Latest / REAP/SOW / Reporter Michael Grunwald tells us why he has hope for our food system future
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- This transcript was exported on 02/04/2026 - 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. Our guest on this episode is Michael Grunwald, a journalist and the author of We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate. He's also well known for his opinion columns in The New York Times, and his writing often takes on, well, the sacred cows of the progressive environmental movement, CAFOs, chemicals, veganism, and more. We're happy to have him on. Theodore: Helena, welcome back. How are you? Michael, welcome to the show. We're very happy to have you here today. What should we talk about first, Helena? There's so much going on. I think we should start with a double-take that is about something in the news a lot, which is the rollout of the SNAP waivers in the different states. Tell me a little bit about what's happening there with the Twixes and granolas and cakes and ice cream and all that good stuff. Helena Bottemiller Evich: Yes. In the last few days, there's been a ton of mainstream press attention to this. I think we had Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Atlantic. There's been all these big features about what's in, what's out of the handful of states that have already implemented waivers. These are specifically trying to limit what SNAP participants can buy with their EBT benefits. Every state's different. There's a bunch of charts out there now that show you how complex this has become for retailers and also for consumers. It's just a wild situation. I don't know if we want to get into specifics, but it's quite interesting. [crosstalk] Theodore: I do want to get into one characterization. There's a nice, I thought, depiction of this in The New York Times a couple of days ago, and it said, "In Iowa, food stands can be used to purchase ice cream at a convenience store, but not a fruit cup with a fork attached. Next month, consumers in Idaho will be able to use supplemental nutrition assistance programs, SNAP benefits, to buy a Twix candy bar, but not a flourless granola bar with chocolate chips. And in April, government assistance can be used in Virginia to pay for sweetened iced tea and lemonade, but not some brands of sparkling sweetened fruit juice. The opposite, of course, will be true in Texas." Michael, I know you're not really an expert on these subjects, but I imagine you may eat junk food every once in a while. What do you think about these SNAP waivers? What does it do to you? Michael Grunwald: It's funny. There's this idea where, personally, you're supposed to say, well, MAHA and RFK, they're terrible about vaccines, but they have some interesting ideas about food and Ag. Because of the book I've written and the research I've done, I'm the guy saying, actually, MAHA, and particularly RFK, is terrible on food and Ag. I disagree with their-- I don't like the seed oil moral panic. I think GMOs are fine. On this, I'm actually with them. It seems like it's been a bit of a cluster of a rollout, but the idea that if the government is going to pay for food stamps, which I think they should, to help low-income or struggling families afford food, I think it is perfectly legitimate to say not the super crap that we all know is crap. Helena: Yes, I definitely hear that argument a lot. I think it is one of the things that polls pretty well across party lines. Just this idea that, again, if the government's buying the food, not that we should be telling people exactly what to eat, but if the government is buying it, should we be subsidizing the foods that might be contributing to diet-related disease? We're also paying for the healthcare costs on the other end, Medicare, Medicaid, and so there is this problem with incentives, I think. It's a more than $100 billion program. It's not a small amount of money. There's been some really interesting-- Michael: It's not banning. They're not saying, we're not banning soda, we're not banning Twinkies, we're not banning Doritos. They're saying, maybe the taxpayers shouldn't pay for that since we're paying for the nasty stuff on the back end. Helena: I should note, Doritos are fine so far. I don't know that any state has specifically targeted Doritos. It's mostly been focused on sugary things. This gets into the complexity of, there's this great chart at The Wall Street Journal, and it goes through Coca-Cola, Gatorade, M&Ms, and a tub of ice cream. Spoiler alert, tub of ice cream, ice cream is fine. It's not banned in any state. I'm sure that has nothing to do with the formidable dairy lobby, nothing at all. Ice cream's cool for now. I'm not sure if other states are targeting it or not, but I'm going to guess they're not. M&Ms, though, are banned in Iowa and Indiana, but not Nebraska, Utah, and West Virginia. Maybe some of that's that they're doing candy or not. As a consumer, you can understand why there would be confusion about this. Theodore: There's going to be that confusion, though. Helena: There's going to be some state-added stigma to the experience of using your EBT benefits because you might have to put something back or it gets called out at the register that this isn't SNAP-eligible. Theodore: I'm sorry to interrupt you. That confusion, that potential for stigma, we can debate all of those things. The thing that I'm curious about, and I can't speak to the deep, dark soul of RFK Jr. or why he