Food Politics

by Marion Nestle
Mar 5 2026

Keeping up with chocolate; the crisis and what to do about it

The chocolate industry, it appears, is in crisis.  Here’s my collection of recent items on the topic.  

Trends

Challenges

Addressing the crisis

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Mar 4 2026

How to explain glyphosate hypocrisy? Bayer’s lobbying and revolving door

Here’s one place where the MAHA and Food Justice movements agree: on glyphosate.  Here is a post from thefoodbabe (@Vani Hari):

LOBBYING

This refers to U.S. Right to Know’s Bayer lobby tracker.

Federal disclosures show Bayer reported spending $9.19 million on lobbying Congress and the executive branch in 2025, which includes fees paid to at least 13 outside lobbying firms. As of the fourth quarter of 2025, 45 lobbyists were registered to lobby for Bayer under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

The tracker comes from Stacy Malkan’s reporting: Tracing Bayer’s ties to power in Trump’s Washington; From lobby firms to top officials, a look at how Bayer built access and secured favors

The White House invokes the Defense Production Act to guarantee supplies of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides. Regulators reapprove dicamba, a Bayer herbicide twice blocked by federal courts, and clear the way for new pesticides containing toxic, persistent PFAS “forever” chemicals.

And the U.S. Justice Department urges the U.S. Supreme Court to erase billions of dollars of Bayer’s liability for its glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer – placing the weight of the executive branch on the side of a foreign company against thousands of Americans who say Bayer’s products caused their cancers.

Over the past year, the administration under President Donald J. Trump has delivered a string of victories to Bayer, the German agrichemical and pharmaceutical giant that merged with Monsanto in 2018 to become the world’s leading manufacturer of genetically modified seeds and pesticides.

REVOLVING DOOR

The term refers to government regulators taking jobs with corporations and vice versa.  US Right to Know reports:

The Trump administration yesterday handed Bayer another win, urging the Supreme Court in a new brief to side with the German pesticide company in a high-stakes legal case that could wipe out thousands of cancer lawsuits and potentially billions of dollars in liability tied to glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer.

Three out of nine U.S. officials who signed the brief previously worked for law firms that have represented Bayer, raising questions about whether the Trump administration is providing special favors and benefits to Bayer and siding with a foreign corporation against Americans with cancer.

COMMENT

It’s pretty amazing what Bayer gets away with.  Despite Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s insistence that glyphosate is carcinogenic and needs to get out of the food supply, he has now backtracked on that.  In his backtracking statement, he says:

Unfortunately, our agricultural system depends heavily on these chemicals. The U.S. represents 4% of the world’s population, yet we use roughly 25% of its pesticides. If these inputs disappeared overnight, crop yields would fall, food prices would surge, and America would experience a massive loss of farms even beyond what we are witnessing today. The consequences would be disastrous.

This sounds like he’s looking out for farmers.  But glyphosate is used in industrial agriculture, not small- and medium-sized family farms, and certainly not in organic and regenerative farms.  As an herbicide, it’s used on feed for animals and fuel for automobiles.  It’s also used for drying wheat and oats.  It should not be used for food for people at all.

Why is this still allowed?  The Bayer Lobby Tracker makes that clear.

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Mar 3 2026

More MAHA hypocrisy in action: Dicamba, Mercury, and PFAS

One of the major items on HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s agenda has been to get toxic chemicals out of the food supply.

He’s not doing a good job on that.

Last week, I discussed his hypocritical backtracking on glyphosate.

Here, I mention three more:

DICAMBA

The Environmental Protection Agency has announced its reapproval of the pesticide dicamba as a spray on genetically engineered cotton and soybeans—despite how it drifts onto everyone else’s crops, whether growers want it or not.

Federal court decisions in 2020 and again in 2024 said such approvals were unlawful.

As the Center for Food Safety puts it,

Since its first approval in 2016, dicamba drift has damaged millions of acres of farmland and caused devastating damage to orchards, vegetable farms, home gardens, native plants, trees, and wildlife refuges across the country. Experts have found dicamba drift damage to be the worst of any herbicide in the history of U.S. agriculture. Yet the current approval provides even fewer protections from dicamba drift and damage than past approvals.

