Food and nutrition education is hard to come by these days.  As Laura Reiley wrote in Civil Eats,

The end of SNAP-Ed leaves underserved communities with even fewer resources.  The One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated the program in July, giving program administrators 90 days to dismantle a nationwide network of nutrition classes and outreach efforts.

You would think that educating SNAP recipients about choices and cooking methods would be good for everyone, but no such luck.

Some groups are trying to fill the gap.  Alex DeSorbo-Quinn, the Executive Director of Pilot Light Chefs, sent me a press release 

 Pilot Light today announced the release of its updated Food Education Standards, the first-ever comprehensive framework for integrating Food Education into PreK-12 classrooms. The revised standards build on five years of real-world implementation by educators across the United States and expand access to include PreK students for the first time.

…The 2025 edition of the Food Education Standards:

• Incorporate greater diversity in food system expertise, ensuring all students see themselves reflected in Food Education.
• Reflect best practices in teaching and learning based on five years of classroom implementation.
• Include competencies tailored to PreK students for greater accessibility and early childhood engagement.

Here’s an example of competency #4: Food behaviors are influenced by external and internal factors for grades 6-8 (I can’t get the resolution higher, sorry):

The standards come with suggestions for activities designed to meet them.

For anyone teaching K-12, this ought to be useful.

It also should be useful to anyone who has a K-12 kid.

If I counted right, the FDA oversaw 17 recalls of pet food and animal feed in 2025.

The causes included Salmonella, Listeria, aflatoxin, bird flu, plastics, and “presence of particulate matter”

Not yet on that list is an even more serious case involving Darwin’s raw pet food (thanks to  Phyllis Entis for writing and sending) : Darwin’s raw pet food linked to human case of E. coli O157:H7 in four-year-old child.

The contamination came to light after food-safety attorney, William Marler, initiated third-party testing of an previously unopened package of BioLogics All-Natural and Grain Free, Beef Recipe for Dogs found E. coli O157:H7 in the raw, frozen product. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) confirmed that the strain found in the pet food was a match for the strain recovered from the child.

In addition to the E. coli O157:H7-positive sample, the third-party lab recovered Salmonella Infantis and Salmonella Hadar from previously sealed packages of Darwin’s chicken dog food and duck dog food, respectively.

This example is notable for two reasons.  The company refused to recall the products (recalls are voluntary) and continued to sell contaminated food:

Darwin’s pet food tests positive for Listeria and Salmonella: The FDA has again found bacterial contamination in Darwin’s Natural Pet Products dog food and the producing company, Arrow Reliance, is again refusing to recall its products.Read more 

As I keep insisting, pet food is not a separate entity; it is part and parcel of the food supply for humans.  Contaminated pet food can and does infect pet owners and their children.   It is made from the same foods that go into the human food supply and is an early warning of problems to come (hence my book, Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine)

That is why safety and other pet food issues are well worth tracking.

SAFETY

• APHA reveals Salmonella findings in animals and pet food: Reports of Salmonella in raw meat-based pet food in the United Kingdom have declined again from the record levels seen in 2022.The Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) collected data on Salmonella from animals, feeding stuff and animal by-products (ABP) in England, Wales and Scotland.Read
• Dog food, treats linked to Salmonella outbreak in Canada: The Canadian government reports 27 confirmed cases across four provinces connected to handling various dog food products. Read more
• Dog Food Recalled Nationwide Due to Bacterial Contamination: FDA: North Carolina-based Viva Raw said the recalled dog and cat foods were contaminated with Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes.

INGREDIENTS

• Report: China dominates critical vitamin, amino acid supplies: New IFEEDER research reveals U.S. dependence on Chinese-produced feed additives essential for animal nutrition and food security. Read more
• Shark-based pet snacks rising in popularity, include regulated species: DNA barcoding of shark-based pet treats in Thailand identified eight species of shark. Biologists have classified many of those species as near threatened, while also under international trade regulations. Read more
• Good fatty acids boosted by BSFL insect protein in dog food: Nevermind humans, dogs didn’t need to be convinced of insect-based pet foods’ value. In preference testing, dogs showed no significant difference in consumption between traditional and insect-based diets. Read more
• Tesco issues urgent recall over contaminated dog food fears: The retailer has issued an urgent recall notice after a foreign body contamination was detected in Lily’s Kitchen branded dog food cans…. Read more

The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans actively promote meat and dairy intake, especially full-fat dairy.  The USDA has long acted as a marketing arm of those industries through its research and promotion (checkoff) programs.

But the current government takes this new levels.

