Latest / REAP/SOW / Can Mike Tyson really kick some ultraprocessed butt (and save lives!)?
Transcript
- This transcript was exported on 02/18/2026 - view latest version here Theodore Ross: Welcome to Forked. I'm Theodore Ross, Editor-in-Chief of the Food and Environment Reporting Network, and I'm joined by my co-host, Helena Bottemiller Evich from Food Fix. On this episode, it's Mike Tyson giving Mama Said Knock You Out vibes on ultra-processed foods, RFK Jr. tag-teaming with David Kessler on 60 Minutes, and why, thank God, RFK Jr.'s remarks about doing cocaine off a toilet seat actually make sense, maybe a little. Helena, welcome back to Forked. How are you? Helena Bottemiller Evich: I'm doing well. How are you? Theodore: I'm great. It's always good to come back in two weeks and talk about a little food and a little politics. Before we jump in, I don't know if everyone who listens to Forked knows what Food Fix is. I say it at the beginning of the introduction, Helena Bottemiller Evich from Food Fix. Why don't you tell people what Food Fix is? Helena: Food Fix is a weekly newsletter that you can read for free. Just go to foodfix.co. If you work in the food space, you can upgrade to get it twice a week. It's really a must-read on food policy. It's fun. It's wonky. Yes, you should definitely check it out. I think if you're into Forked, the podcast, you should be into Food Fix, the newsletter. Theodore: I agree. I think she is telling the truth. It is, in fact, a must-read if you care about the kinds of things we're talking about on Forked. As far as my end of this is concerned, the Food and Environment Reporting Network, where I'm the editor-in-chief, we're a nonprofit news organization. Forked is an expression of some of the work that we do. If you go onto our website, though, you'll see there's investigations, there's narrative features, there's op-eds, there's all kinds of other audio, narrative audio, podcast series, all kinds of good stuff that we do at www.thefern.org. Go check it out. If you think it's really great, and I hope you do, make a donation. Helena: Also, fun fact, I wrote the first-ever FERN story- Theodore: I think this is a very fun fact. Helena: -many, many years ago. It's a full circle moment. Theodore: I think it's awesome. All right. Let's jump in. The first segment of every episode of Forked is always the double-take, which is something in the food policy and food politics world that makes you do a double-take. It's usually not so great, but sometimes it's just weird. In this case, I think we should talk about the Super Bowl and its advertisements and Mike Tyson kicking the crap out of processed foods. Helena, give us a little background on this, and then we can talk about it. Helena: If anyone hasn't seen the ad, which I think most people have at this point, Mike Tyson was featured in a MAHA PSA, which seemed like it was funded by the government because it told everyone to go to realfood.gov at the end, but was not funded by the government. Theodore: Very much not so. We will talk about the funding, yes. Helena: Funded by an outside group, MAHA Center. This ad has really generated a lot of conversation. It basically features Mike Tyson, the boxing icon. He shares some personal experience with struggling with obesity. He says his sister died of a heart attack when she was 25, which he ties to obesity. He actually sheds a tear. It's this very emotional ad. Then, across the screen, it says processed food kills. Theodore: Kills. Helena: Then tells people to go to realfood.gov. It looks like this government PSA. This has a lot of people talking. Some people criticized it, felt it was fatphobic, and stigmatized obesity. Some people just love that it's so raw. It's this shocking message, or I guess very counter-programming message to the rest of the Super Bowl ads, which I call the Oscars of processed food advertising. This is always where we see the super high-budget ads for everything from chips to beer to soda. It just caused a splash, and a lot of people have seen it. Theodore: I think it's an interesting thing to say that Iron Mike Tyson is a corrective to the debauched advertising of the Super Bowl. Helena: The message was different. Theodore: That's true. Let's talk a little bit about the background of the ad. It was directed by Brett Ratner, he of Melania weirdo doc fame and other MeToo things, and also lots of good movies. Helena: Has he made good movies? I don't know anything about that guy, but yes, definitely-- Theodore: I think he's made, let's put it this way, blockbusters, I think. I don't know. I think maybe Star Trek. Don't fact-check me here. I think he did some of those. Helena: No idea. Theodore: Anyway, it was also co-directed by another guy who I don't know much about. His name is Peter Arnell. I did think it was interesting. He showed up at this HHS event to talk about the ad, Tyson's involvement, and other things having to do with ultra-processed food. What he said was, "Mike Tyson has been famous for biting." For those of you out there who don't know this, he famously, I believe, bit Evander Holyfield's ear twice in a heavyweight championship bout, which is also the time when I vowed never again to buy a pay-per-view subscription to a boxing match because that could happen. The rest of the quote, "Mike Tyson has been famous for biting, but this time, he chose