The first lawsuits have already been filed.

MERCURY

RFK Jr particularly wanted mercury out of fish.

Mercury gets into fish from two sources: volcanos and coal-burning power plants.  We can’t stop volcanos, but we sure could insist that coal-burning power plans clean up their emissions.

No such luck.

The New York Times writes: E.P.A. Plans to Loosen Mercury Rules for Coal Plants, Documents Show

In particular, the administration is taking steps to improve the economics of coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, by rolling back several regulations that would have made it much more expensive, if not impossible, for many coal plants to keep operating. Over the past nine months, the Energy Department has taken the extraordinary step of ordering eight coal-burning units that had been headed for retirement to stay open and keep running….the E.P.A. is arguing that it would reduce “unwarranted costs” for utilities that own and operate coal plants across the country.

The administration is, however, banning mercury from dental fillings (where it s use is declining rapidly and currently accounts for less than 6% of fillings).

PFAS

A report from the National Academies of Sciences says the USDA has plenty of opportunities do so something about PFAS on farmland.

As the New Lede explains, 

On Feb. 13…the House Agriculture Committee released its draft 2026 Farm Bill, which includes language that would permit research grants on the agricultural impacts of PFAS in land exposed to firefighting foams, sewage sludge or compost containing the chemicals…But US Rep. Chellie Pingree from Maine said the draft bill reflected a “willful neglect of the PFAS crisis.”

“The bill acknowledges PFAS contamination on farmland — but then stops at research,” said Pingree. “While further research is a critical component to addressing PFAS contamination on farmland, we also need to support farmers who have already lost their livelihoods, their markets, and their land.”

COMMENT

To state the obvious, what all this tells us is that when public (or even personal) health comes up against corporate health, corporate profits win.

Make America Healthy Again?  American corporations, yes,  American citizens?  Not so much.

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Mar 2 2026

The supplement industry: questions of safety, adulteration, corruption

Since passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, supplement products became basically unregulated.  The FDA is no longer allowed to monitor these products and only gets involved in situations of egregious harm.  Otherwise, you have no way of knowing if their labels have anything at all to do with what is in those bottles.

Here are recent items on safety and adulteration issues with supplements (particularly turmeric), and the Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman’s comments on corruption in the supplement industry.

SAFETY

  • New outbreak traced to moringa capsules under investigation: Investigators from the Food and Drug Administration are looking into a new outbreak of Salmonella Newport infections traced to moringa powder capsules. The implicated capsules are sold under the Rosabella brand…there is great concern that consumers may have the moringa capsules in their homes because of their long shelf life, which stretches into late 2027. This outbreak is separate from an outbreak of Salmonella Richmond infections traced to Member’s Mark and other brands of moringa.
  • South Korea re-evaluating turmeric, green coffee bean due to adverse reports: South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) is re-evaluating the safety and functionality of turmeric extract and eight other functional ingredients.
  • Health Canada calls for warnings on turmeric/curcumin supplement labels: Health Canada has mandated warning labels on turmeric and curcumin natural health products (NHPs) to indicate the risk of hepatotoxicity, following a review that found potential liver health risks, although rare.

ADULTERATION

 

CORRUPTION

Paul Krugman on dietary supplements: How the Kakistocracy Became a Quackistocracy

It may seem strange to think of the wellness industry as a corrupt and corrupting force comparable to the fossil-fuel sector. But wellness is big business. McKinsey estimates that U.S. spending on wellness is running at around $500 billion a year, while spending on nutritional supplements alone was close to $70 billion last year.

And sellers of nutritional supplements, unlike companies selling pharmaceuticals, are effectively allowed to make false, outlandish claims about what their products do…It’s OK to peddle snake oil with false medical claims as long as you mumble some content-free boilerplate.

And where do the snake-oil salesmen peddle their wares? Largely on right-wing media. After all, that’s where they can find customers who have the right mix of anti-intellectualism and disdain for experts. And the snake-oil purveyors are, in turn, a key part of the extreme right’s financial ecosystem.

