Latest / REAP/SOW / SNAP bans on sugary foods were blocked in federal court. Now what?

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SNAP bans on sugary foods were blocked in federal court. Now what? · REAP/SOW

• Theodore Ross: Welcome to Forked. I am Theodore Ross, editor-in-chief of the Food and Environment Reporting Network, and I am joined by my co-host, Helena Bottemiller Evich from Food Fix. A federal judge struck a decisive blow to the MAHA movement's efforts to restrict the use of SNAP dollars for sugary foods, blocking waivers granted by the USDA in five states. Cool Ranch for all? Helena and I get into the ramifications. Plus, we spend some time debunking claims by HHS Chief Robert Kennedy Jr. about who is responsible for lowering US obesity rates. Short version, it's probably not him. Finally, American fried chicken is making British soccer fans weep, and we are loving it. Let's do this. Helena, how are you? Welcome back to Forked. Helena Bottemiller Evich: I'm doing well. How are you? It is officially summer over here. Theodore: It's not the vernal equinox. It's the summer solstice. Helena: It's when school is out. That is what I'm talking about. Theodore: Schools are not yet out in New York officially. Helena: Really? Theodore: No, they go until the 27th. My older daughter, who's in high school, took all their tests, and she basically doesn't have to show up to school. Then, my younger daughter she's got her graduation tomorrow. She's in middle school, and we just learned that she is the salutatorian of the school. Helena: Wow. That's very cool. Theodore: I'm going to brag to everyone who wants to hear. Helena: That's great. Theodore: Anyway, let's talk about food, politics, and policy, shall we? That seems to be the reason we are here, right? Not to talk about my kids. Helena: Although I have to say, I got a lot of emails about my toddler climbing into the fridge. Theodore: Were people roasting you or giving you advice or what? Helena: No. One of them was very nice. The woman wrote to me, and she said, "I think your toddler is a genius because my nine-year-old is still trying to get me to make her breakfast, and your toddler is just helping herself." Theodore: All right. That's good. Helena: It was very kind. Theodore: That's very good. Let's dive in. As we always do on Forked, we like to start off with something called the double take. That is something in the food politics and policy world that usually makes you do a little bit of a double take. Usually it is bad. Sometimes it could be good, but mostly it is bad. Helena: It's surprising. Something surprising. Theodore: This time I do not think it is really bad. I think it's actually just typical. The headline here is, no, sorry, Americans are still probably pretty obese, and yes, RFK Jr. did not make them any less so. Helena, why don't you decipher that runic headline for us? Helena: The headline I went with on the newsletter last week in Food Fix was, is obesity really dropping as Kennedy claims? The answer is obesity may be dropping right now. We actually do not have gold standard data yet. The data is delayed in how the CDC measures or estimates the obesity rate. We don't have that data yet, but there's some early data from Gallup that shows that self-reported obesity is declining for US adults. Kennedy has been touting this as good news. He was in Michigan recently, and he said that adult obesity was dropping in the US for the first time in 50 years during the Trump administration, and it was this piece of good news that was pointed to as, "Look, what we're doing is working." The evidence just does not bear that out. Theodore: Actually, I want to interrupt because I want to quote you from the newsletter on this. This is an article from the newsletter. We have the build-up, we have Kennedy say, "This is such a great thing that I have done, and Trump has done. We are fantastic." Then Helena, in the most subtly undermining way, says, "The best available evidence does not support this claim." Helena: Yes. Theodore: That is the doom right there. You have laid the hammer on RFK Jr., I think. Helena: I looked into the data. That claim is just not supported by the data. First of all, if Kennedy is looking at the Gallup data, which I believe is most likely. Theodore: The Gallup National Health and Wellbeing Index is the term. Helena: Yes. Gallup does measure self-reported obesity. This is an important measure. It measures trends over time, but it is not the same as the CDC estimates, which are the gold standard. The Gallup data, if you were to look just at that, actually shows that obesity for adults began declining in 2021, likely due to GLP-1s and the increased access to them. They are becoming increasingly affordable. Some surveys are showing as many as one in eight Americans are on a GLP-1. Maybe it's 1 in 10, but really mass adoption in the span of a few years. We don't yet have CDC data for