooke Rollins in the White House saying, we're going to update school meals and we're going to make them, you know, follow these guidelines we just rolled out. I mean, that's a huge political shift in the Republican world to, to do that. So we're starting to see, like, you know, where. Where are these shifts going to turn into real policy? We'll see. And where are they not? Where is it just rhetoric? And I think that this 2026, I think it's going to be a really key year to, you know, suss out where is this just talk and where is it going to lead to, like, substantive federal policy change? And it's going to depend, I think, issue by issue.
- [36:42]
B
Yeah, yeah, I agree with you and I. It certainly has been interesting to watch. And you know, I think when you talked about that tension, you know, within the, within the movement and Maga Maha. But then also, you know, I, I think just between industry and administration. Right. So that final MAHA strategy report that was released in September actually got quite a lot of criticism for certain things, including like reliance on voluntary industry cooperation for food system reform rather than enforceable action or like regulation. And then also there was reduced emphasis on certain food safety issues like pesticide residues and pfas. But I guess that kind of leads me into asking, where do you see the major shortcomings of the MAHA approach to food safety and nutrition policy and especially industry regulation?
- [37:32]
C
Well, I mean, I think one really clear one is that there is no focus on microbial food safety. Like, I hear nothing about, you know, being concerned about foodborne illness outbreaks. I'm not saying they, the Trump administration isn't like, of course they took action in the botulism situation. They're, they're constantly investigating multiple foodborne illness outbreaks. Like, obviously, I think that is all still happening. But if you just look at MAHA as a movement, keeping food safe in the traditional sense is not really part of it. They're much more focused on chemical additives, contaminants. I think one place where there would be some overlap would be things like heavy metals, you know, in baby food, or different other consumer products. There's just so much more focus on that, on pesticides, on pfas. I mean, one thing I think doesn't get enough attention is, is the microplastic situation. If you talk to the, you look, you spend any time on any of the MAHA influencer accounts, or if you spend any time talking to big MAHA supporters, they're super concerned about microplastics. What on earth is the government doing nothing, you know, about microplastics? So we're not even hearing that conversation. So I think there's. There are definitely examples where there is, like, concern and want from the Maha moms for action. And, like, you know, we're not seeing anything. You know, microplastics, I will say, is a. Is a hard one because, well, there. Lots of these issues are hard. But microplastics is particularly hard because it's like, it's everywhere. It's, you know, it's clothing, it's cons, it's our. Our water bottles, it's our food containers, it's the restaurant containers, it's yoga pants. It's like, all the things. And so it's almost like, where do you even start? There's a lot of issues like that that I think, like, cross different agencies, and they're not getting attention at all. And one of the things the MAHA folks were really angry about is that EPA has been approving a couple of pesticides which environmental advocates argue act very similar to pfas in the environment. And so they're like, okay, well, it's great that we're getting food dyes out of M&Ms. Eventually. If, you know, I guess the West Virginia is having a. They did have a judge intervene in that recently challenge. Yeah, we'll see where that goes. But, you know, they're like, basically, like, it's great that we're getting food dyes out. Like, I support that, but I also don't want, you know, PFAs, more PFAs in the environment, or I don't want these other pesticide products to be approved. And so, you know, there's a lot of inconsistency, I think, at times, to put it mildly.
- [40:41]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like they're definitely looking at certain issues, but then others is kind of like, just turning the other way. Right. So not. Not looking at that one. But we will look at these. So.
- [40:52]
C
And it's like, so. So it's so typical, though, with food safety, though. It's that, like. And I used to experience this so much when I. I mean, I still cover food safety, but I used to focus on it full time. My very first journalism job was actually helping launch Food Safety News. But when I focus, whenever I focus, I spent, like, the first four, five years of my career focusing on food safety, and nobody pays attention to it until there's a crisis.
- [41:19]
B
Right?
- [41:20]
C
There's a crisis. And then everyone's like, oh, my gosh, what are we doing about food safety? And the way you have a safe food supply is to have, like, consistent, boring focus on things. Like keeping pathogens out of food. Right. Like, these are, you know, technical problems, cultural problems, economic problems that, like, deserve a lot of focus. And I think some of those, quote, boring topics are not really gonna excite the masses.
- [41:50]
B
So, yeah, now, like we've been talking about, MAHA really wants America to have the safest and healthiest supply, food supply in the world. And you know, as part of its efforts to address chronic disease and diet related health issues, and particularly among children, they really, really care about kids more than anybody else. So do you think that MAHA can accomplish its goals through its deregulatory approach and also with this greatly reduced workforce we were talking about?
- [42:20]
C
I mean, no, I don't think that. I don't think there's any vision of the MAHA agenda succeeding without some level of regulation. I mean, you can't transform school meals without regulation, without changing those rules. You can't, you know, crack down on PFAs in water or soil without some level of regulation. I mean, certainly there's like, different innovations that can come along and help with these, with these challenges. But it's, you know, you can't close the grass loophole without going through a regulatory process. So I think we'll have to see if MAHA gets somewhat of a pass sometimes on the deregulatory stance. We don't know the answer to that yet. I have also heard Kyle Diamantes, I've noticed recently he has started saying we can't regulate our way out of the diet related disease crisis that we're in. And so they're also trying to make the case, which, which I do think makes sense, that part of this is shifting culture, part of this is shifting, you know, consumer awareness and education. And like, I do think consumers are shifting right now. I think part of it's generational, part of it's like Gen Z and millennials have different habits. Part of it's the GLP1s that are scaling.
- [43:54]
B
Right? Yeah.