I wrote about this almost five years ago. The relationship between quack medicine and right-wing extremism has a long history…But now we have entered a new era. As many observers have noted, the Trump administration is a kakistocracy: rule by the worst. A history of personal corruption is no longer a bar to high office — it’s practically a requirement.

 

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Feb 27 2026

Weekend reading: My latest publication: Dietary guidelines: Brazil vs. U.S.

I was invited by Brazilian colleagues to collaborate on a brief paper comparing the new US guidelines to those in Brazil.

Neves FS, Nilson EAF, Mendes LL, Khandpur N, Nestle M.  The 2025-2030 US Dietary Guidelines: A retreat from scientific integrity and global health governance.  Lancet Regional Health—Americas.  2026; 56:101402

The United States (US) has recently released the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025–2030. While the policy introduces sound recommendations for vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, and limits added sugars and ultra-processed foods (UPFs) (termed “highly processed foods” within the text), it fails to reflect the contemporary scientific consensus by prioritising animal proteins, animal fats, and full-fat dairy products. Additionally, this political position follows a supplementary institutional report that dismisses previous efforts to include health equity and social determinants in the empirical evidence base, labelling such integration a “methodological deficiency”. Consequently, these guidelines depart from the international standards required for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) prevention., Given US normative influence, this regression legitimises corporate interests, threatening transnational health governance and food and nutrition security.
          The inherent contradiction within the 2025–2030 guidelines is profound. By promoting animal-source proteins and full-fat dairy, the document proposes a dietary pattern fundamentally inconsistent with its own goal of limiting saturated fat intake below 10% of total calories. This internal incoherence reflects decision-making that continues to prioritise the economic interests of specific industrial sectors over NCDs prevention. The paradoxical nature of the guidelines is evidenced by the reliance on an anachronistic visual communication tool. While the inclusion of processing-based terminology is a progressive step, the reintroduction of a hierarchical food pyramid model represents a semiotic retreat into a reductionist era of public health. This abstraction fails to capture the complexity of modern food systems or the distinction between food types and the extent of industrial processing. While the international community moves towards representations emphasising fresh foods and the social context of eating, the US return to a pyramid isolates nutrients from the food matrix.
           In sharp contrast, the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population remains the gold standard for food and nutrition frameworks. Published in 2014, the Brazilian approach introduced an epistemological shift away from the dominant reductionist paradigm by moving dietary advice towards the degree and purpose of industrial food processing. This strategy, facilitated by the Nova classification system, acknowledges that industrial alterations to food matrices have wide-reaching implications for biological integrity, metabolic health, social structures, and environmental sustainability.
            As Table 1 illustrates, the contrast between the US and the Brazilian standards is defined by their diverging methodological and conceptual foundations. By prioritising an adequate and healthy diet centred on fresh and minimally processed foods, Brazil provides a robust template for addressing the interactions between human biology, cultural identity, and planetary health, achieving maximum scores across metrics of public health and sustainability.,,
Feature Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian population
Guiding paradigm Focus on nutrient density and individual responsibility; health is framed as a matter of personal choice and moral deficit. Multidimensional approach integrating biological, social, and environmental health; focus on food systems and collective well-being.
Scientific integrity Supplementary report authored by experts with documented conflicts of interest with the beef, dairy, and food industries. Independent process led by academic researchers, strictly free from commercial influence and industry sponsorship.
Classification system Traditional food groups with an absence of technical criteria for industrial processing; focus remains on isolated nutrients. Nova classification categorising foods by the degree and purpose of industrial processing (fresh and minimally processed foods, culinary ingredients, processed foods, and UPFs).
Visual communication Reintroduction of an anachronistic hierarchical food pyramid model, representing a semiotic retreat into reductionism. Rejection of the pyramid in favour of food-based representations that emphasise meals and the social context of eating.
Core recommendations Prioritisation of animal proteins and full-fat dairy; selective recommendations against processed products. Dietary foundation of fresh, plant-based foods and the categorical avoidance of UPFs.
Saturated fat management Mathematical paradox between a 10% intake limit and the promotion of animal fats; absence of guidance on unsaturated fat substitution. Achieved through patterns based on fresh foods; explicit emphasis on replacing animal fats and UPFs with plant-based oils and whole foods.
Environmental sustainability Omission of the climate crisis and planetary boundaries from the policy framework; silence on the environmental impact of livestock. Sustainability as a core principle; promotion of biodiverse, just, and resilient food systems that respect planetary limits.
Equity and determinants Rejection of the “health equity lens”; social and environmental determinants dismissed as a “methodological deficiency”. Structural pillars: integration of social justice, social determinants of health, and the promotion of food sovereignty.
Global influence and sovereignty Functions as a permissive framework that dilutes the narrative on food sovereignty and serves as a scientific alibi for industrial actors. A paradigm of regulatory sovereignty; provides the conceptual framework for pioneering policies like warning labels and fiscal measures.