might do something, why the USDA does something, I can't speak to that. Helena: Technically, this is under- [crosstalk] Theodore: It's USDA. I know. I know. Helena: Yes, yes, yes, but he loves to talk about this. Yes. Theodore: Exactly. The implementation itself, what we're seeing around the country, those contradictions that we're talking about, my personal perspective is that those are not unintentional. When you have an administration like this giving away these waivers, their belief is not, oh, well, can we fix the food systems for low-income people? What they're really doing is furthering a GOP consistent pattern over many, many years, many, many administrations of undermining SNAP. One of the ways you can undermine it is through chaos. That's what we're seeing. Now, again, I can't speak to what is in their heart and why they're doing one thing or another, but you look at the impact that is happening right now. Those contradictions will keep people out of the program, I think, in certain kinds of ways, whether it's through stigma or confusion or grocery stores not wanting to deal with this process at all and opting out, and all of the above. To me, it's not just about should the government be subsidizing soda, which I think you can make the case that they shouldn't, but it is also about what's actually happening and the falsehood of the states being the laboratories of democracy and MAHA getting these wins and look at how fantastic this all is. Helena: Well, I really want them to study this. Each state is supposed to have an evaluation. Some will be more rigorous than others. There are a bunch of very legit researchers I was learning recently are very much looking at this. They're going to be studying what happens. What do you substitute it with? Does it actually have an impact on consumer behavior? Those are going to be really important because if you're going to add stigma to the program, to keep that going, you're going to have to show some benefit, you would think. We don't know. We don't know what's going to go-- I do think it's important to remember that this used to be a Democrat thing. This used to be a liberal public health thing. Now, to watch mostly Republican but not exclusively Republican states take this up, it just shows you how much things have realigned here. I do think it's easier for them to go after SNAP because of the GOP inclination to try to attack safety net programs, that's obviously part of this, but it is so interesting to see Republicans being the ones that are doing things that are bad for Coca-Cola, that are bad for the stocks that are in many people's portfolios. That's an anti-business thing as well. It's really interesting to watch it play out that way. Michael: I would just say that those of us who do care about government, Ted, you're probably right about what the Trump people are probably trying to do. They're trying to make SNAP look bad. Another thing that makes SNAP look bad is this idea that poor people are spending all our money on crap. In the same way that those of us who have real concerns about farm subsidies, we hate the idea that we're just throwing money at rich foreigners to grow on- [crosstalk] Helena: With very few strings attached. Michael: We're saying, hey, if we're going to give $20 billion a year to some of the wealthiest people in rural America, maybe we should attach some strings. We should have some conditions, some environmental conditions, some economic conditions. You choose it. I do think that those of us who believe in government should want to, setting aside what the Trump people are doing, if you want to have a program to help low-income people afford food, you should try to make it as good a program as possible that works well and that also is something that people are going to be proud of and not pissed off about. I do think that this is one area where it's like, huh, it is a little bit hard to justify whether or not you think sugar is poison. This is one thing I actually do agree with RFK about. Helena: He literally says it's poison. Michael: It's the only nutrition opinion I have is that- Helena: Hot take. Michael: -sugar is poison. On the farm side, we do all kinds of things to help the sugar industry. We probably shouldn't be doing it on the food side either. Theodore: I definitely think there's consensus. Or not consensus, but there is a groundswell of belief that this is an okay thing to do. Again, I'm going to go back to that Times article, and they quote this guy, Dion Pitt, the owner of Logan Super Foods. It's a grocery store in Logan, Iowa, and he said, and I just like the language here, it's like, "Pop, candy, that kind of stuff, it should never have been included all along," Mr. Pitt said, "but the juices and the granola bars, I kind of wish they had left that stuff alone." I guess everybody gets to have an opinion about nutrition. For me, I just like pop. I don't say pop. I'm not from a pop part of the country, so I don't say pop. That's interesting to me. The local grocery being called Super Foods is pretty awesome too. We could talk about this a lot more, but I think we should move on to our second section of the episode, which is Forks and Knives. Michael, if you don't know, it's the main meal, the big thing that we want to talk about this week. It's already been out in the news already, which is the new dietary guidelines that were released a couple of weeks ago. We wanted to bring you on to talk about the role of protein in the dietary