Food Fix broke the news: Jim Jones, FDA Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods , resigned saying that the firings of the staff he had recruited over the last year made his job impossible.

The New York Times quotes Jones. 

They’ve created a real pickle for themselves,” by cutting staff members working on a key priority, Mr. Jones said. “You just can’t do an assessment [of food additives] for free and you can’t ban chemicals by fiat.

But wait!  Maybe you can.

The FDA is an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  And that brings me to its new secretary’s astonishing opening statement on his first day on the job.

I’m totally for making chronic disease a national priority for intervention, for getting conflicts of interest out of the FDA, and for focusing on child health.  And for Making America Healthy Again (MAHA).

I am eager to see what he does.

The FDA has long been plagued by cumbersome procedures (many of which do protect the public), conflicts of interest (especially the “revolving door” between the agency and industry), and apparent capture by the industries it is supposed to regulate.

Can RFK Jr address those problems in a way that promotes the public interest?  We shall see.

In the meantime, Jim Jones is being replaced by Kyle Diamantas, a lawyer from the large firm, Jones Day.

Not much is known about Mr. Diamantas, beyond his hunting turkeys with President Trump.

Food Fix quotes Vani Hari, the Food Babe as saying Diamantas “has a lot of Big Food contacts…I think that actually serves him. It puts him in an interesting position because he understands the stakeholders at play….I think that puts him in a good position to figure this out…He gets this issue.”

The nominee to be the new FDA Commissioner,  Martin Makary, has not yet been confirmed.

So much remains uncertain.  I am following all this with great interest.

Update on the chaos

The FDA has now rehired some of the people who were fired (particularly those supported by user fees).  Presumably, Jim Jones remains out.

Thanks to Peter Johnston, a dietitian in Melbourne, Australia, for sending this one.

The study: Huppertz T, Blom L, van Est L, Peters S. Exploring Nutrient-Adequate Sustainable Diet Scenarios That Are Plant-Based but Animal-Optimized. Nutrients. 2025 Jan 18;17(2):343. doi: 10.3390/nu17020343.

Results

• Reducing the amount of meat products in the diet reduced the environmental impact but increased the price.
• On the other hand, when dairy products were reduced or even omitted, the environmental impact of the nutrient-adequate optimized diet did not change notably, but prices increased notably.
• Increasing vegetable or fruit consumption increased price but did not affect the environmental impact nor did it increase the consumption of beans and pulses when kept within realistic levels.

Conflicts of Interest: T.H. is employed by the company FrieslandCampina. L.B. and L.v.E. are employed by Nutrisoft. S.P. is employed by the Dutch Dairy Association (NZO). The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

My next forthcoming book is now available for preorder.

I say next, because this one is a bit of a surprise, even to me.  It’s a spinoff from my forthcoming (in September, I think) new and thoroughly revised edition of What to Eat, retitled What to Eat Now—the book I’ve been working on for the last three years.

Here’s what the publisher says about The Fish Counter:

A standalone extract from the newly revised edition of her groundbreaking What to Eat (which is being reissued as What to Eat Now).

Marion Nestle, America’s preeminent nutritionist and the scholar widely credited with establishing the field of modern American food studies, takes us through every aspect of how we grow, market, shop for, store, label, and eat fish in America….
Nestle pulls the curtain back on the complicated routes that fish have to go through to make it to our supermarket fish counter. What is the history of methylmercury contamination in our fish supplies? How have government agencies dealt with it in the past? How have they communicated its dangers to us, and how do they do that now? What should we consider when we think about food safety and fish? How healthy is fish, in fact?

Marion Nestle answers these and many more questions at the heart of how we consume fish. These chapters are a master class for anyone looking to eat more sustainably, mindfully, and with a full awareness of the many complicated factors at play when you’re standing at the fish counter trying to make a decision about what fish you ought to buy for your dinner.

If you scroll down on the Macmillan website for the book, you can see the five other books in the Picador Shorts series on Oceans, Rivers, and Streams.  They all have great covers.  I’m thrilled to be in their company.

Macmillan is the behemoth consolidated publisher that owns Farrar, Straus & Giroux. the publisher of What to Eat Now, which in turn owns Picador, the publisher of The Fish Counter.

The book is also listed at

• Barnes and Noble
• Drury Lane Books
• Amazon
• and can be pre-ordered from your local bookstore

I will have more to say about this book and What to Eat Now as the publication dates get closer.  Stay tuned!

As practically its last act under the Biden Administration, the FDA  Revoked Authorization for the Use of Red No. 3 in Food and Ingested Drugs.