this time period, but the last round of CDC data we showed, showed that it might have started declining during the Biden administration. It takes time to know the true trends and directions of obesity. We have seen blips before where we think it is plateauing or maybe going down, and then that ended up not being the case. It may, in fact, be going down, but we do not have evidence to say that it is going down for the first time during the Trump administration, and certainly you cannot attribute any policies that they have implemented. Even with more access to lower-cost GLP-1s, which has happened during this administration, you wouldn't see that. It's not like you snap your fingers and you immediately see that national population level trend. The evidence just does not back this up. It may be true that we have passed peak obesity. We are seeing some signs that that may be true. Theodore: I think there are a few interesting things that we can talk about here. Before we get to the more serious stuff, the more legitimate stuff, I just wanted to note when you look at the Gallup thing, it talks about how these are surveys conducted over the phone. There's a vanity effect, I believe they called it, and they said that people over the phone really tend to overestimate their height and underestimate their wealth. Helena: Their weight. Theodore: Their weight, excuse me. On the phone, I am 6' 5" and 175 pounds of lean muscle. In person, however, and unfortunately, I'm only 5' 8", 155 pounds of whatever. I just thought that was interesting. I think the other thing that is more substantive is that the mass adoption of GLP-1s is maybe making a difference, certainly on BMI. What I thought was interesting in the data is that they have not seen a corresponding and meaningful decline in diabetes rates. Maybe that's only a question of timing. It's a lifetime disease. It might take a longer period of time to show up in the data. Maybe that's something that will be coming, but they haven't seen it yet. Overall, I think the point for me, it's interesting that obesity is down, whatever it means. It hasn't made that dent in diabetes yet. It started before Trump took office. This has to do with GLP-1s, basically, as far as I can tell, and nothing to do with Trump policies, although lowering the cost of GLP-1s may contribute. Ultimately, though, this is a story really about RFK Jr. saying things that are not really, as you say, supported by the best available evidence. Helena: Yes. I think that's fair. This is something I take when cabinet officials say things, I take them in good faith, and then I look at whether or not the evidence supports those claims. I can think of another recent example where RFK just said, "We've closed the grass loophole," and that literally has not happened. There's things like that that are said, and it's my job to tell you whether or not that happened or is supported by evidence. Theodore: I'm glad you do that. I will also say that one of the things that brings me to the show with some interest is that I do not take statements from someone like RFK Jr. inherently as being in good faith. I don't think there is any reason to. I don't particularly think of it as my job. You and I have different jobs. We do different things. I'm not a newsletter writer. You don't run a nonprofit news organization that does long-form journalism and all these other things. We don't have to come at it the same way. I don't think that it's some good-faith accident that RFK Jr. shows up in Michigan after having visited a farm and takes credit for a potentially meaningful or potentially not meaningful downturn in obesity rates in the United States. I don't see that that is my duty as a reporter to look at it that way. I think there's two competing visions for how journalism is supposed to work. There's obviously many visions for how journalism is supposed to work, but I think there are two of them at play. One is what I would very loosely, and you can feel free to contradict me, call a newspaper standard, which is an idea of objectivity. That would require you to take it at good faith and then disprove it if it is wrong or unfactual or whatever. I think of it more in a this is my background, a magazine standard, which is a fairness standard. I don't believe that it would be fair to a reader, listener, or viewer to take RFK Jr.'s statements at face value whenever he makes them and then proceed from there. I think I am empowered to use the experience of past statements and how I see them and what I feel about them, and what I know about them to color the things that he says. That's where I am coming from. Helena: I think it's interesting to think about when then do you for example, Brooke Rollins says, "We have three new cases of screw worm." Is that automatically a lie? Theodore: No. Helena: These are the leaders of the federal government, of the most powerful nation on earth, and you have