Table 1

Conceptual and methodological comparison between the 2025–2030 US Dietary Guidelines and the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population.
UPFs = ultra-processed foods.
           The conceptual divergence between these frameworks reflects a broader tension between public health principles and the narrative of personal responsibility. By rejecting social and environmental determinants, the 2025–2030 US guidelines shift the entire burden of health onto individual choice, ignoring the structural barriers defining the food environment., The reintroduction of individual responsibility as the central axis of food policy is an ideological framework that converts systemic failures into individual moral deficits, thereby legitimising state regulatory inaction., In an era where NCDs prevention requires robust environmental and policy interventions, the US return to a personal responsibility framework represents a dangerous abdication of the state-led public health mandate.
            The erosion of scientific integrity within the US policy framework is a manifestation of the commercial determinants of health. The formulation of these guidelines suggests a clear case of corporate capture. While official political discourse promises to “Make America Healthy Again” by addressing corporate influence, the supplementary scientific report was authored by experts with documented conflicts of interest with the beef, dairy, and food industries., These commercial interests have effectively undermined the promotion of an adequate and healthy diet. Reversing this trend requires decisive state-led interventions beyond individual choice, necessitating robust policies to restrict UPF production and structural reforms to address the corporate actors dominating global supply.,
            The failure of the 2025–2030 US guidelines to address the environmental dimensions of diet is negligent in an era of ecological instability. While the international community aligns with the EAT-Lancet 2.0 consensus, which emphasises that food systems must operate within planetary boundaries, the US guidelines remain silent on the climate crisis. Transitioning towards plant-forward diets is a foundational requirement for mitigating the environmental degradation caused by intensive livestock systems. The omission of these factors ignores the reality of the Global Syndemic, in which obesity, undernutrition, and climate change are interconnected pandemics driven by the same food system failures. By failing to address environmental impacts, the US promotes a model of consumption linked to planetary health degradation, further endangering global food and nutrition security.
             The axis of scientific integrity has shifted to the Global South, where Latin American nations—including Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay—uphold food systems that are socially just and environmentally sustainable. These countries have pioneered transformative interventions, such as Brazil’s focus on food processing, Chile’s warning labels, and UPF taxation in Mexico and Colombia. The political and economic power of the US increases the likelihood that its guidelines will be leveraged by transnational corporations to dismantle these regulations. In international bodies like the Codex Alimentarius, the US framework provides a scientific alibi for industrial actors to dispute sovereign policies, framing evidence-based regulations as barriers to trade. This reflects documented precedents, such as the use of US policy to circumvent international protections for breastfeeding, illustrating how domestic guidelines can function as instruments to impede global health progress.
           Ultimately, the 2025–2030 US Dietary Guidelines do not represent a legitimate departure from scientific progress, but a case of corporate capture with direct implications for national and global morbidity. The World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the global public health community must act decisively to protect the integrity of dietary guidelines against the corporate concessions represented in the US guidelines, which dismiss established evidence on the health impacts of food processing and social determinants. Transnational health governance must be insulated from the influence of corporations that seek to undermine public health for private gain., Resisting the global influence of this flawed framework is essential to ensure that future generations have access to an adequate and healthy diet that respects both cultural heritage and planetary limits.
           The leadership vacuum created by the US concessions offers a pivotal opportunity for the Global South to redefine public health governance. Latin American nations, supported by regional networks such as the Latin American Inter-institutional Network for Technical Cooperation on Food Environments and the Prevention of NCDs, are already demonstrating the efficacy of science-based, conflict-of-interest-free leadership. Safeguarding global health now requires fostering cross-regional collaborations, securing independent funding, and consolidating Brazil and the region as the pioneers of food system transformation. The era of corporate concessions has ended; the era of evidence-based leadership has begun.

