Food Politics

by Marion Nestle
May 1 2026

Weekend reading: It’s all your fault

Nick Chater & George Loewenstein.  It’s On You: How the Rich and Powerful have convinced us that we’re to blame for society’s deepest problems.  WH Allen, 2026.  345 pages.

This book directly addresses an issue I’ve fussed about for ages: putting the blame for poor diets on individuals and ignoring the social and political forces that make eating healthfully so difficult and expensive.

As I like to put it, if you are trying to eat healthfully in today’s food environment, you are fighting an entire food system on your own.

Chater and Loewenstein take on much more than diets; their book deals with such matters as pollution, climate change, health care, and inequality from the standpoint of how the issues are framed: i-frame (individual behavior is at fault) versus s-frame (the system makes healthy choices impossible).

As they put it,

Instead of making people fat and then providing them with expensive drugs to curb their appetites, clearly our first collective priority should be to tackle the root cause of obesity—and this means a radical overhaul of how the food industry is regulated, taxed, and subsidized, and reversing the trend toward energy-dense, high processed foods and drinks deliberately engineered to be as difficult to stop consuming as possible.  This means forcing the food industry, through regulations or financial incentives, to create and market products that promote, rather than damage, human health.  p. 76.

How can we do better?…We’ll see that the answer is not primariy about inventing new, innovative policies: For most of the problems we have discussed, there are examples of successful policies implemented in other countriesthat could provide almost off-the-shelf solutions.  Social and environmental problems exist not because we can’t figure out how to solve them, but because powerful interests benefit from the status quo.  So the key question is how to build support for, and to frame, those policies in ways that can attract the coalition of support required to drive change.  p. 209.

We’ve seen throughout this book that rigged rules, not flawed individuals, lie at the heart of many of society’s most persisstent problems.  But if this is right, a natural question arises: Why aren’t the rules reformed to work in the intersts of the many, not the few, given that in a democracy the many have, by definition, the majority of the votes?  The answer, as we gave seebm us that the demoncratic process has been hacked by the powerful and wealthy.  This corrupting influence of power and money on politics is an ever present threat…. p.259

We’ve argued in this book that many of our most pressing and persistent social and environmental problems remain unsolved not because we don’t collectively know how to solve them, but because powerful interests beneft from their not being solved.  Indeed, the powerful typicallt do everything they can to ensure that the rules of the game are rigged in their favor….multinational food companies use their influence to expand their global markets for unhealthy ultraprocessed foods and to push back against legislative restrictions aimed at improving public health….  p. 271

This is an important argument, one that bears endless repeating—along with action to change the system.

Get money out of politics!

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Apr 30 2026

Cell-based chocolate? Oh, why not.

I am not usually a fan of techno foods, but I have to admit: this one might have possibilities.

World’s first cell-based chocolate bar developed with Mondelēz: The first-ever milk chocolate bars made with cell-cultivated cocoa butter have been produced… Read more

Here’s how this works:

Celleste Bio uses cell suspension culture technology to produce cocoa butter in the lab, generating enough chocolate‑grade ingredient from a single cocoa bean to make chocolate bars.  To produce cell‑based cocoa butter, Celleste Bio takes a cocoa bean, opens it and places it in a Petri dish. Once cells begin to grow, they are extracted and fermented with water, sugar and vitamins, allowing biomass to develop. This biomass is then harvested and processed to create cocoa butter.

But if the taste and texture are good enough, this could address the problems currently faced by the chocolate industry in production, supply, human rights, labor, deforestation, and climate-change issues.

But alas, this intriguing technology is still in development.  It can produce a few prototype chocolate bars but is nowhere near scaling up to commercialize.

If it works, I might have to change my mind about techno foods.

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Apr 29 2026

Preempting the GRAS loophole: not a good idea

One of the reasons for Monday’s rally at the Supreme Court (see Monday’s post) is the food industry’s efforts to be able to continue to use whatever additives it chooses, without regulatory oversight.

A press release from the Environmental Working Group warns: ‘FRESH’ and Affordable Foods Act is rotten to the core.

This refers to a a draft bill introduced by Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) designed to preempt all state food chemical laws.

States have been passing inconvenient laws banning food dyes and chemicals.  The industry want this to stop.

According to the EWG’s analysis, the bill would do things like this (and more):

  • Allow new food chemicals linked to cancer and reproductive harm to be considered “safe.”
  • Retroactively approve all food chemicals currently considered generally recognized as safe (GRAS).
  • Allow new chemicals to be added to food if the FDA does not respond to a GRAS notice within 90 days.
  • Allow new chemicals reviewed by industry-funded expert panels – including the flavor industry’s notorious “expert” panel – to be automatically GRAS and used in food immediately.