to bite into real food, not an ear." Now we say-- Helena: Then he bites an apple. I didn't put that together that that was like-- Theodore: [laughs] Yes, you didn't understand. What did you think they were talking about? Helena: Well, he just bit an apple. I didn't think about it being a reference to that. Theodore: To biting, yes, poor Evander Holyfield's ear. Now we say bite like Mike. It means something better. It means a better bite for a better life. Not that particular quote, but the ad was paid for with donations from an organization, as you mentioned, called MAHA Center. MAHA Center seems to be one of these groups that just has sprung up in the advent of the RFK Jr. ascension, that they're not really connected to it. Helena: Oh, they're connected to it. [laughs] Theodore: Well, they're not directly connected to it. Helena: They are an outside group, yes. Theodore: The president of it is a guy named Tony Lyons. He also ran a super PAC on behalf of the MAHA movement. Helena: He runs all the outside political groups. Not all of them, most of them. Theodore: What I find interesting about it is a very strange publishing company called Skyhorse Publishing. Some of the titles and the context make sense. The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, authored by none other than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Then some conspiracy theory-type books, Forbidden Facts: Government Deceit & Suppression About Brain Damage From Childhood Vaccines, playing true to form; Deception: The Great COVID Cover-Up by Rand Paul. This one I thought was really bizarre, actually. The MAHA Cookbook by Pete Evans. I'd never heard of Pete Evans. He's an Australian guy, some sort of a nutrition-ish influencer. Back in 2015, I think this book didn't end up getting published because, and you'll see why not, there's a lot of controversy around it. It was called Bubba Yum Yum The Paleo Way: For new Mums, Babies, and Toddlers. The problem with it was that it included a make-it-at-home, do-it-yourself baby milk formula made from chicken liver and bone broth, which is probably not good for your baby. I don't think you should do that. Helena: Don't do that. Theodore: There's a lot of oddness around it. For you, Helena, as someone who's in the food policy world very directly, and perhaps it sounds like not a boxing fan, tell me what your reaction to it was, maybe your peers. For me, I think it's beyond bizarre to have Mike Tyson doing an ad like this. I truly am baffled by it, but I'm curious what you think. Helena: I don't have the full context with Mike Tyson. I was not a Mike Tyson fan. I did not grow up knowing really anything about him. I learned that he had been convicted of rape in the early '90s. I didn't know that. I don't think that that's a well-known-- That was also decades ago. Theodore: I think that's well known. Helena: You think it's well-known? I don't view him with the same context you do. I just thought, "Oh, there's this famous person, this former pro athlete that is very well-known, and he's in this PSA that made a big splash." I called this a messaging coup for MAHA because I had not met Tony Lyons, but I met him at the HHS event they had celebrating this ad. Mike Tyson was at HHS. I had not met Tony Lyons, and I went up to him and I chatted with him about the ad for a bit. He told me that at that point, 170 million people had seen that ad. There is nothing else, not the Olympics, nothing on social media that reaches that many people. That is a massive messaging just-- Theodore: It's a success. I think what's interesting about it because- Helena: The scale of it. Theodore: -it truly is putting, and what's come out of it, it's putting the bullying into the bully pulpit. The administration itself has been doing some PSAs around it. The one that I thought-- I saw it on the X account of RFK Jr., his official HHS X account, and it's a video. It shows you there's this guy, he's sort of schlumpy, I would say, is the technical term, pasty-faced- Helena: He's just a staffer. That's what they all look like. Theodore: He's a DC dude. He's got a donut, and he's just like, "Oh boy, I'm about to eat this donut. It's going to be great." Out of nowhere, here comes Mike Tyson dressed, I would say, very dapper in a suit with a turtleneck. He's looking a little bit like Shaft, and he knocks the donut out of the dude's hand, chases him off camera, looking pissed. You don't want Mike Tyson mad at you. Then he turns to the camera, and he snarls, "Processed foods kill, eat real food." There's that video. You also see on some of these X feeds of major politicians and people within the government, they got the face tattoos ike Tyson did. Helena: I think that's AI. They're like AI [crosstalk] Theodore: Not real, yes. They're not really getting these tattoos. They're really leaning into not just the idea of processed food kills, but this man, who was once, undeniably, the baddest dude on the planet, heavyweight champion of the world, is going to kick your butt if you don't stop eating these bad foods. Helena: It's remarkable messaging to see come from the government. I've never seen anything like it. The fact that you would have someone slapping a donut out of an American's mouth with the backdrop of HHS, this is actually in the HHS studio, and then shared on the government account, just shows that they