guide. Meat, it's all about meat. Tell us how you feel now that you see the reintroduction of real food into our diets, although I'm-- Helena: Debatable. [crosstalk] Theodore: Yes. I'm very, very skeptical of that term. How does someone with your interest in the food system globally and its impact on climate, what do you think about the dietary guidelines as it relates to meat? Michael: Well, remember, I know just enough about nutrition to be dangerous, but my main focus on food is the environmental impact. My book is called We Are Eating the Earth, and it's because agriculture is eating the earth, and it's mostly meat that's eating the earth. Agriculture now covers 40% of the land on Earth. It's like all of Asia plus all of Europe. We lose a soccer field worth of forest to agriculture every six seconds, and that is a meat story. About three-quarters of our agricultural land is either pasture or it's growing crops for animals to eat before we eat them. When you see RFK and the Trump administration valorizing this idea that you've got to eat meat all the time, setting aside, and this, you guys will know more than I do, red meat ain't that great for you. It's fine in moderation, but certainly, there's a lot of evidence that if you eat too much steak, you eat too many burgers, that can cause a problem. The average American eats the equivalent of three burgers a week. It's because of the incredible power of the meat industry that when you see that pyramid, you see those big, massive steaks right on top. Theodore: I just want to say, maybe I'm not an average American, but I would love to eat three burgers a week. I don't, but it would be great if I could. If I could justify that in terms of my waistline and my health, I would love to eat three burgers a week. [crosstalk] Michael: I'm enough of a dork to point out that if we only ate two burgers a week, we would save a Massachusetts worth of land every year. Just saying. Just saying. Theodore: I'm on board with that, too. I'm on board with two burgers a week. Michael: I don't tell anybody what to eat. I've cut out beef and lamb because they really are the baddies. Chicken is way worse than lentils or beans. You have to feed nine calories worth of plants to a chicken to get one calorie worth of meat, but cattle are really the baddies. They use 10 times as much land as chicken, and they generate 10 times as many carbon emissions. This may be good for nutrition, I'm not saying, but this is really bad for the Earth pyramid. Helena: It's interesting to think about to what extent-- first of all, Americans don't follow the dietary guidelines, so there's that. We have to say that just out of the gate. We've been told to eat way more fruits and vegetables and all the things for a long time, and people are not doing that. We don't really follow them, but there's no question that the message coming from the Trump administration is that they're literally saying the war on saturated fat is over. They say that, but then you look at the details, and it's like the dietary guidelines still advise people to keep their saturated fat intake at no more than 10% of calories, which is really hard, if not almost impossible to do, if you're eating a fair amount of whole-fat dairy or ribeyes, for example. Theodore: You're not going to get there with three burgers a week. That ain't going to happen. [crosstalk] Helena: They're trying to have it both ways, in a sense. I think the message is still, though, to most people, if you're on social media, it's that butter is back, steak is back, all these things. Then, when you look at the details, it's not really that much different. There is a big change in the amount of protein overall they're recommending people consume. It's almost double for some people, and that is substantial. When you dig into the details, it's not really fundamentally a huge shift in terms of the amount of servings of dairy and meat and fruits and vegetables and grains. They have portrayed it as this reckoning with institutional knowledge that we were all lied to, and this is this huge departure. The big departure is really slamming highly processed foods. That is much more explicit. In saying eat real foods, no question that is a major vibe shift, narrative shift, all that, but the message doesn't really match the details. That's just one of those things that you're like, wow, they're just out there with that contradiction, and MAHA's full of contradictions. Now here we are again with more of that. Theodore: The other contradiction, too, and Michael, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this, is the idea of, well, we can get protein. We don't have to get protein from our yummy ribeyes and burgers. We can get it from plant-based protein and lab-grown meats, but the MAHA folks, they don't like that either. I'm curious what you think about that aspect of it. Michael: Yes, it's really interesting. Obviously, I think this is political. They're trying to align themselves with this sort of like the meatfluencer-- Helena: It's like the masculine manosphere. Michael: Yes, exactly. The bro podcaster, the Joe Rogan who's- Helena: Carnivore diet. Michael: -on the caveman diet type stuff. I get it. As if there's a real difference between using seed oils and beef tallow. It's nonsense. Theodore: I like the way you say that. If they all said it like that, I might eat more beef tallow fries just because you say it with such enthusiasm. Helena: They're delicious, but it's like, don't pretend