Contributors

FSN conceptualised the study. FSN, EAFN, LLM, NK, and MN performed the formal analysis. FSN drafted the original manuscript. EAFN, LLM, NK, and MN provided critical revisions and edited the manuscript. All authors had full access to all the data in the study and had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication.

Declaration of interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Acknowledgements

None.
Funding: This manuscript did not receive any specific funding.

References

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Feb 26 2026

Op-ed: Can the Food Justice Movement and MAHA Find Common Ground?

Nick Freudenberg and I wrote this op-ed for Civil Eats to start a discussion of what we think is a topic that needs it.

Can the Food Justice Movement and MAHA Find Common Ground? A cross-cutting food justice movement could improve our diets, food systems, and health.

By Marion Nestle and Nicholas Freudenberg

February 23, 2026

During the past year, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement attracted positive public and media attention and provoked widespread discussion of the importance of diet to health. As academics who have written about and participated in food-and-diet advocacy for several decades, we have rarely witnessed such spirited public debate about the connections between the well-being of the American population and the system that produces the food we eat.

The food justice movement, which  emerged from the social movements of the 1960s, has long focused on reforming the food system and improving diets. Organizations  such as HEAL Food Alliance, Community Food Advocates, Food Chain Workers Alliance, and the National Black Food and Justice Alliance have fought for broad goals such as building more collective power to improve food policies and systems, changing food and farming practices to reduce pollution and carbon emissions, and making healthier food choices available to people of color. Together with local campaigns, these national organizations have also worked to win more specific changes such as making school lunches healthier and free for all children and increasing job benefits for low-wage food workers.

While the food justice and MAHA movements hold many of the same goals, they differ deeply in other ways. We believe food-justice advocates could benefit from a clearer understanding of where their objectives and approaches overlap but also diverge from those of MAHA, as well as a more defined strategy for how to interact with the movement and decide which MAHA messages to amplify and which to subject to public debate.

“Successful movements build power by winning over new constituencies in working toward common goals; the potential for forging a shared action plan is worth pursuing.”

What do food justice advocates and MAHA supporters have in common? Both believe that the current U.S. food system and the diets it produces contribute to poor health, especially as compared to other countries. Both believe that the profit-seeking and market practices of food and beverage producers, fast food chains, and food marketers actively promote chronic disease, obesity, premature death, and preventable illness.

Both agree that food companies must change their marketing practices, especially to children, and limit chemicals, dyes, and additives in food products. Both also agree that improvements in the rules for school food and federal food assistance programs can lead to improvements in diets and health.

How do the movements differ? Whereas food-justice activists stress the need for collective and public action and make reducing inequities in healthy food access a top priority, MAHA followers emphasize the importance of individual and parental responsibility for diet and health, even for the disadvantaged. While the social justice side views profit-driven markets as a key cause of the nation’s food and health problems, most MAHA leaders (if not its rank-and-filers) endorse market-based solutions to food and health problems.

The two movements also disagree on what constitutes evidence for changing policy. MAHA distrusts established science and often rejects the scientific process that most independent researchers and food justice advocates believe constitutes the basis for policy. By relying on “mom influencers” rather than scientists, MAHA adherents show their belief in the power of narratives of personal experience. And by using  evidence gathered by non-mainstream investigators, they tap into public distrust of established science.

Fifteen years ago, the food writer Michael Pollan wrote that food movements of the day were a “big lumpy tent”  in which the various factions beneath it sometimes worked at cross-purposes. We recognize that this remains true for the food justice movement. It is also true for the MAHA movement.

Today’s MAHA movement includes activist parents fighting to improve school food and get rid of pesticides, wellness industry influencers and entrepreneurs like Calley and Casey Means, anti-vaxxers, and, of course, President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Its contributors include major corporations and right-wing leaders.

