American Dish

Ten percent of Americans are estimated to have food allergies — and that’s probably an undercount. The government hasn't updated its population data in nearly a decade, so the real figure could be more like 12 or even 15 percent. Despite the scale of food allergies, food allergy research gets a small fraction of the funding devoted to comparable chronic diseases — and the gap has stayed remarkably...

More than 4 million people have dropped out of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the past year — an unprecedented drop that hasn’t gotten much attention in the media. As SNAP Director at the Food Research and Action Center, Gina Plata-Nino is tracking all of this very closely. FRAC fought hard against the $187 billion in SNAP cuts Congress passed through reconciliation last July. Th...

This episode is something a little different: a roundtable with three journalists who've been deep in this moment in food policy, talking frankly about what they're seeing as MAHA's promises meet the reality of governing in Washington. Tal Kopan, deputy Washington bureau chief for The Boston Globe , has been reporting on the politics and also the money behind MAHA. Deena Shanker covers food for Bl...

Todd Wagner, a tech billionaire and Hollywood mogul best known for co-founding Broadcast.com with Mark Cuban, isn’t particularly well known in food world — but he’s increasingly having a big impact. Wagner first got interested in American food policy after noticing his migraines would all but disappear when he traveled to Europe. He did some research and realized that the U.S. was letting thousand...

The debate about ultra-processed foods is loud in America right now, but zoom out, and it's everywhere. Governments around the world are trying to figure out what to do about diet-related disease, and the food and beverage industry is under pressure at every turn. Rocco Renaldi is secretary general of the International Food and Beverage Alliance, the group that brings together some of the world's...

Schools are the largest restaurant chain in America, bigger than Subway, Starbucks, and McDonald's combined. Nearly 100,000 locations, 30 million kids, and roughly 7 billion meals a year. Right now, the lion’s share of the calories served through this system are ultra-processed at a time when there’s growing concern about chronic diseases among children. Nora LaTorre is the CEO of Eat Real, a nonp...

HHS Secretary Kennedy says the food industry is poisoning us. The White House shares AI videos of him body slamming a Twinkie. And somehow, the trade group representing the companies making those ultra-processed foods — and thousands of other products Americans buy every day — has to figure out how to respond. The Consumer Brands Association represents the CPG industry, not just food and beverage,...

Infant formula isn't some niche parenting topic. It's a public health issue, a food security issue, and in many ways an infrastructure issue. The 2022 infant formula crisis was one of the most alarming food system failures in recent memory. Shelves were suddenly empty. Parents were driving across state lines to find cans of formula. The Department of Defense was flying it in on military planes. An...

The American diet has become dominated by ultra-processed foods, but it’s taken a while for scientists to even begin to understand what this really means for our health. One of the researchers at the cutting edge of our nascent understanding is Kevin Hall. A physicist by training, Hall spent 21 years at NIH becoming the country's foremost nutrition scientist before resigning from the agency in 202...

The FDA is nearly a year into its MAHA era. The rhetoric has been bold — food dyes, ultra-processed foods, infant formula, GRAS reform. But what's actually happened? And what might still be coming? Helena got down to brass tacks with FDA Commissioner Marty Makary during a fireside chat on stage at the National Food Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. Commissioner Makary came into this role as a...

Sam Kass calls RFK Jr. "the greatest threat to public health this country has ever faced." He’s not joking. Sam led Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign, served as senior policy advisor in the Obama White House, and fought some of the most brutal food policy battles in recent memory. He knows what it takes to enact regulation and how hard industry will fight to protect its interests. Hearing MAHA...

She says she hates politics. She's also been on the White House lawn with the FDA commissioner, helped pressure food companies to drop artificial dyes, and is now one of the most influential voices within the Make America Healthy Again movement. Vani Hari, better known as the Food Babe, built a massive following pressuring food companies to ditch controversial ingredients long before MAHA was a th...

The Trump administration says we're being poisoned by our food system. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talks about ultra-processed foods, pesticides, and corporate capture of our health agencies. It's rhetoric that in many ways sounds like it came straight from the progressive food movement. Marion Nestle helped build that movement — and so far she's not impressed. An emerita professor at New...

Everyone is suddenly talking about food policy. But this conversation has been building for a long time, and I've been closer to it than most. I'm Helena Bottemiller Evich, and I've spent years in congressional hallways, school cafeterias, and farm fields, covering the stories that people in power would rather keep quiet. Now, as these once-wonky topics go increasingly mainstream, I'm launching a...