they're-- Michael: Right. You've got the Health and Human Services secretary pushing french fries as long as they're made with beef tallow and Coca-Cola as long as it's made with real sugar. We're really in the upside-down. I do think the war on fake meat, that they call it, is really similar. It's funny. In my book, I quoted Kevin Hall, who you guys know is a real nutrition scientist, and in some ways really kind of led the fight against ultra-processed food. I think he kind of helped coin that phrase. [crosstalk] Helena: He didn't think there'd be a difference, and then he learned-- [crosstalk] Theodore: Who resigned from the government, essentially, effectively in protest of what the Trump administration was doing. Michael: Exactly. If you think of Kevin Hall, you think of the guy who doesn't like ultra-processed foods. When I talk to him about this kind of another moral panic about these, oh, the plant-based, it's processed garbage, it's not real meat. He said, no, this is not what I meant by ultra-processed foods. No, it's not health food. If you look at the early studies, they show that plant-based meat is about as healthy as meat-based meat. In any case, the real ultra-processed crap is the stuff we were talking about in the first segment. It's the Twinkies. It's the crap that everybody knows is crap. One thing about plant-based meats, as well as cultivated meat, is that right now, the dogs haven't liked the food because they don't taste as good and they're still more expensive. They will, over time, get tastier, they will get cheaper, and they can get healthier. They're already starting to add more protein, for example, which is something people want. The cow is a pretty mature technology, and this stuff isn't. I think they are trying to put out this idea that, oh, any technology in your food is somehow unnatural and gross and is going to make people laugh at you in the gym. A lot of it is nonsense. All of our food has technology in it, including the modern calf. They've been bred. Helena: Even just setting that aside, though, the question of whether or not [a][b]consumers eventually adopt these plant-based, I call them alt-meats, because it's different. They are taking processing and trying to replace burgers and processed meats, and they're trying to put it in fast food and stuff. That has not worked super well. You could look at Beyond Meat, I think they just launched a beverage. They're trying to pivot. It's not gone super well. Michael: They went from $250 a share to $1 a share. They're having some trouble. Helena: I'm not good at math and I'm not a finance person, but that sounds really bad. Theodore: That doesn't sound good. Helena: It's been not good, obviously, for them. Even looking at how beans are treated in the pyramid, or tofu, the Trump administration released a PSA video. I don't know if you guys saw it around the dietary guidelines. You should definitely go watch it. They flash images of a ranch and meat, all the things. There's one split-second flash, and I'm like, was that tofu or was it chicken? You have that moment of, did they let tofu slide into the gate? Beans are on the upside-down triangle, yield sign, pyramid, whatever you want to call it. They're on there. One of the confusing parts is there's a little bowl of rice that has some beans on and everyone's been like, what is that? Is that oatmeal with raisins? They can't even tell. Part of the visual messaging is just not coming through like it is for steak. [crosstalk] Theodore: Or the visual messaging is coming through exactly as they would like it to be, which is-- Helena: Oh, no, I'm not arguing. I think it is intentional. No, I think it is intentional. Again, it doesn't even really match the document. It's this thing where it's not like beans have been put in the doghouse by the Trump administration, but they are not going to be leaning in with that message. When you go to realfood.gov, which is very well designed, it was done by, is his name Joe Gebbia? Who co-founded Airbnb? He's the chief design officer. I think he's a billionaire. Anyway, realfood.gov is very slick, and at the very top it's broccoli, steak, and whole milk. That's the mix at the top. Beans are not there for a reason. That is not part of the narrative of the MAHA nutrition. I think if you find individual influencers within MAHA, they'll eat beans. They're not anti-bean, but it's just not part of the narrative that they want to put forward. So much of it is this reflexive, you've been lied to, we're the only ones who know the way. There's this real subversive thing that they have to do as part of this. It's just fascinating though when you, again, look at the details and you're like, well, this isn't fundamentally that much different. Definitely, the highly processed food thing, again, that message is a huge loss for them. The consumer packaged goods industry got absolutely rolled in these dietary guidelines. Saying it clearly, avoid these foods, which make up the vast majority of the American food supply, is a huge deal, no doubt. Again, it's the details, we didn't actually flip over the table, but they very intentionally flipped over the pyramid in this way that sends a lot of messages. Theodore: That's a pretty good image of Jesus and the moneylenders in the temple, flipping over the table. That is not what happened. Helena: News flash, Americans are not consuming enough fruits and vegetables. They're not consuming enough fiber. Huge, huge missing part of the American diet. I will