In 2024, the  largest contributor to the group’s super-PAC, the MAHA Alliance,  was Elon Musk and his SpaceX, together contributing $6 million—and this year the MAHA Center, headed by Tony Lyons, a major financial supporter of RFK Jr.’s presidential campaign, funded the controversial  Mike Tyson “Eat Real Food” Super Bowl ad for a reported $8 million. Whether the private interests of wellness entrepreneurs like the Means, and billionaires like Musk, will take precedence over the MAHA mom influencers remains to be seen.

This heterogeneity poses both an opportunity and a challenge to those seeking alliances, raising the question: Is it possible to build on commonalities given the deep differences and this era’s sectarianism and polarization? We believe the food justice movement should pursue this chance for new partnerships, despite the risks in this path. Successful movements build power by winning over new constituencies in working toward common goals; the potential for forging a shared action plan is worth pursuing. To do so, we suggest six actions for food-justice advocates.

  1. Talk to MAHA activists.The groups should create forums and spaces where they can discuss commonalities and differences openly without insulting or disrespecting those who differ. Open discussion is a prerequisite for exploring the possibility of shared goals.
  2. Argue with respect.We acknowledge the risks of attempting to work with and win over MAHA supporters. In some cases, we will have to agree to disagree. In others, we will forcefully debate in public settings. In all situations, we must not lose sight of common goals or conflicting values.  By listening carefully to MAHA arguments, food justice proponents can better understand its supporters’ worldviews and engage them in finding opportunities for joint action.
  3. Develop a common agenda of legal and regulatory reforms. The two movements’ shared distrust of corporations—and the legal and political systems in which Big Business exerts undue influence—present important opportunities for winning public support. Can the two groups establish clear goals for legal and regulatory reforms in food, agriculture, pesticides, and other industries? These could include strategies to reduce theconflicts of interestthat enable corporations to profit from public harm and promote new evidence-based and public-serving transparency rules for businesses, universities, and government. One example—agreeing that government has the right to set policies to keep toxic substances out of our food supply and the duty to enforce these policies—would be a big step forward.
  4. Provide a clear rationale for a focus on food equity. A food system that offers healthy food to the well-off but not others can never make America healthier. To enlist MAHA followers in making the entire food system more equitable will require winning their support for reducing current socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, and gender inequities in access to healthy food and other basic human needs. It will require proposing they consider the “sum of us” argumentthat, for example, stronger food regulations and healthier supermarket food benefits all of us, not just the most disadvantaged.
  5. Encourage MAHA followers to question the moral commitments and policies of MAGA and its leaders. The cruelty, corruption, disregard for science, and disdain for democracy that characterize MAGA leaders (but not necessarily MAHA followers) dismay Americans of varied political beliefs.

Last week, President Trump issued an executive order promoting production of glyphosate (Roundup), the widely used herbicide, claiming the weedkiller was needed to protect national economic and food security. Signaling the fragility of the MAHA/MAGA alliance, Vani Hari, an influential MAHA grassroots leader, told The Guardian, “This executive order reads like it was drafted in a chemical company boardroom. Calling it ‘national defense’ while expanding protections for toxic products is a dangerous misdirection. Real national security is protecting American families, farmers, and children.”

MAHA followers could also examine the conflicts of interests of their own wellness-industry aligned leaders. A MAHA/MAGA alliance is not inevitable. By finding specific and appealing ways to win over MAHA followers who genuinely want a healthier nation and food system, the food justice movement may help to build the political power needed for transformative changes.

  1. Study successful MAHA initiatives. MAHA’s use of personal stories and narratives, its capture of public attention, its acceptance of internal differences in opinion, and its successes in rural communities are accomplishments worth emulating. MAHA has been strikingly effective in bringing public attention to our nation’s food system and food policies. Finding ways to capture the bully pulpit of public attention without ceding to the pulpits of bullies could provide lessons for other current political struggles. The food justice movement can extract relevant lessons from these experiences.