Here are the Secretaries of HHS and USDA:

More on the milk mustache campaign here, here, here, and here.

And how about RFK Jr’s birthday celebration:

Earlier, in 2025, USDA announced its plan to “fortify the American beef industry.”

• USDA Action: USDA FNS is encouraging schools, sponsors, and institutions participating in any USDA Child Nutrition Programs (CNP) to source and serve locally grown foods, including beef, in program meals.,,,These efforts will improve access to local foods, including high-quality meat, for American students, and will improve child health and nutrition and reinvigorate American livestock producers by better connecting them with USDA’s Child Nutrition Programs.
• USDA Action: Together with HHS, ensure the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) reflect sound science and practical advice for the American family, including encouraging protein as the foundation for every meal.

Comment

I chalk all this up to the extraordinary lobbying power of the meat and dairy industries.  Fruit and vegetable growers (“specialty crops”) do not have this kind of clout.  Will eating more meat and dairy foods Make America Healthy Again?  That seems highly unlikely.  In my reading of the evidence, we—and the planet—would be healthier getting more of our calories from plant foods.I

I thought this post on X was well worth a follow up.  I went right to the site: Human Foods Program 2026 Priority Deliverables.

Its vision: “to ensure that food serves as a vehicle for wellness.”

Its mission: “to protect and promote the health and wellness of the American public through science-based approaches to prevent foodborne illness, reduce diet-related chronic disease, and ensure chemicals in food are safe.”

Its 2026 Priority Deliverables: these are listed in three categories: food chemical safety, nutrition, and microbiological food safety.

I.  Food Chemical Safety (my selection and summary)

• Reform GRAS; regulate
• Review safety of food chemcials
• Conduct research on microplastics
• Establish action levels for cadmium and inorganic arsenic in baby foods
• Research consumer exposure to PFAS and other chemicals
• Regulate new dietary ingredients
• Modernize oversight of supplements
• Collect opinions on allergens; develop regulations

II.  Reducing chronic disease through better nutrition

• Research ultra-processed foods; develop definition
• Research infant formula nutrient requirements
• Recruit experts to develop a UPF policy agenda
• Work toward issuing a front-of-package label to encourage healthier consumer choice and reformulation
• Implement the “healthy” front-of-package label
• Develop strategy to reduce added sugars
• Evaluate phase I targets for sodium reduction
• Issue guidance on food labeling for online shopping

III.  Microbiological food safety

• Get states to take action
• Increase oversight of imported food
• Increase oversight of imported shrimp
• Train growers to prevent produce contamination
• Improve recall communication

Comment

I haven’t listed everything but this should give you the idea.  Lots of this involves “research,” “develop,” and “evaluate.”  Hardly any involves real regulation (except for chemical food additives).  Still, this is, or could be, an impressive list.

The most pressing area is microbial food safety, because we are still seeing so many people made ill by contaminated food, especially infant formula.

The big question: Where is the FDA going to get the resources needed to carry out this agenda?  The FDA, already working for decades on an increasingly bare-bones budget for all it is required to do, eliminated a fifth of its workforce last year.

And this administration prefers personal responsibility as the primary approach to dietary health.

It would be great if the FDA could do all this in 2026.  We are already in February.  It has best get busy.

The study: Effects of replacing solid fats and added sugars with avocado in adults with elevated cardiometabolic risk: a randomized, double-blind, controlled feeding, crossover trial.  American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Volume 123, Issue 2101137 February 2026.

Objective: to assess the effects of replacing energy from solid fats and added sugars with equivalent energy from 1 avocado daily on cardiometabolic risk factors.

Methods: Study subjects were given a diet with or without an avocado a day to replace energy from saturated fatty acids and added sugars.

Results: While on the avocado diet, subjects improved their lipoprotein profiles.

Conclusions: Replacing solid fats and added sugars with avocado in a typical American diet improves the lipoprotein lipid profile in adults with
elevated triglycerides.

Funding: “The Avocado Nutrition Center of the Hass Avocado Board funded this research. The sponsor was allowed to comment on the study design as part of the application process. The sponsor had no role or involvement in the collection, analysis, or interpretation of the data; in the writing of the manuscript; or regarding the submission of the manuscript for publication, regardless of the results of the study.”

Conflict of interest:  The list of disclosed conflicts is much too long to bother to reproduce.  At least 3 of the 12 authors specifically disclose financial support from  from the Hass Avocado Board.

Comment: The disclosure statement is unusally forthcoming.  The funder had input into the study design, the part of the research process where industry influence is most likely to show up.  Funders are most likely to fund research that has the best chance of giving them the answers they want.  This was a cooperative effort to demonstrate the benefits of eating avocados.