to listen to what they say and then figure out does the reporting support these as factual statements. I think that's really all we can do. We can't assume things are either untrue or true. I didn't assume-- By the way, when the Biden officials said things, I didn't assume they were true either. Theodore: No. Definitely. You shouldn't. Helena: I'm thinking back to when the FDA commissioner during Biden called Food Fix misinformation because he disagreed with a lawyer's assessment of FDA's legal authority about something. By the way, the FDA commissioner was wrong. It happens. Theodore: That's like a great compliment, that statement from the Biden administration. Helena: It didn't feel like a compliment at the time, but yes, it is. Yes. Theodore: It's like ending up being in the Nixon files. That is a club you want to be a part of. It means you have said something, assuming you were correct, and I believe you. I don't know the specifics of it. Let's assume you were correct that they were incorrect. Having them call you a purveyor of misinformation means that the factuality of your reporting hit home. You were touching on something that matters as far as, like, whether or not you start out believing or disbelieving. Obviously this is a challenge for reporters at the time-- Helena: It's not about believing. It's about listening to what they're saying and then, I think, doing the reporting. One thing that I think is so important for media right now, and this goes for everything, TV, radio, podcasts, magazines, everything, is like paying attention to tone. You mentioned color, like when you use adjectives and adverbs and things, you're telling the reader what you think. Sometimes that's the point. In magazine writing, you usually do know what the magazine writer thinks about something. You have to be careful with that. I don't want people to know exactly what I think. I want them to have a full picture of the best version of events I can figure out, and then they can think whatever they want about it. It's just a little bit different. Theodore: I agree it's different. I'm approaching it much more often from an argument-based point of view. Helena: Yes, it's just different. Theodore: Yes, it's a different standard and sometimes for you, dear listeners out there listening to me and Helena debate journalism ethics, that's how we end up viewing the same set of facts and events slightly differently. With that in mind, we all can agree that the best available evidence does not support RKF Jr.'s claims to having lower obesity [inaudible] Helena: If someone has inside government data that refutes this, you know where to find me. I don't think that's the case. Theodore: Overall, though, and this is a longer-running thing to deal with, the fact of GLP adoption at this scale, it's just staggering. I don't know what to do with it. Part of me still rebels against it. The Gallup survey talks about still remaining shame around the idea of using GLPs, especially, it's why it's driving more adoption among women than less among men but there's greater weight loss for BMI change for women than men. I just am just shocked that it can work at this scale. It was a big country, a lot of Doritos in this country, Cool Ranch producers of this world, and I love them. I do love Cool Ranch Doritos. They have made products that we like for a long time, and yet the pharmaceutical industry seems to have come up with something that is even more powerful than my desire for Cool Ranch Doritos, even though I don't take GLP-1s, although I would if I felt that I needed it. I think it is a-- Helena: It gives you a shield against the food environment. That's what it does. Theodore: It's a massive social and cultural change to think that it could actually move the needle on obesity. That's a big old needle. Helena: It's changing food consumption, it's changing the way food companies are thinking about marketing food. It is going to have a sweeping impact for a while. We'll see. There are more powerful ones coming. The GLP-1s we have right now work on like one or maybe two receptors. There's stuff in the pipeline that works on three receptors. This is just the beginning of the GLP-1 era. We'll have to see where all of this goes. I don't know. Theodore: This is the portable jet pack we were once promised. We're not flying around in our own personal space cars, but we can potentially lose weight through the marvels of modern science. All right. Who'd have funked it. All right, let's move on from that to our next segment, which is forks and knives, the main meal, the big dish, whatever we think is of greatest importance in food, politics, and policy right now. I think this one, Helena, has to do with SNAP waivers granted to states for the purchase of sugary foods. There's been some movement in the federal courts against this. Why don't you tell everybody what that's all about? Helena: Yes, so just yesterday as