don't care. They think this is a winning message. They don't care that most of the American diet is still ultra-processed foods. The average person seeing this is like, "Whoa." I think that's the point. They want to be really aggressive. They just don't care that it's controversial or weird or that they're using people. Just recently, I don't know if you saw, RFK did a video with Kid Rock, who has incredibly crass, would be putting it mildly, lyrics and history and lots of baggage. They do not care about that. They do not care about having only-- I'm thinking of some of the people during the Obama era who were part of the pro athletes. They'd be highly vetted. They could not have been Me Too'd. That was not something that was on the floor. Theodore: This is beyond Me Too, by the way. It's the rape conviction. Helena: I agree. I'm talking about all of them. All of the players here that we're mentioning have had some level of that. Not all of them, most of them. I just don't think they care. The point of it is to be controversial and to be out there. That donut-slapping thing got 7 million impressions on X. Theodore: It is funny. It is funny. Helena: You can't get that kind of exposure from an ad on Morning Joe or whatever. You know what I mean? It's like they're finding these ways to just spread this message. I think the point of it is to be outlandish and aggressive. That's what they're doing. I've never seen anything like it, but this is where we are. I think we're only going to see more of this. Theodore: For the true Mike Tyson completist, that slapping is, to me, very reminiscent of a movie that Mike Tyson was in in the early 1990s. It was directed by James Toback. It was called Black and White. Allen Houston, the former New York Knick, was in it. It was oriented around Allen Houston having to throw a game. There's a pretty notorious or famous scene in it with Robert Downey Jr., pre-Iron Man. He's playing a gay guy who's somehow connected to the sports gambling world. I can't remember all the details. Mike Tyson smacks him pretty good in that movie. It is an intimidating scene. It feels really, really real. If you want to go check out Black and White, there's that. Anyway. Helena: There's all these cultural references that just flew right over my head. Theodore: It was the era. I grew up in New York when Mike Tyson was coming up. He used to fight on TV, free TV, every three weeks. He would go into a ring at Madison Square Garden and pound the crap out of some guy. It was like a phenomenon in New York at the time. It was a big, big deal. Helena: Wow. Theodore: All right. Let's move on. I will not wax nostalgic on Mike Tyson anymore. We'll go to our next segment, which is Forks and Knives, the main meal, Helena. Something big that's happening in the world that we're covering. I think what we should talk about is the recent 60-minute segment on GRAS, generally regarded as safe. Why don't you tell us all a little bit about what GRAS is, and then we can talk about the show? Helena: Yes. GRAS is an acronym that stands for Generally Recognized as Safe. This is the pathway that most new food chemicals get into our food supply in the US. The reason it's so controversial-- Basically, there's two ways food chemicals can get. They can do a food additive petition, which means that FDA actually reviews everything, gives it a stamp of approval, and then the substance is on the market, or they can-- Theodore: Which takes years, and we'll get to that in a minute. Helena: Takes years, and it's expensive, and it takes a long time. This is not really how things are getting to market because it is so onerous. Then there's GRAS, which is this-- FDA now actually calls it a loophole. It was created in the late 1950s. The idea was that there's all these substances on the market already that didn't need to go through regulatory approval, like baking soda and vitamin C, and these things that are just common and are generally-- Theodore: Generally regarded as safe. Helena: Yes. Now we have the situation where a lot of substances are self-determined as GRAS, which means that, basically, a food company has enough experts and science to self-determine that something is generally recognized as safe. It has to have a reasonable certainty of no harm as it's used. FDA doesn't have to know about it. They don't have to tell FDA. There is also a path where they can notify FDA, and FDA can say they have no questions, which is this tacit approval, but not technically. It's created this big gray area where we have all these substances on the market that FDA doesn't know about. There are a lot of concerns about how this works because it's not strong FDA oversight, and it's really hard to defend this with consumers. When you describe how GRAS works, that any industry or any food company can self-determine and not tell FDA that they believe a novel food chemical is safe, people are just like, "That can't be how it works. It doesn't pass." Theodore: It does work. That's the way it works right now. Helena: That's how it works. That's how it works. The Trump administration, RFK, one of the first things he did when he came in is said, "We are ending this. We are going to reform how GRAS works." They're going to close the GRAS loophole. We don't know exactly how they're going to do this, but there is a rule, like a regulation, at the White House