predict that this will not fix that. Although they are important, they drive school meals, but the Trump administration will have to regulate to implement those changes. That's the big thing to watch is will they actually do that? Michael: I think you're really smart to talk about this as vibes-based. This idea that this is somehow we're appealing to your idea that they're out to get us. They're screwing us. Because obviously, what happens inside a cow's stomach, it's a process. A lot of the chemicals that the meat industry has put out in their advertisements, where they're trying to trash plant-based meat, it's like niacinamide that sounds like a felony. It's a form of vitamin B that is also found in beef. Obviously, beef is one ingredient, and it's not processed. It just goes to this idea. It's not really science-based. It's like, Joe Rogan loves it. This is the kind of stuff that you want to look at before you go pump iron at the gym. Theodore: Also, it is very confusing. I was looking at the Instagram feed of a particular influencer who had done a visual. They were breaking down the ingredients of a particular product. I don't want to get into the product. One of the things they were pointing at, some of it, you look at their point and they were saying, well, this thing has soybean oil in it, as if that was equally as bad as whatever plastic that was found in the bread part of it. I was like, I put soybean oil sometimes on my salad. Is that bad? Then they were pointing to something that said high-fructose corn syrup, and it appeared, I couldn't tell if they were pointing at the pickle or the tomato, and I was like, well, what does that mean? Can I still eat this thing or can I not eat it? The language surrounding it was completely hysterical, that you were being poisoned, poisoned by this particular large company. Yes, that is definitely a vibe. Michael: There is no vibe more important in America than the meat vibe.[c][d] That's our culture. We vote on these issues three times a day, and we have voted for meat. I quoted a pollster in my book who said that taxes or other restrictions on meat are the least popular policies he has ever polled in his entire career. His quote was that it was like veterans' benefits for ISIS. Helena: That was his quote? Michael: Yes. You can imagine that it's good politics for these guys who, whether or not, take them at their word, sure, they actually believe the nutrition stuff that they're saying, but they definitely know that lining up with, we're the ones who are for meat, and then the other side, they're the ones who want to ban cheeseburgers and force everybody to eat bugs with their green new scam and their hoity-toity. You can see where they're coming from. Obviously, it's been very good politics because it appeals not only to the people in the manosphere. It also appeals to the people in my yoga class who feel like this is somehow more natural, somehow more wholesome, somehow better for their children. Helena: Well, I do think it's important to say, though, that even though the plant-based protein people, the alt-protein people, feel very unfairly looped into the ultra-processed foods concern, panic, whatever you want to call it, we do have to note that the vast majority of the American food supply is ultra-processed, and every country that has adopted the similar food supply does get chronic disease rates that go up in ways that are completely unsustainable. Part of why we are so unmoored in this debate and it's so confusing is that we have dedicated so little to the research that Kevin Hall was doing to really get into, what is it? Is it the processing? Is it the nutritional profile of these foods? We have lumped everything together, and the government's trying to come up with a definition now for ultra-processed foods because right now, the way we look at it doesn't include nutrient profile. It's just the level of processing. That's why this is so confusing is that there is a [crosstalk] problem with the American-- Well, we don't know. There is a problem with the American food supply. We are really sick. We do have really high rates of diet-related diseases. These things are true, but once you get into what do we do about that, how do we advise people, it gets harder because we haven't, I think, dedicated the resources to really dive into, like, are there certain ultra-processed foods we shouldn't be eating? Is it all of them? Do we just need to go back to scratch cooking and the school meals program? These are actually questions we need to answer now that the dietary guidelines say this. These are multi-billion dollar programs that feed tens of-- just school lunch alone is 30 million kids a day. It's the largest restaurant chain in America, and it's not close. We have to now look at, okay, what does that mean? Anyway, there's a whole backstory of lack of funding, that is why we're like, what does it mean? Should we not eat all of them? We have a total lack of research. It's actually a real problem. Theodore: Those changes, that kind of introspection or research or any of that kind of thing, that's not on the table right now. Helena: They say it is, but I don't know that it's actually happening. It's a question I have. Theodore: Well, why don't we do this? Since we've now, we've hit the deer, we know they're not going to figure this all out, or they probably won't figure this all out, why don't we turn our attention to our final section, which is the good vibe, where we try to think of