In our view, the prospect of a cross-cutting food justice movement that brings in new supporters and builds political power to win new measures to improve diets, food systems, and health is a risk worth exploring. At best, the food justice movement might open new doors for alliances between MAHA followers and activists in movements for environmental justice, women’s health, or universal health care.

Given the different worldviews of MAHA and food justice advocates, we are under no illusion that this process will inevitably or easily lead to meaningful changes in diet, food policy, or health. But we do believe that silence due to fear of criticism or conflict wins nothing. With eyes wide open, we invite others to join in the exploration of new principled alliances.

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Feb 25 2026

R.I.P. Ray Goldberg, “the father of agribusiness”

Ray Goldberg died last week at the age of 99.  He was still going pretty strong the last time I saw him last fall at the annual meeting of PAPSAC (Private and Public Scientific, Academic and Consumer Food Policy Group) at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Edmund O’Keeffe, photo

We were an unlikely pair to know each other for so long and to care about each other so deeply.

When I first met him in the early 1990s, Ray was professor of agribusiness (a term he coined) at the Harvard Business School, as representative of Big Ag as anyone could be.  When he invited me to participate in the newly formed PAPSAC, I could not imagine why he would want me there or why I should go.

Contrary to Ray’s recollection, I did not attend the first meeting. I would have had to pay my own expenses, which seemed outrageous given that so many of the participants were CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies and flew to Boston via private jet.

The second year, Ray said they would pay for my travel and persuaded me that the meeting would be worth attending.  Its purpose, he explained, was to bring food business leaders and consumer activists together to share views and to reach mutual understanding.

My interpretation: Ray thought that if we saw how caring the CEOs of agribusiness firms were about feeding the world, we would not object so much to what they did.  That never worked, but he kept on trying.  And I kept on attending, for more than 25 years.

My rationale:

  • Ray was impossible to say no to.
  • I could learn how agribusiness leaders thought about what they were doing.
  • I could say what I thought in a presentation pretty much every year.

Two highlights:

  • I witnessed the CEOs of Pioneer Hi-Bred and other agbiotech companies scream at the CEO of Monsanto for alienating the public about genetically modified crops and ruining their businesses.
  • I attended the session when Ray had the bright idea of showing the film Food, Inc to the group (he thought they ought to see it).  This did not go over well, and I joined its director, Robby Kenner, in fielding audience attacks.

Despite what I consider to be a total contradiction between the profit goals of agribusiness and the goals of public healthl, Ray continued to insist that we all needed to listen to each other.

His sunny view of humanity is best illustrated by his book  Food Citizenship, which I wrote about in 2018 when it first came out.

The book consists of Ray’s interviews with dozens of PAPSAC participants, beginning with his interview with me.  [The interviews were videotaped and are  available at the Oxford University Press website.  The video of Ray’s interview with me is posted here.]

I always felt like a total outsider at this meeting, and was surprised to find myself at the core of Ray’s attempts to achieve mutual understanding among participants.

We could all use more of that.

As is clear from our interview and Ray’s response to my responses to his questions, we viewed the world of agribusiness very differently.

But I loved him, and will miss him.

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Feb 24 2026

60 Minutes: RFK Jr on non-regulation of ultra-processed food

On February 15, CBS News’ Bill Whitaker interviewed RFK Jr, former FDA Commissioner David Kessler, and journalist Michael Pollan about ultra-processed foods and what to do about them.
As far as I am concerned, this is the money quote:
This is classic RFK Jr: put everything on personal responsibility, never mind how hard it is for people to resist eating unhealthfully in today’s food environment.
As I explained last August, David Kessler gave RFK Jr a gift.  He sent him a letter presenting a  Citizen’s Petition arguing that if the FDA wanted to help people reduce consumption of ultra-processed foods, all it had to do was to define ultra-processed foods as Not GRAS.
The FDA is required to respond to citizens’ petitions within 180 days.
During the 60 Minutes program, RFK Jr said:
We will act on– on David Kessler’s petition. And the questions that he’s asking are questions that FDA should’ve been asking a long, long time ago.
“Act on?”  What does this mean?
Will the FDA act to regulate ultra-processed foods?
I will believe it when I see it.

Food Industry Comments (thanks to the invaluable Hagstrom Report)

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