Under the “GRAS loophole,” which Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, has vowed to close (this has not happened yet), chemical companies – not the FDA – decide whether a food chemical is safe. For new chemicals, companies submit a GRAS notice to the FDA, and the FDA responds with a “no questions” letter.

As an EWG analysis found, since 2000, almost all new chemicals – nearly 99% –  have come onto the market through the GRAS loophole.

The system is already inadequate; this act would make it worse (here’s my contribution to this discussion from more than a decade ago).

Helena Bottemiller Evich says in Food Fix: Food industry quietly advances its preemption push in Washington

Right now, preemption is becoming even more critical for industry because MAHA groups and consumer advocates have been having a ton of success in state legislatures. In many cases, the industry is actually getting creamed outside of Washington.

She notes that the New York legislature has just required companies to publicly disclose any additivies they self-determine to be GRAS (it also bans Red 3, propylparaben, and potassium bromate in the state).

This kind of action makes the food industry long for federal preemption.

Secretary Kennedy and the MAHA movement have promised to fix all this.  Will they be able to?

Stay tuned.

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Apr 28 2026

American tragedy redux: USDA is relocating more programs out of the DC area

It’s deja vu all over again.

During the Trump I administration, I wrote repeatedly about the tragic relocation of the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) to Kansas.  As I said, the Government Accountability Office confirmed my analysis.

Why tragic?  I don’t have anything against Kansas, but expecting long-time residents of the Washington, DC area to uproot their families to move there seemed designed for only one purpose: to gut the ERS of its experts and to force it to stop producing sophisticated—and honest—analyses of inconvenient food issues.

In this, the move succeeded admirably.  Many experts quit.  Some were rehired to the DC area, but as far as I can tell, the ERS has never recovered.  It continues to publish routine statistical data, but the analytic reports have stopped.  This is an enormous loss to my work in particular, but also to society.

Now the USDA is doing it again, and finished the job on ERS.

Last week, the USDA issued two press releases on the relocations:

I.  USDA Advances Reorganization and Restructuring of the Research, Education, and Economics Mission Area to Improve Efficiency and Better Serve American Farmers

This effort refocuses REE’s structure on mission delivery—streamlining operations, strengthening leadership accountability, and positioning resources closer to the agricultural communities USDA serves. The updated structure will be guided by five core principles: strengthening leadership accountability, reducing organizational complexity, ensuring consistency across agencies where appropriate, leveraging emerging tools and technologies, and aligning clearly with USDA’s priorities.

II.  USDA Announces Food Safety and Inspection Service Reorganization, Establishes National Food Safety Center in Iowa

This one says pretty much the same thing.

Let me translate what the USDA is really doing.

It is moving the hub of the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to Urbandale, Iowa where it will establish a National Food Safety Center with about 200 employees relocated from Washington, DC (if they agree to move).  It also is relocating employees to Fort Collins, Colorado, and to a Science Center in Georgia (ditto).

Ostensibly, this is to bring FSIS closer to its constituents to strengthen “its ability to protect public health and ensure the safety of the nation’s food supply.”

In practice, the moves will gut the agency, destroy its expertise, and disable it for years to come.

That has to be the intent.

Add these to the 27,000 people who have already left USDA since Trump II, 37% of its staff.  Surely, some of those people helped get the agency’s work done.

Who will be hired to replace the people who choose not to relocate?  I’m guessing those who go along with the current administration’s ideological agenda.

As I said, tragedy.

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Apr 27 2026

Happening today: Rally against glyphosate at the Supreme Court: The People vs. Poison

Farm Action has joined Vani Hari (the Food Babe) and other groups in this People vs. Poison rally.

Livestream it here.

The “poison” here is glyphosate, the potentially carcinoenic weed killer manufactured by Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) for use with genetically modified crops.

People vs. Poison says, “For decades they poisoned us for profit.  Now the people are fighting back”.

The rally is to let the Supreme Court know that there is widespread opposition to Monsanto’s position in the case, Monsanto v. Durnell.  The Court is hearing that case today.  As People vs. Poison explains,

Bayer – the foreign corporation that bought Monsanto – has paid over $10 billion to cancer victims linked to their weed killer Roundup (glyphosate). And there are still tens of thousands of cases pending.

Now Bayer wants to make sure they never have to pay again.

As described in The New Lede, 

Monsanto specifically is asking the Supreme Court to rule that under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), it cannot be held liable for failing to warn of a cancer risk if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not found such a risk exists and not required such a warning. FIFRA preempts any state requirements for such a cancer warning, the company argues.

Hundreds of groups have filed briefs on both sides of this case.

Trump’s Department of Justice filed one in support of Monsanto/Bayer.