of our taping this, a federal judge struck down the USDAs approval of these restriction waivers in five states. They've been approved in almost half of US states. This is specifically for five states. The states are Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Those are now off the table. Actually, they had been implemented in three of those states, so Nebraska, Iowa, and West Virginia now have to undo their restrictions that were actually in place. Colorado's waiver was approved by the feds, but has been put on ICE. There's a lot of pushback there. Locally, Tennessee's waiver was supposed to take effect in July, so this does not get rid of all of the SNAP waivers, but we now have a federal court ruling actually saying that USDA exceeded its legal authority. I think it's likely that we will now see more litigation because this gives an opening for more parties to argue that USDA does not have the authority to do this. This is a big deal. Theodore: We will be hearing from the Supremes on this eventually. The SCOTUS folks will-- Helena: We'll see. Theodore: There's a fairly big chance. Let's talk about what the judge based her ruling on. There's a variety of interesting arguments. One of them is, and we'll get to some of the other stuff, but the judge wrote that the pilot programs in these states had waived the statutory definition of food and they were replacing it with a new definition. Now, this is as a very relatively narrow meaning within the context of SNAP, but I do think it's interesting on its face to use that terminology. Can you explain what that meant? Helena: I had heard that there were definitely some folks in the anti-hunger community who made that argument that the definition of food in the context of SNAP and federal law is set and you can't change it. This had been something that was debated and wasn't necessarily agreed on whether or not that was-- I don't think it had been tried in-- Theodore: The judge believed that. Helena: The judge agreed that yes, this was the case. That's a big win for that argument. I thought it was interesting too that the judge is basically saying that USDA didn't follow its own rules for procedure. They didn't allow comment. That is policy making 101. If you don't follow the set procedures, that's just the easiest way to strike down something like this. It was both that they didn't have the legal authority and that they didn't follow the procedure. Theodore: The procedure part of it, that's standard Trump procedure at this point. We've seen that over and over again, that if they had followed the rules in some meaningful way, and these are in other contexts that don't necessarily mean just in food policy, but that if they had followed the rules as they are written, they probably could have done some version of what they wanted to do. I think the authority to do it, that's a more meaningful standard. The judge-- Helena: For sure because yes, if it's just some procedure, you can just go back and like redo what you were supposed to do to begin with. No, this judge is saying that they do not have the authority to do this and they didn't follow procedure. Then there was an interesting line in there where District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who's an Obama appointee, basically notes like this is not about whether or not the pilots are a good idea or not. She writes, "The federal defendants and the states may have a genuine desire to improve the health of SNAP households by encouraging healthy choices at the store, and they can take lawful steps to meet those goals, but what they cannot do is violate the law and their own regulations along the way." Theodore: That was a great statement. Helena: That's a good way there. Theodore: It's a very clear statement. I think another aspect of the ruling that was very interesting to me, and maybe we could talk a little bit about, the judge wrote that when talking about the authority that USDA has to regulate SNAP, she wrote that they are allowed to do things that could increase the efficiency of SNAP, and improve the delivery of SNAP benefits to eligible households. That's a pretty narrow mandate. I would think the average American who pays attention to SNAP, I mean, the average American probably doesn't know anything about how SNAP works unless they are using those benefits, and then they probably do, but it has no genuine mandate as relates to nutrition or to health. It's interesting. Obviously, it makes sense, the Congress legislates what we're supposed to be doing in terms of nutrition and health, and the USDA in this particular case implements it. What do you think of that ruling? What do you think the narrowness of its mandate is-- What do you think of that? Helena: Again, it really does back up. What critics have always said is that USDA doesn't have this authority. They had pointed out that this wasn't part of the specific waiver authority that USDA