I like avocados and appreciate that their fats are largely monounsaturated and benign or good for health.  But the purpose of this research is not about science; it is about avocado industry-sponsored research to market avocados.

I have no doubt the Hass Board would respond to this by saying, “if we don’t fund this kind of research, who will?”

That’s my point.

Bee Wilson.  The Heart-Shaped Tin: Love, Loss, and Kitchen Objects.  Norton, 2025. 312 pages.

I loved this book.  It was an unexpected pleasure from start to finish, and it completely changed the way I view the objects in my kitchen.

Bee Wilson uses commonplace kitchen tools to tell stories about love and loss.  She used the titular tin to bake her wedding cake.  The book is about her grief about and recovery from the not-her-choice ending of that marriage.

The chapters use kitchen gadgets to tell her stories and those of others, in sections titled Mementos, Junk, Tools, Gifts, and other such headings.  The chapters come with pictures of the objects that frame the stories.

A few excerpts.

From The Best China:

So many of us spend our whole lives denying ourselves the best things because the time is not right or we feel we haven’t earned them yet, or we feat that someone–probably our parents–will disapprove if we drop them.  This attitude to objects sometimes goes along with a wider impulse of self-denial.  This may be the legacy of hunger and rationing, or a religious childhoold…or simply of the social attitudes of earlier generations in which visitors were treated like royalty whereas closae family members were unworthy of the ‘good china’ except in company…If you don’t use the best china now, you may never use it.  p. 15

From The Paper Cup:

Like any utensil, a paper cup can change its significance.  It can go from lovable to unlovable in a second.  And it needs to.  p. 99

From The Mushroom Cannister:

When the Merry Mushroom kitchen sets were first launched, the bosses at Sears had no idea how popular this would be.  The design was dreamed up by Jack Buchanan, the firm’s housewares buyer.  His boss told him to devise a new ceramic pattern to ring the changes from the usual fruit and flowers.  According to Buchanan himself in a talk he gave to a local library when he was in his nineties, he went into his backyard, where he suddenly pictured a mushroom talking to him.  p. 202

From A Red Washing-Up Bowl:

A friend came round with a bunch of tulips.  She knew that when I was married we could never have flowers in the house becausae they gave him instant hay fever.  Her bouquet inspired me to start planting roses in the garden…Thanks to the red washing-up bowl, I could recycle some of the dishwater by giving it to the roses.  The next time I met my ex, to discuss the children over a tense cup of coffee, I told him about my new interest in gardening.  ‘You have given me the gift of flowers,’ I said, and I wasn’t being sarcastic.  p. 246

There is much history, sociology, humor, and resilience here.  I really enjoyed reading it.

Here’s my most recent collection of items about plant- and cell-based meats, in an effort to try to figure out what is happening with the market for these products.  Prospects are not as bright as they were at the height of this trend, but these product have considerable staying power.  Time will tell.

Trends

• Plant-based meat in 2026:  What’s next for the plant-based trend?… Read more
• Is plant-based dead – or evolving?  Plant-based brands are looking for new ways to lure in consumers after the category’s initial success… Read more

Successes

• Record 960% rise in alt protein patents signals industry rebound:  Major food and beverage manufacturers, including Nestlé and Unilever, are busily securing alt protein patents as sector grows… Read more  
• Why meat alternatives are landing with young people: Younger consumers are often more open to new technologies and less sceptical about ultra-processed foods… Read more  
• First-ever mycoprotein goes through novel food system successfully:  The Protein Brewery is celebrating a positive scientific opinion from Europe’s food safety agency. So when will its new mycoprotein ingredient hit the market?… Read more

Difficulties

• Nina Teicholz in the Wall Street Journal:  Meat Will Make America Healthy Again: Federal guidelines favor inferior plant-based protein.
• Is meat too cheap for plant-based to succeed?  The cost of meat production is not necessarily reflected in the end price…. Read more  
• Believer Meats ceases operations, but ‘setback’ does not mean cultivated meat sector is doomed, insist key players: “With an unlimited budget, you can rush to hit certain milestones—like building a full-scale production facility—but you risk putting the cart before the horse,” says one expert.

Regulation

• Cultivated meat guidance released in UK: 4 key takeaways: The UK has released its first guidelines on cultivated meat novel food applications… Read more

I’m not sure why we’ve seen so many problems with contaminated infant formula lately, but this must stop—and be stopped.  Infants who are not breast fed are dependent on formula.  Families buying formula for their infants assume it is safe.  If it’s not, it’s a disaster.