Farm Action says

Monsanto, owned by Bayer, has mounted an aggressive campaign to secure immunity, leveraging its outsized market power to influence policymakers. The company faces thousands of lawsuits alleging its flagship product, Roundup, causes cancer. As Farm Action has documented, threats to pull Roundup from the market are a strategic pressure tactic, not a sign of impending crisis for the food and farm system…The coalition’s brief urges the Court to reject Monsanto’s argument and preserve the right to hold companies accountable when their products cause harm.

The rally is set for 9:00 this morning.  I will be interested to hear how it goes and whether the Supreme Court listens.

Commentary on what the rally is about

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Apr 24 2026

Weekend reading: online marketing of soda and alcohol

Vital Strategies has issued two reports about digital marketing of soda and alcohol based on AI analysis of web content: Sick from Scrolling: Protecting the Next Generation from the Flood of Unregulated Social Media Marketing.

Soda and alcohol marketing is flooding social media at a scale that outpaces regulation—embedding brands into sports highlights, influencer content and viral moments that generate billions of impressions…The findings show this marketing is no longer confined to ads—it is woven directly into the content people watch and share every day, creating a constant stream of exposure that largely escapes oversight.

The reports and webinar

I. From Stadiums to Screens: Coca-Cola’s Sportswashing at the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup

Researchers found that 795 posts identified by Canary generated an estimated 3.6 billion impressions, highlighting the reach of FIFA sponsorship. Coca-Cola branding was amplified primarily through sports accounts, broadcasters and streaming platforms resharing match footage that captured brand logos embedded in the frame…Every highlight reel functioned as advertising, with clips circulating online indefinitely.

II. Exposing Alcohol’s Advertising Playbook: Digital Marketing in RESET Alcohol Initiative Countries

Alcohol marketing has undergone a dramatic transformation in the digital age, moving from traditional advertising to sophisticated, algorithm-driven strategies that target consumers with unprecedented precision…Researchers found that nearly 4,000 posts…generated an estimated 2 billion impressions, underscoring the enormous reach of online alcohol promotion.

III.  The Webinar on the reports

Comment

Marketing on the web is challenging to analyze and this report performs a great public service in illustrating its scope and reach—and also its merging into content making advertising and content difficult to distinguish.

Regulation, anybody?

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Apr 23 2026

Current events in agricultural chemicals

Pesticides, herbicides, and other agricultural chemicals in food are of great concern right now, and getting rid of them is high on the agenda of Make America Health Again (MAHA).

This will not be easy.  The chemicals pervade the food supply and Big Ag producers claim that cannot grow food without them.  We have already see how they forced MAHA to retreat on Roundup (glyphosate).

Here’s what’s been happening recently on the chemicals-in-food front.

I.  EWG’s Dirty Dozen: Spinach, it says, ” has more pesticide residues by weight than any other type of produce.”

II.  The Supreme Court case, Monsanto v. Durnell.

Senator Cory Booker has asked the Supreme Court to permit lawsuits against Roundup to proceed.

Vani Hari (aka the Food Babe) approves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A coalition of groups represented by Center for Food Safety (CFS) has also filed a brief in this case.

For the past decade, state juries across the country have found Monsanto (now Bayer) guilty of failing to warn the public of the cancer risks of its flagship pesticide, Roundup, totaling billions of dollars in damages against the chemical giant. Monsanto is now using the Supreme Court case to seek immunity from any accountability for these harms.

Comment

It’s hard to know how serious a problem these chemicals pose for human health but they cannot possibly be good for us.  I do not want them in my food and drink and support all efforts to reduce their use.  Big Ag is fighting back, of course, which is why this case matters so much.  Let’s hope the Court rules against Monsanto/Bayer.

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Apr 23 2026

Annals of food marketing: some new items

It’s hard to keep up with what’s happening with food innovations.  Manufacturers have to keep coming up with new products to encourage sales.  Functional foods—those with ingredients over and above what’s in natural foods—seem to work.  But so do others.  Here is a sample.

And I have to say something about The latest in Oreos.  Would you believe: Marvel comics.  Stuf of Legends.  Get the complete set.  And—they change colors when you lick them (I’m not making this up).

Power Up. Save the universe with MARVELOREO Stuf of Legends Chocolate Sandwich Cookies. Available in four different package designs, these special edition snack cookies contain classic OREO chocolate wafer cookies featuring 32 unique cookie designs embossed with MARVEL characters like The Avengers, the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and X-Men (designs included may vary). These sweet treats are the first-ever OREO cookies to contain color-changing creme with the same great taste! To see its color change from gray to blue, lick the OREO creme. Find all four special edition packs, and scan the pack’s QR code to help save the universe.

You have to admire the ingredient list.  Ultra-processed?  Indeed yes.

You will have to decide for yourself whether to eat any of these things.  Personally, I prefer food.

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