has. I don't know that every judge would agree with that interpretation. You know how this goes. Maybe it can be interpreted differently. I don't really know, and I didn't go to law school, but it really gives momentum to the side that has been trying to tear these down and stop these. This was on behalf of SNAP participants. They had identified plaintiffs that had made various arguments about needing to access some of these products that were restricted. You could see a scenario where retailers might bring litigation or other community-based groups, I don't know, who all would have standing in this situation, but I can foresee there being more litigation. It follows a pattern where some of these MAHA policies are-- even the states are being stopped in the courts. The West Virginia synthetic food diet ban is under preliminary injunction. I have not seen any movement that would suggest that law can-- I guess, could be fixed in the state legislature to get around this, and that hasn't happened. Texas also, their MAHA labeling law has been also stopped in the courts temporarily, but I'm not sure what the path forward is for that. Even where MAHA has won at the state level, the food industry and others are now being pretty successful in the courts. This SNAP decision is particularly a big L for MAHA because as I've said so many times, their biggest actual policy change that has been made at the federal level has been these waivers. Theodore: Oh, absolutely. Helena: No food additives have been banned. It's not like we have new labeling from FDA. They did change the dietary guidelines, which maybe eventually will be applied to these federal programs. We are waiting to see, and that would be a real change. These SNAP waivers are changing how tens of billions of dollars are spent in grocery stores in these states. This is a really big blow to that policy. We'll see what happens. This is five of the states. It's not all of them, but this is like blood in the water. Theodore: For sure. I also think going back to the specifics of the ruling and how it was debated in court, one of the things that's interesting, because you and I have talked about these specific restrictions before, and whether or not how we feel about the US government trying to protect health and nutrition for average Americans. One of the things that came up in the case by the plaintiffs was that by banning sugary drinks, you might prevent SNAP recipients from getting foods that they need for, say, diabetes. There was a debate in the ruling where they talk about how if you can't say, "Buy high-sugar Coke," it might be bad for you as a person with diabetes. The government had argued they can get fresh fruits like bananas. They would be better for you to get your sugars out of that than from Coke. The judge didn't find that persuasive, saying something along the lines of that may be true, but the people who use SNAP benefits they may not be able to afford fresh bananas as opposed to Coke, or they may lose the autonomy to choose what they need to help with their diabetes. I thought from a MAHA perspective that debate, which is inherently legalistic, I think, rather than based on nutrition, that has to be very, very frustrating to a person who supports a MAHA perspective that the courts are saying, "We need to protect the right for you to drink Coke to protect yourself from diabetes. Where these ultra-processed foods, these sugary drinks, they might be the things that have contributed to your diabetes in the first place." Helena: I think the folks within the administration saw those arguments being made in the original lawsuit, and they were like, "This can't be serious." You are arguing that you need access to soda specifically for diabetes when that is not what a health professional would recommend. Bananas are cheaper than Coke, actually. Even at a 7-Eleven when they're charging too much for bananas on the counter, they're still going to be cheaper than a Coca-Cola. Theodore: That doesn't strike me as a good faith argument. That's one of those cases where the good faith doesn't work for me. I don't know if I understand that, but the judge accepted it. Helena: I'm not an expert in how you get your blood sugar up. This bigger issue of whether or not SNAP, which is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the N stands for nutrition, whether or not SNAP has to be a nutrition-promoting program is, I think, the bigger issue here. There are some health advocates who want Congress to more clearly make nutrition part of the mandate of SNAP. That would maybe change the waiver authority. By the way, the Senate is supposed to come out with a farm bill this afternoon, or the Senate Republicans are supposed to come out with their farm bill this afternoon. I don't know if there will be anything specifically on SNAP waivers, but this is a place where Congress, if this were important to lawmakers, they could clarify