The ByHeart formula disaster

This one is about botulism in ByHeart formula.

Oregon baby is still battling infant botulism after ByHeart formula exposure: A Portland, Oregon, baby got sick with infant botulism after drinking contaminated ByHeart formula donated through a program that helps poor and homeless families.  What happens to these babies is devastating.

Ashaan Carter, now 10 months old, was hospitalized twice and remains on a feeding tube after contracting the dangerous infection that has sickened more than 50 babies across the U.S.…Ashaan was hospitalized for nearly two weeks in November and discharged without a feeding tube. His health rapidly declined, including dramatic weight loss, and he was hospitalized again in December…[he] had to have the feeding tube down his throat replaced because his muscles remain weak…He is having to relearn how to crawl and to talk…Since June 2022, nearly 24,000 cans of formula have been distributed to groups that aid homeless and other vulnerable families, the company said.

Food safety lawyer Bill Marler is representing families with children injured by the families.  Here’s what he and Food Safety News have to say about all this:

• The ByHeart Botulism Outbreak is a Moral Disaster
• ByHeart, Safeway, FDA and ADHS – Botulism in a can still on a store shelf?
• I have Questions: Where else did the supplier of whole milk powder implicated by the FDA in the ByHeart Botulism Outbreak send its product? Is that supplier linked to other infant botulism cases?
• FDA – ByHeart is Source of Botulism Outbreak – Tainted Ingredient Likely 
• Unnamed Suppler to ByHeart of Dried Whole Milk tests positive for Botulism
• Question? FDA and CDC has been silent on ByHeart Botulism Outbreak since December 17, 2025 – What’s up?  
• Feds find raw ingredient supplier behind infant formula outbreak: Neither the CDC nor the FDA will name the company.

The Nestlé infant formula disaster

The company, to which I am not related, recalled infant formula products from nearly 60 countries, because cereulide, a toxin that causes nausea and vomiting, was found in an ingredient—ARA oil—used in making it.

ARA stands for arachidonic acid, a long-chain essential omega-6 fatty acid found in breast milk.Like many other nutrient ingredients, it was made in China.  That company is now testing its products.

Here’s what’s happening:

• Nestlé infant formula scandal deepens as sickness cases emerge: British infant hospitalised after consuming recalled Nestlé formula – key questions about the contamination risk remain unanswered… Read more
• Nestlé CEO issues apology following infant formula scandal: Nestlé’s global infant formula recall sparks safety concerns and transparency backlash – can the food giant restore trust?… Read more
• Danone and Lactalis embroiled in global infant formula crisis: Two dairy majors have pulled infant formula products as cereulide fears spread beyond Nestlé… Read more
• Nestlé and Lactalis face lawsuit over infant formula scandal: The CPG majors are facing litigation for their handling of infant formula recalls over possible toxin contamination.
• Nestlé’s infant formula recall: What’s next for the industry?  We look at the supply, safety and quality control implications for infant formula manufacturers and ingredient suppliers… Read more
• First Nestlé, now Danone: The infant formula contamination is spreading:  The detection of cereulide in a batch of Aptamil infant formula pushes Danone deeper into the crisis… Read more

The heavy metals crisis

RFK Jr. says heavy metals in baby formula study coming in April

Kennedy, speaking at a health-themed rally in Harrisburg, Pa., said the studies set to publish in April will focus on the presence of contaminants including cadmium, mercury, and lead in baby formula.  “We’re going to be regulating baby formula companies so they’re giving you something that is as close to mother’s milk as we can get,” Kennedy said.

Officials at HHS and FDA launched “Operation Stork Speed” in March 2025 to improve the safety and supply of infant formula. A Bloomberg Law investigation published in January 2023 found that all but one of 33 baby food products tested by a laboratory contained at least two of three heavy metals: lead, arsenic, and cadmium…As part of the baby formula review, FDA is updating which nutrients manufacturers are required to include in their products. Kennedy said that’s because some of the existing 30 required nutrients were based on “archaic science.”

Comment

What’s going on here?  Why are infant formula supply chains so sloppy?  Isn’t anyone minding the store?

I can’t believe this situation.  What a dilemma it causes for parents who for whatever reason are not breast-feeding their infants.

Maybe it’s time to go back to the do-it-yourself days using evaporated milk, as was done before commercial infant formula was invented? [**But see NOTE below].

* 13 oz. can of evaporated whole milk (reduced fat, skim, and sweetened condensed milk will not provide enough calories or nutrition)

* 18–19 oz. of water

* 2 tablespoons of white granulated sugar or 1 tablespoon of light corn syrup