The FDA is revoking the authorization for the use of FD&C Red No. 3 as a matter of law, based on the Delaney Clause of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act). The FDA is amending its color additive regulations to no longer allow for the use of FD&C Red No. 3 in food and ingested drugs in response to a 2022 color additive petition.

The Delaney Clause says the FDA cannot consider any substance that causes cancer in animals to be GRAS (generally recognized as safe).

Red 3 was associated with cancer in laboratory animals 30 years ago but the FDA considered the issue low priority and nobody complained until the Center for Science in the Public Interest filed its petition.  Then the FDA had to act.

For food safety advocates, this has been a long time coming.

The FDA’s action fits well with the Make America Health Again (MAHA) agenda.

Vani Hari (the Food Babe) says:

thefoodbabe (@Vani Hari) posted: It’s truly amazing what can happen when we put our differences aside & work together, it took a lot of loud American voices to get the FDA to ban red #3. Big thanks to @CSPI @ewg @SenRonJohnson @SenSanders @TTuberville @realannapaulina @CFSTrueFood @CoryBooker @RobertKennedyJr

She points out that this is only the first salvo in getting artificial food colors out of the food supply, especially breakfast cereals.

thefoodbabe (@Vani Hari) posted: .@KelloggsUS refusal to sit down with us will be biggest PR mistake in the Food Industry.

Food dyes may not be the most important food concern but they are unnecessary cosmetics and ought to be low hanging fruit for action.  Getting rid of them is long overdue.

Comment

RFK, Jr promised to get the artificial food dyes out of cereals as soon as he could be appointed HHS Secretary.  Will he do that immediately, or will this need to wait for the MAHA Commission action report in 6 months?  We shall see.

Press accounts

• The Washington Post – FDA bans controversial red dye found in candy, drinks and snacks
• cnnbrk (@CNN Breaking News) posted: FDA bans red dye No. 3 from food and ingested drugs in the US, more than 30 years after scientists discovered links to cancer in animals
• New York Times: F.D.A. Bans Red Dye 3 in Foods, Linking It to Cancer in Rats

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued: Food Safety: Status of Foodborne Illness in the U.S.

This one sounds much like GAO reports I’ve been reading since the early 1990s.

We have long reported that the fragmented nature of the federal food safety oversight system causes inconsistent oversight, ineffective coordination, and inefficient use of resources. Since 2007, we have identified federal oversight of food safety as a high-risk issue and made several recommendations and matters for congressional consideration. In 2017, we called for the Executive Office of the President to develop and implement a national strategy for overseeing food safety. As of January 2025, there were no plans to create a national strategy, according to officials from the Office of Management and Budget.

What’s impressive about this report is its comprehensiveness.  If you want to understand why food safety in the U.S. remains a problem, this is the place to start.

Among other things, it’s got great graphics, like this one.

It makes several points, none for the first time.

Oversight of food safety is a mess; it needs consolidation.

At least 30 federal laws govern the safety and quality of the U.S. food supply, both domestic and imported. Collectively, 15 federal agencies administer these laws, including CDC, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), and HHS’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The federal food safety oversight system is supplemented by states, localities, Tribes, and territories, which may have their own laws and agencies to address the safety and quality of food.

The division of oversight responsibility between USDA (meat and poultry) and FDA (everything else) makes no sense.  It needs fixing.

Foodborne pathogens can be transmitted through multiple types of food and, therefore, can affect both FDA- and FSIS-regulated foods. For example, in 2024, two Salmonella outbreaks—one attributed to cucumbers, an FDA-regulated food, and one attributed to charcuterie meats, an FSIS-regulated food—collectively caused 650 confirmed illnesses and about 180 hospitalizations.

We keep trying and wish everyone would listen to us.

We previously reported on the need for a national strategy to guide federal efforts to address ongoing fragmentation and improve the federal food safety oversight system. This strategy could address our other previous matters for congressional consideration about a government-wide performance plan and sustained leadership for federal food safety. We maintain that such a strategy could create an opportunity to further strengthen federal oversight of the nation’s food supply and reduce the economic and public health effects of foodborne illness.

Food Safety News reports that the FDA says

the biggest stumbling block to conducting inspections of food facilities is understaffing…The annual target for FDA inspections is 19,200, according to the report. The most annual inspections of foreign food facilities occurred in 2019, with 1,727 inspections, or 9 percent of the annual target… in July 2024, FDA had a total of 432 investigators — 90 percent of the full-time equivalent ceiling — for conducting both domestic and foreign inspections, according to FDA officials.