all of that. Theodore: That's more of the if we lived in the bizarro land in which a farm bill could pass and there were all these things happening. Helena: I'm not betting on the farm bill passing. Theodore: Let's just get this out right. Today it is June 23rd right now as we are taping. I think when this comes out on the 30th, events will not have gotten ahead of us, and we will be still with that farm bill. Helena: The safe bet is no farm bill. Theodore: One other and final thing about SNAP fairing in the courts, this is earlier in the month. I didn't notice. I don't know if this came across your plate, but another judge blocked the US Department of Agriculture from withholding some billions of dollars in federal funds from states unless they complied with Trump administration policies on immigration enforcement, transgender rights, and other similar issues. Did you hear about this one? The USDA was trying to tie money from the federal government for SNAP to those issues in ways I think we've seen with the negotiations with universities and things like that. I had not heard about that, but it just seems to me yet another struggle. This is not a MAHA struggle, this is a Trump struggle, and this is one of the ways in which I do think they diverge, but the fact is you have to do what you were talking about in the Senate. You got to legislate. You cannot just say you're going to do things and think there will be no pushback from it. Helena: There's been some reporting that-- and I can't remember which outlet first had this, but there has been some reporting to suggest that Trump administration officials had been telling states that there's been an infusion in rural healthcare funds through the big reconciliation package that Trump likes to call The One Big Beautiful Bill. I think they set aside something like $50 billion for rural healthcare because everyone was really worried that these very big cuts to Medicaid spending would harm rural hospitals. The Trump administration was-- I don't know if they're still doing this, but at one point, it came out that they were urging states to apply for SNAP restrictions waivers if they wanted those rural funds. I don't know if there was litigation over this, but I think you could make the argument that that is perhaps an inappropriate use of those funds. Theodore: I think the technical term for that is dirty pool right there. Helena: I don't know if it's technically illegal. I don't know what the rules are about this, but I think states could have felt coerced to do this, but I don't know. I don't know how many states factored that into their equation, or if it was just chatter about it, but it's complicated, the situation. I don't know how many more states are trying to get SNAP restrictions waivers, or if this will be a situation where, now that we've seen this court ruling, maybe it will cool off some of the interest. I'm not sure. Theodore: Yes, it's such an interesting range of states. Having the interests of West Virginia and Colorado align in this way is pretty strange to me. Helena: Colorado had a really big fight internally, and theirs is on hold now, before this ruling. I don't know the fate of Colorado's push to get restrictions, or whether or not that could still happen regardless of the court decision. We'll see. That was one of two blue states. The other one is Hawaii. I'm actually not sure on the status of Hawaii. For anyone interested, USDA does keep a pretty up-to-date webpage where, if you just Google USDA SNAP restrictions, the first thing that comes up, they have a map, and they have a table of how every single state that has applied is affected. You can go read how it will work. It will give you the implementation dates. It's actually very handy. If anyone wants to nerd out on that, you should go do that. Theodore: Pretty rare for the Trump administration. The dissemination of information on websites is not a strong suit of the Trump administration. Maybe if you-- Helena: I don't think it's their number one priority is websites. Theodore: No, it's definitely not. Helena: There's a lot of broken links on the FDA website. I will tell you that. Theodore: For sure. With that all in mind, and I think a little PSA for the USDA website is not amiss, given all the somewhat less than pleasant things we had to say about them. Helena, why don't we move on to our final section, which is the good vibe, something that's happening out there, all in the food world or otherwise, that we actually like. I think you had a good one this time so why don't you [crosstalk]-- Helena: Oh, yes. I've been bad about coming with a good vibe. Theodore: No. You had a great one last time. Don't be so hard on yourself. Helena: I also got emails about the mosquito reduction efforts. Theodore: That thing was awesome. That was a great good vibe. Helena: [laughs] If anyone has questions, well, no, you don't need to ask me questions. Just Google