right now for review. FDA has submitted it to White House. It's going to come out. There's two things going on with the 60 Minutes. The Trump administration is reforming how GRAS works. They are changing how GRAS works. We don't have the details yet, but they are going to issue a regulation on that. Then, also, we have this really controversial petition from former FDA commissioner, David Kessler. Theodore: Let's back up. Let's back up a second. All right. Let's let the stage a little bit. Helena: It's confusing because they do both things in this segment, and they're very mixed up. Theodore: First of all, going back to GRAS for one second. Just so people understand, we're not talking about baking soda, we're talking about the unpronounceables, the things that are on those labels that you have no idea what they are. They may be good. They may be bad. Someone has decided they're generally regarded as safe. Guess what? That ain't you. All right. 60 Minutes, RFK Jr. comes into office. He's going to fix this loophole. He's been in office now. That 60-minute segment came out on February 15th. He took office one year earlier on February 13th. Now, so far, yes, there's this rule at the White House, but no change has happened yet. Meanwhile, David Kessler. Give us a very short introduction to who David Kessler is. Helena: David Kessler, former FDA commissioner under Clinton and Bush. He was known for taking on big tobacco in the '90s. He submitted a petition to FDA in August saying, basically, a lot of these highly refined carbohydrates on the market, think like maltodextrose, high-fructose corn syrup, these highly processed starches and sugars, are no longer generally recognized as safe. Basically, FDA put the onus on FDA, saying there is so much data of metabolic harm that many of these common ingredients in ultra-processed foods are no longer generally recognized as safe. There's not reasonable certainty of no harm, he argues, because we have lots of evidence of harm. Theodore: Well, let's talk about the involvement of Kessler and what that means. Kessler, first of all, on 60 Minutes, when he was asked about it, he said that he believes that those ultra-processed foods, the things that he put in that petition, are potentially as bad as smoking cigarettes, if not worse. Helena: He says the public health harm is as bad or worse than tobacco. The scale is definitely bigger, no question. Theodore: Kessler is coming from a very, very different place on these issues than RFK Jr. is. Along with the big tobacco history that he has, his time at the FDA, he was also in the Biden administration, working on COVID issues. This is not an anti-vaccine dude, unlike RFK Jr., and unlike all the people that RFK Jr. likes to put into government. Bringing him to the table and showing that he has enough clout to get RFK Jr. and potentially the White House to act is an interesting thing. How do you assess that? Helena: I think Kessler is very clear in the 60 Minutes segment, which is very anti-ultra-processed foods. Kessler is saying, "Look, I disagree strongly with Kennedy on vaccines. Couldn't disagree with him more." You mentioned he was part of the Biden COVID response. He is a pediatrician. He is a proponent of the safety and efficacy of vaccines. He makes that very clear. His case is that there is so much harm from ultra-processed foods that, giving the Trump administration a regulatory pathway to actually crack down on them, he felt was important to do, even though he disagrees with Kennedy. Kennedy said during that interview, "We will act on Kessler's petition." He did not specify how. He did not say exactly what. He also said, "I'm not saying we're going to regulate ultra-processed foods," which confused a lot of people. They were like, "You can't have it both ways here." We'll see what they actually do. The fact that Kennedy is even playing footsy with the Kessler petition, which presents an existential threat to ultra-processed foods in this country, is wild. The food industry is really spooked by this. It's just like a sea change in potentially how we even think about the foods on the market if this proceeds forward. We'll see. It was a big deal that it was on 60 Minutes. Theodore: I agree. I also think that it is also interesting that Kessler is playing footsy with RFK Jr. Because you do that with the Trump administration, the next thing you know, you're up on a stage during the pandemic like Anthony Fauci and listening to somebody say, "Well, why don't we inject bleach into people?" You never know where that's going to go. It oftentimes doesn't work out as well for you as you think it might. You think you might have the leverage, but it may turn out to be that it's RFK Jr. using you for leverage. I think that comment he made about he's not going to regulate ultra-processed foods, that's the tell. We'll see. We can't predict, but we'll see what actually comes of it. Helena: We have to watch what they do. I think this is a theme throughout is their rhetoric is very extreme and stark. Kennedy on Friday went on Fox News and said, "The American public is being mass poisoned." He used that word. We are being mass poisoned by ultra-processed foods. He is very stark in his language, but you always still have to look at what are they actually doing. Does the action match the rhetoric? Still, right now today, the answer is