Comment

The instructions to the MAHA Commission (see yesterday’s post) say nothing about food safety beyond its being a matter requiring fresh thinking. Food safety does not appear to be a MAHA priority, especially in light of the threatened mass firings of FDA staff.  Reducing the number of FDA inspectors is unlikely to help at this point.  I hope the Commission adds safe food to its agenda.  The GAO has called for a single food safety agency for decades.  This might be just the time to take that on.  Fresh thinking indeed!

The White House has announced the formation of a President’s Commission on Making America Healthy Again

It will be chaired by newly confirmed HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and according to the The MAHA Commission Fact Sheet “is tasked with investigating and addressing the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis, with an initial focus on childhood chronic diseases.”

The Commission will include representatives of relevant agencies.  It is to:

• Produce a Make our Children Healthy Again Assessment within 100 days.
• Submit a Make our Children Healthy Again Strategy within 180 days.

Comment

Whew.  I can’t wait to see what this Commission comes up with.  But it sounds like nothing will be done, actually, for at least six months.

Oh.  Wait!  I’m having a deja vu.   Didn’t we already do this?

Isn’t this just what Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative did in 2010?

• Recall: White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity Report to the President: Solving the Problem of Childhood Obesity Within a Generation.
• Also recall: Republicans pushed back so hard on this that hardly any of it could be accomplished.
• And: President Trump opposed her initiatives as late as 2017.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am totally for doing this and hope the Commission takes its mandate seriously.

Let’s Move got pushback for trying to take on the food industry.  If RFK, Jr’s Commission can do this, it will deserve much applause.

As always, stay tuned.

A member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics forwarded this email sent to academy members.

From: PepsiCo Health & Nutrition Sciences <pepsiconutritionscience@pepsico.com>
Subject: Help combat nutrition misinformation 📢

We’re sure you’ve seen this firsthand with your patients and clients: Nutrition research has become increasingly complex for the general public to understand – and the volume of contradictory headlines and misinformation in the media doesn’t help. As a healthcare professional, you have the power to inspire trust and deepen the general public’s understanding through credible communication of balanced, high-quality, evidence-based nutrition science.

That’s why we hosted our most recent Lab & Learn webinar, Communicating Evidence-Based Nutrition Science Effectively, on the topic. Whether you attended live or viewing on demand, we wanted to share an additional resource with you on this topic to enrich your practice even further.

Didn’t get a chance to tune in to the webinar live last week?
Watch on demand here and earn 1.25 free CPEUs!
Communicating Evidence-Based Nutrition Science Effectively awards 1.25 CPEUs in accordance with the Commission on Dietetic Registration’s CPEU Prior Approval Program.

Download the handout here.

Comment

Who better than PepsiCo to counter nutrition misinformation?  The handout gives standard information about how to interpret scientific studies, and useful for that purpose.  Perhaps it is an oversight but it omits any mention of biases introduced by funding by food companies.

More important, it implies that science alone will be enough to counter misinformation.  It would be nice if erroneous beliefs about nutrition could be corrected by presenting facts, but beliefs, especially those that are deeply held, are not necessarily fact-dependent.  They often have more to do with faith in what trusted people say.

PepsiCo wants dietitians to trust PepsiCo and avoid advising clients to cut back on sugary beverages or salty snacks.

The dietitian who sent this to me was skeptical, as dietitians should be in situations like these.

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Since I’m talking about potatoes, try these!

I learned about this from a Tweet (X) from Dan Barber.

I went right to The Lever and signed on so I could read: The Rise Of Big Potato: Allegations of price collusions among the potato cartel reveal the new, sophisticated methods food corporations are using to keep prices high.

The four companies now stand accused of operating as a “cartel” and conspiring to hike prices, jacking up the cost of french fries and Tater Tots around the country. But they’re hardly alone. The case against Big Potato is a window into how consolidation has crept into every corner of the food industry — and how these firms are finding new, sophisticated methods to keep prices high.

After decades of consolidation, just four firms now control at least 97 percent of the $68 billion frozen potato market, the antitrust cases reveal. These four companies participate in the same trade associations and use a third-party data analytics platform — PotatoTrac — to share confidential business information. The lawsuits allege the firms’ collusion has driven french fries and hash browns to record-high prices.

All of this reminds me of:

• Get big or get out: the USDA’s advice to corn farmers in the 1970s
• Congressional overturning of school lunch standards restricting the number of times french fries could be served
• Health concerns about frequent consumption of french fries