- [43:55]
C
More and more households. So there's a lot of things that are changing and that are putting pressure on food makers to sort of adapt. But, yeah, no, I don't think there's any way for. And I just think to be clear that like Maha moms, when they voted for these things, when they heard Trump say, let's get toxins out of the food supply, like that's what they were hearing, right, Is cracking down, right? I think that's what they were hearing. And so, you know, I just, yeah, I think that that's just. Is a, a conflict that either needs to be Reconciled. Or. Or it will not. It will not meet their expectation.
- [44:41]
B
I'm going to ask you to gaze into your crystal ball for a moment and look toward the future. So I'm wondering, how do you see the Maha movement impacting food policy and industry action and consumer sentiment toward the food industry moving forward? And, you know, do you think Maha is going to gain greater or lesser traction and influence over the remaining years of the Trump administration? Do you see it surviving beyond this administration, throwing a bunch of questions at y' all at once?
- [45:09]
C
Such a good. Such a good question or questions. So I do a food policy podcast called Forked. And recently my co host, Ted Asked, asked me to make a prediction. And his prediction was that Maha has peaked and that it's all down here, from here, from here. Like, it's just like we are. We. We hit the apex and, you know, they're going to lose nothing but lose power. And I don't know. I said, you know, I think this year, 2026, Maha faces a lot of tests. A lot of them have to do with the conflict between this desire to use the federal government to make America healthy again and the deregulatory posture that is more natural to a Republican administration. And also like many of the key players within this administration, particularly the folks like leading omb, et cetera.
- [46:08]
A
So.
- [46:11]
C
I don't know. I think there's a lot of tests for Maha on the horizon. One thing I do wonder about is that because we've had this political shift, right? The Republicans are now increasingly saying they care about these issues. Republicans say, you know, they want more regulation of pesticides. They want more regulation of processed foods. Like, they're, you know, they're kind of on board with these ideas that I think, again, like, would have been more considered more lefty. I think it's hard to see how you put that back in the bottle. Like, I think that dynamic probably lasts. I'm not sure how you undo that. And so I think the question going forward is, like, how does this. This movement. Or sort of like, not narrative, but like, all the vibes, the national vibes about this, how does that change the national conversation? Like, we actually hadn't seen a lot of these issues used in a presidential campaign until 2024. And when they did it, they saw that it worked. So looking ahead, it's like, well, maybe the Democrats and the Republicans will look at this and go, huh, maybe consumers do care about this. Maybe this is something. Maybe we talk about food additives and nutrition in schools or whatever. The issue is Maybe we talk about that. Like, we do taxes and health care and these other issues, you know, those are typical things that get discussed in a presidential election. I think other than food prices, like, food policy tends to not, like, get in there on that list. And so I think looking forward, looking out, that's the big question I have, like, may have we seen food now hit a new level where it will become normal to see food policy issues, whatever those are discussed in presidential elections? I think that's going to be really interesting to see and it probably won't be under the moniker Maha, which is obviously now a very partisan construct and term.
- [48:32]
B
So.
- [48:34]
C
But I don't know, it's such an interesting realignment that we've seen, and I don't know where it's where we're headed. I wouldn't have predicted this is where we would be now. So I try to not predict things so that I'm not terribly wrong. So.
- [48:52]
B
Yeah, no, and I think, you know, it's interesting, you know, when you mentioned earlier in the interview about that tension with, you know, what, you know, people who supported the ideas of Maha and were really sold on that, you know, are. They're, they're obviously closely watching this. Right. And so if the, if, you know, the Trump administration wants to try to accomplish these things with using as little regulatory power as possible, you know, are the hardcore Maha supporters and the Maha moms, like, you refer to them, like, are they going to call, you know, call BS on that? Like, we'll have to see. Is that going to be a tipping point at all over the next years of the administration for the Maha agenda? We'll see.
- [49:38]
C
I do think the midterms are going to be important. Maha is getting discussed a lot more in terms of the midterms, like, trying to keep those voters, the Republicans want to keep them. Right. Because they're very worried about how they're going to do in the midterm election. And so it's going to be really interesting. I do think we will be hearing more about Maha voters later this year, so.
- [50:04]
B
Yeah, yeah, I think so, too.
- [50:05]
C
Super interesting. You can follow along in Food Fix if you're not already. I'm sure a lot of your food safety expert listeners are tuning in sometimes, but yeah, it's. It's going to be a very interesting year. So.
- [50:20]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And I think Food Fix is an excellent way to stay updated on all the wacky things happening in food policy. There's never a dull moment and never a Selena. You cover them all. So we appreciate it. I always look forward to the newsletters. So thank you. Thanks for your great reporting and thanks for being on the podcast with us. It's, you know, I mean, we've, we've been talking and following you over the years, but it's nice to have, you know, your voice alongside ours here on our podcast. So thanks so much for being with us today.
- [50:48]
C
I'm so glad to do it anytime.
- [50:51]
A
Thanks again to Halina Buntmill or Evic for joining us on the podcast today. And of course, thanks to all of you for listening. Now, you know we love hearing from you, so please never hesitate. Send us your questions or suggestions to podcastood safety.com or post a note on LinkedIn X or Facebook. We're always excited to hear your feedback. And to make sure that new and bonus episodes magically appear in your podcast player, all you have to do is click that Follow or Subscribe button in the player of your choice and presto, all the episodes appear. So and while you're there, throw some stars our way by rating the podcast, especially if you enjoyed it. It only takes a moment and it's good for everyone. And that's it for us today. Our next regular episode will post on January 27th. In the meantime, take good care of yourselves and those around you. We'll talk to you then.