something that you could take a little tiny modicum of hope out of-- now, Michael, normally we all come up with one, but I know that you have one that you wanted to talk about that I think maybe we should give a little more time and attention to. Why don't you lead the way? Michael: Well, look, because now I'm [inaudible 00:30:08] or famous. It's like, I'm the guy who's out here saying that-- even energy and climate, as bad as it is, we at least know what to do about it, and we're actually starting to do it. 90% of our new power plants around the world last year were zero emissions. We're starting to figure this stuff out, but food is such a disaster, food and agriculture. It's getting worse every year. We're eating more meat every year. I researched dozens of really promising solutions for this book, I spent five years doing it, and none of them have any traction. Not plant-based meats, not cultivated meats, which are banned in Florida. Not alternative pesticides, alternative fertilizers, all kinds of cool stuff, and nothing is really moving forward that quickly. What I wanted to talk about a little bit is the reason the main character in my book says sometimes he's tempted to tell everybody to euthanize their children. The reason I don't think that is because what was very cool was just, obviously, it's a really big problem, this eating of the earth, but there are so many brilliant and incredibly dedicated people working on it that it just makes you feel really excited. As a species, we're not that awesome at making sacrifices for the good of the planet or even the good of our health, but we're really good at inventing stuff and solving big problems that we put our mind to. I see these scientists who are working on biopesticides that use the RNA technology behind the COVID vaccines to constipate beetles to death, so you don't have to nuke an entire field with pesticides. You can just send in Jason Bourne to kill the bad guys. Or people at the University of Illinois who are reinventing photosynthesis. This technology that's been working pretty well for 3 billion years, maintaining all life on earth, but they're using artificial intelligence and gene editing and big data to essentially engineer away some of its inefficiencies. They think they're going to maybe increase crop yields 50% in 20 years. I just think the thing about these big problems is they start to feel unsolvable, but the fact that the most awesome among us are actually trying to solve them makes me think that at some point, the gap between where we are and where we need to be is going to close. I don't believe that just because the problem is so big, it has to be solved. When I do see all these people who are actually trying to solve it, I do feel at some point people are going to say, huh, maybe public policy and individual behavior and the actual technology will come along. That's my happy vibe for the day. Helena: That is a happy vibe. Theodore: I don't think I can top that. Helena: Well, I'm just glad for my children that we do not have to go down that road. I'm glad that the kids are back in school here in DC because, woof, speaking of potential climate change impacts, we're covered in ice here. It's been terrible. Michael: I live in Miami. I'm not sure. What is that ice- [crosstalk] Helena: It's wild. We have three-foot, four-foot drifts of just solid ice, and they're saying it's going to be here until March. Some cars will not be out. Anyway. Michael: We just have iguanas falling from the trees. Theodore: I'm going to give a little-- we're going a little further afield for the good vibe. My good vibe is for the folks who just never dug their car out in New York. Helena: That's me. Theodore: I'm like, "Are you kidding? That your car's not going to work. Do you not like your car? Are you looking for a new car?" Helena: Well, we got the snow off the car. The car is not buried. Theodore: I'm talking about the people. I live in Brooklyn. People park on the street, or many people park on the street. You see people still buried in there, up to the door of their car with snow, and I'm like, "Either you don't live here, you hate your car, you're an eternal optimist. I don't know what it is." Those are the folks, they need my good vibe more than I do, I think. I will give it to them. Okay. Michael, thank you so much for this conversation. This has been really great and very entertaining and very educational. Helena, I know you do this newsletter thing. Why don't you tell us all about that? Helena: Yes. Anyone who's not already reading Food Fix, go get on the list, foodfix.co. You can read my newsletter every week. It's informative, wonky, but also fun. Theodore: I agree. I read it myself. Michael: Me too. I love it. Thank you for doing it. Helena: I'm so glad. Thank you. Theodore: Again, thank you to both of you. Helena, I'll see you in a couple of weeks. It's always a pleasure. Helena: Thank you, guys. Theodore: 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 Lauren Newson. Our producer and video producers are Maya Okindo and Amanda Vicari. 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. [00:35:33] [END OF AUDIO] Forked ep.15 2.10.26_mixdown.mp3 (Completed: 02/04/2026) Transcript by GoTranscript.com [a]@dana@thefern.org [b]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FJehqTnxq40IvFCTe2zw0wzi7vI6rdsI/view?usp=drive_link [c]@dana@thefern.org [d]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N60FphpB0eskt0YFBCY_lPYYW8bwNvF2/view?usp=drive_link