no. We will see. I don't know. Theodore: Is no. It's still infrastructure week for the Trump administration on this. Helena: I will say on that note, though, I think all the folks in public health are looking at this, going, well, they should take action on some of this. Let's stick to science, try to not just be reckless about it. They want to see some action, but the vibes that they are sending on this stuff do matter. We have the federal government, the highest levels of the federal government, telling the American public repeatedly that ultra-processed foods are bad, they should be avoided, the dietary guidelines say this, and that we're being poisoned. This is a message we have never seen from the US government. Even before you get to regulatory actions, I do think these vibes matter. The food industry is freaking the F out. They hate all this. They don't know what to do. They're disoriented by it because it's so aggressive. It's just wild to watch. I've never seen anything like it. Theodore: It's definitely a dramatic shift in what you see out of the government. I can't remember where I saw it. There was some sort of comparison back to Michelle Obama, who, again-- I think the problem that Michelle Obama was trying to do many of the same things when Barack Obama was president, was that vibes are one thing, regulation actually improves, and you can't really just hope that the American public will change its ways, although maybe can. Helena: They did do regulation, though. They changed the nutrition facts panel. They're the reason we have added sugars labeling. They changed school meals regulations, which increased fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and actually regulated the snacks that were sold in schools. They also banned trans fats, like industrial trans fats, from the food supply. There were regulatory changes. I remember Michelle Obama had this initiative called Drink Up, and it was to promote water consumption. They wouldn't even say. It was too controversial to say, "Drink less soda." They were too afraid of the blowback that they would get of having a nanny finger-wagging first lady saying, "Drink less soda." It was a positive message. Drink more water. The subtext of that is to drink fewer sugary drinks. That was 15 years ago, and now we just have a government saying, "You're being poisoned. This stuff is poison. Stop drinking." It's like, "Whoa, the landscape has changed." Theodore: I understand that. Maybe I'm a little nostalgic for a positive message rather than good old Mike Tyson whacking you with one of his big paws and taking away your donut. Helena: I have seen a lot of public health people also say that the shame-based messaging that they're leaning into right now, I have not looked at this evidence myself, but apparently, there is a lot of evidence that this is not effective, or this is not the most effective way to go about it. Here we are. Theodore: We'll see. Helena: I don't know. Theodore: I don't know what to say to that. Once, I used to work on a television show called Patriot Act. We did an episode on-- It was basically on corn production in the United States, subsidies to corn, and high-fructose corn syrup, and how globally the trade in corn made in the United States has resulted in an epidemic of obesity, not just in the United States, but around the world. This is a comedy show. We did a lot of research on the emergence of corn subsidies, how the system works, how we sell it, how that results in people starting to take on an American-style diet around the world, and why that's bad for public health. It is very difficult to talk in this country about obesity in any way without getting criticism as shaming. This was a liberal show, to put it mildly. We got a ton of messages back from people like, "How dare you fat-shame all these people and talk about obesity in this way when nobody understands what obesity is, and actually doesn't really exist," and so on and so on and so forth. We were making this, I think, fairly now standard argument about the role of corn and farm subsidies in people's diets. It's not easy to do unless you're the Trump administration and you just don't care. Helena: On that framing, I think it's so important for people to remember and to think about obesity and diet-related diseases are the predictable result of adopting an American-style food system. It's interesting to watch. Even Calley Means, one of the top White House advisors, was on Fox over the weekend saying, "This is not Americans' fault." The ultra-cheap, hyper-palatable, convenient food system we have results in what we have now: a diet-related disease crisis. That is the result. That's not controversial. That bears out, any country that starts adopting more American-style food, this is what happens. There is this really interesting shift, I think, happening away from the personal blame and sort of the, you're just lazy, or you're just making bad choices, and understanding this as a systemic result of the system. This is just what happens. The GLP-1s are also changing how people think because it's revealing how much of this has been a biological response to the food system. Theodore: It's not just a question of cutting back. Helena: It's wild. It's wild. It's like Big Pharma versus Big Food, and we're just like guinea pigs in the middle of it. Theodore: It's free