mosquito doom bucket. Everyone in the Washington area should be implementing these. Theodore: Google mosquito doom bucket. Helena: Mosquito doom bucket. Find a great extension website, preferably the nerdiest gardener you can find showing you how to do this on YouTube, and you should do it. No, my good vibe right now is I am fully in the algorithm that serves me only World Cup fans discovering American food. It is the most joyful, fun. I've watched every video. There's the Congolese fans discovering Texas Roadhouse. There is the Japanese fans going crazy over Texas barbecue. Obviously, the Scots drinking Boston dry, hilarious. So funny and everyone's like, "Can they stay forever? These guys are so fun." There's so many examples. The guys going into Walmart, the Frenchman who fell in love with Buc-ee's. It's so fun. Theodore: The Buc-ee's guy is great. I think my favorite actually is the British woman who takes a bite of Popeye's chicken and starts to cry. Helena: Oh, my God. I haven't seen that one. I thought I'd seen all of them. It's really fun. It's also such a reminder that there's just a lot of people who have not been to the US, especially outside of the big cities. Watching this discovery of all of these different pockets of different American culture and cuisines has been really fun. I'm also a little bit worried that these folks are going to feel quite unwell based on what they're eating. Theodore: Yes, they're eating pretty well. The free refills, you see their eyes light up, and they're like, "Wait a minute. I can just keep having more." I don't know if this is all over-- Helena: The chips. Theodore: My family lives in Mississippi, and they have free refills there. One of the things-- this was not when I was a kid. This is more recent. You're at dinner, or whatever, or lunch at a restaurant, you're getting your free refills, you're ready to be floated out the door because you've had 14 different iced teas. They then ask you, do you want another free refill today to go. There are levels of free refill. I don't even know if these foreign visitors, these tourists, have experienced the to-go cup giant size. Helena: That's the other genre of these videos of them ordering a Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee, and it's the size of their torso. They're like, "What is going on." It's both ridiculous, it's fun, it's also in some ways concerning when you're like, "wow." They're so shocked by the portions and the serve and even the sizes of things you can buy at Walmart, which we're just very normalized to. I think it's been fun. Theodore: What's the slogan? The slogan here, America, big, sweet, bad for you. That's the take-home for them. [laughs] Helena: Yes. It's been joyful, though. I think overall, also, I'm from the Seattle area originally, and watching all these cities, but particularly Seattle, just be so excited to host World Cup games. It's been really, really fun. Theodore: I know they're particularly psyched out in Seattle for some reason. Helena: Yes. People are like, "What? I didn't know Seattle was patriotic." Come on. It's a reminder that it does not matter. I think, obviously, there's lots of blue cities that are very much getting into the go USA spirit here. Theodore: We'll get back to binging on videos-- Helena: What's your good vibe? Do you have one? Theodore: No, I'm jumping onto yours. Yours is good too. Helena: I just recommend everyone getting their algorithms trained to serve them all this content. It's just fit in delight. Theodore: All right. In that case, let's move on, and we'll close things for this episode. Before we do that, Helena, as we always do, I'll give you a chance to tell everybody about your newsletter, which we cited very closely today in this episode. Why don't you tell everybody about Food Fix? Helena: If you're not on the list, go get on the list. What are you even doing? foodfix.co or Google Food Fix Newsletter. It should be the first thing that comes up. Get on the list. You can read it every Friday for free. There's just plenty going on. You could have known all about the obesity fact check if you'd read it last week. Just saying. Theodore: Would've made this episode redundant. In that case, I agree. Helena: Some people prefer listening. They prefer podcasts, which is fine, which is good. You do you. Theodore: As they should. Let's leave it at that. I will catch you in a couple of weeks, Helena. This was a great conversation, and I thank you as always. Helena: All right. Talk to you soon. Theodore: Forked is a production of the Food & Environment Reporting Network. Our executive producers are me, Theodore Ross, and Tom Laskaway. Our sound engineer is Lauren Newsom. Our producer and video producer is Amanda Vacari. Our hosts are Helena Bottemiller Evich and me, Theodore Ross. To find out more about FERN and donate to support our independent, non-profit reporting, go to www.thefern.org. [END OF AUDIO]