trade. It's national security. It's big business. All of those things are factoring into how you eat, and that food that you're eating is not good for you. All right. On that somewhat dark note, although I think it's really interesting to talk about, I think one of the things we do at FERN, for example, if you go read some of the work, one of our staff members, Ted Genoways, he's written about the role of corn in global trade, national security, history, all these things. There's a really, really great history to understand how we ended up in this position to have RFK Jr. gently pushing back on what we're doing with these foods. It's not as simple as I can't live without my Twinkies. It's much, much more complicated than that. All right. Moving on, our final segment, the good vibes, which is something, Helena, that we can find in the food world that gives us a little note of hope. In this one, I'm going to just say how relieved, how happy, how just so deeply, deeply relieved to know that when RFK Jr. went on a podcast with a guy named Theo Von Natta and talked about snorting coke off a toilet seat, that this was, in fact, not just about him snorting coke off a toilet seat, which he, in fact, did do, but was a lesson from him about how he arrived at his understanding of the world and his role and the way that sobriety plays a part in it. I have some hope with it. Do you know what I'm talking about? Are you too relieved to understand this? Helena: Yes. This went massively viral. Everyone was like, "Oh my God, our HHS secretary snorted coke off a toilet seat." I agree, shocking. That is-- Theodore: Shocking. [laughs] Helena: There's no other word for it. There was a lot of mockery, a lot of jokes, a lot of memes. I did go, and I watched the clip. I actually listened to that whole interview because any time RFK does an interview, I listen to it. Theodore: It was definitely taken out of context. Helena: It was taken out of context. The context for that comment was Kennedy basically saying the reason I kept going to recovery meetings during COVID, even though gatherings got shut down, was because he said something like, "I'm not afraid of germs." I think he said, "I used to snort coke off of toilet seats, but I know that addiction will kill me," basically. The choice was-- it wasn't between just getting COVID and not getting COVID. It was like recovery meetings every day, every single day, are what helps keep him in recovery. I think he has been in recovery for decades, and I would never make light of that. I would never make fun of that. Theodore: I would. I would make fun of him. Yes, that is a thing that's worth making fun of. Helena: It's a wild statement, but in context, the comment makes more sense. What he was saying was that he knew that addiction would kill him, and that the choice was clear, that he would still go to recovery meetings. I guess Theo Von is also in recovery. Theodore: I believe so. Helena: They talked about it a little bit, and they talked about addiction. I think at one point, they also said they hoped Kid Rock would join them. There were some interesting twists that came out of that conversation. Theodore: We'd have to confirm that he, too, has snorted coke off a toilet seat in order to then be in recovery and then to come in and talk about it. Helena: I have no comment on that. I don't want to know anything about this. Theodore: I don't either. I do not think his sobriety is inherently funny, although the story is certainly mockworthy. I will say that nestled in that, it's a telling story about his anti-vaccine beliefs. During COVID, he thought it was more important for him to maintain his sobriety than it was to follow what was the prevailing thoughts about ending the pandemic so that he could then go back to his meetings. I think it's not a big story. It was blown up. I don't think you can truly treat a politician like RFK Jr. unfairly. I think that is a contradiction in terms, given his role in politics and what he's doing in the country. In that case, everybody had it wrong. Helena: You can't take things out of context, though. Theodore: Yes, you can't. Helena: I don't know. I think there is a risk in taking things like this out of context because then, when things are said in proper context, the media is not trusted. I do think you have to be a little bit careful about presenting things as they're stated. Theodore: Well, here we are setting the record straight on the toilet and cocaine issue. Helena, that is probably a good place for us to stop with that image locked in everyone's mind, all of our listeners. I just want to say thank you very much for this conversation. It is a great one as always. I'm looking forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks so we can do it all again. Helena: Yes, always a pleasure. Never a dull moment. Theodore: [laughs] All right. Forked is a production of the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Our executive producers are me, Theodore Ross, and Tom Laskawy. Our sound engineer is Lauryn Newson. Our producer and video producer is Amanda Vicari. Our hosts are Helena Bottemiller Evich and me, Theodore Ross. To find out more about FERN and donate to support our independent nonprofit reporting, go to www.thefern.org. [00:32:53] [END OF AUDIO] Forked Ep 16_mixdown.mp3 (Completed: 02/18/2026) Transcript by GoTranscript.com