Latest / REAP/SOW / Food safety Mission Accomplished – or not so much?
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- This transcript was exported on 04/02/2026 - 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. How would you feel if someone told you one of the most pressing problems in food safety in this country was fixed? Now how would you feel if you learned that that wasn't really true? What if I told you that the average American really cares about this stuff, maybe even more than food prices? For answers to these questions and more, let's dive in. Helena, welcome back to Forked. How are you? Helena Bottemiller Evich: I'm doing well. How are you? Theodore: It's only been two weeks since I've seen you, but it feels like more than two weeks. I'm so glad to be back. Helena: A lot's going on every week. Theodore: A lot is happening. Before we jump into all the food politics and policy stuff, I want to mention a pretty cool thing that's going to be happening. It's going to be on April 15th, and it's another live taping of the Forked podcast. It's going to be down in DC. It's at the GW, George Washington University's Planet Forward Summit on April 15th at 6:00 PM at the Jack Morton Auditorium in Washington, DC. If you want to come, you should go onto Eventbrite and reserve yourself a spot right now. I'll be joined there by Sean Sherman, the sous-chef, who I will definitely get better at pronouncing all those S's by the time we get onto the stage. He's a James Beard Award winning chef. He's also a cookbook author, and he's really known for his innovative understanding of indigenous food systems and applying that to fine dining. Our other guest will be Leah Douglas, who is a Reuters correspondent on the MAHA beat, among other things. She also used to be a staff member here at FERN. I will say one truly sad thing, and that is Helena will not be there. Now, Helena can confirm or deny as she likes. My understanding is she's on a secret spy mission that she cannot comment on, and she cannot tell us why she'll be there. You don't have to say anything, Helena. Your secrets are safe with me. Helena: Yes, mom duties call. I'll say that. Yes. Theodore: All right, fair enough. Make sure you come and check it out. On our website, there's going to be information to it. It's at www.thefern.org. It's going to be a lot of fun. All right, so let's do it. Helena, why don't we jump right in and get onto the double take? Now that, as you know, is something that is happening in the news of food policy and politics. It just makes you do a double take because it's surprising. I think we should start with RFK Jr. going out into the media and saying that the grass loophole, the generally regarded as safe loophole, had been closed. Then almost immediately, everybody in the news say that that is not true. Why don't you tell us what happened there? Helena: Yes. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went on a podcast, as he does often. I was not familiar with this podcast. Theodore: We're going to talk about it in a second. Helena: Okay, I don't know anything about the [crosstalk]. Theodore: We're going to get to it. I got a lot to say about this podcast. Let's go. Helena: I think it's a wellness podcast, which tracks a lot of wellness podcasts. He went on this podcast and he said that the administration had closed the grass loophole. We've talked about grass before, generally recognized as safe. People will maybe recognize this term. It is essentially the pathway we have that most food chemicals get to market. It does not require FDA oversight. Food chemicals can get on the market without FDA oversight or approval. This is something that a lot of people do not like. Consumers are really shocked by this and they want to close the so-called grass loophole. The administration is moving forward on a rule. There's a proposed rule sitting at the White House for review where it has been since December. They are working on this, but you cannot use the past tense because it hasn't happened yet. Theodore: Hasn't happened. All it has to do is get through the White House, get through a million lawsuits, and then be implemented. It's just like that. Helena: Actually, more than that. There's more steps than that. They get through the White House. They have to propose a rule. Then they have to take comment. Then they have to review those. Then they have to issue a final rule. Then litigation can begin, especially if they violated the procedures for doing so, which is a very common industry attack on these types of things. Long road ahead. To say, in past tense, we have done this, is just demonstrably false. Actually, I think I was the first person to flag that. Love that the New York Times picked that right up. Love that others did as well. Great. We all should be listening to these remarks. I feel like a broken record at this point, but I feel so much of my job is just flagging the difference between rhetoric and action and very clearly delineating where those go apart from each other. That was a very clear example. Kennedy has made some other claims recently. In addition to the normal ones that everyone hears all the time that are very much part of his stump speech, he claimed at CPAC that they'd revolutionized military food already, which was not true. No. It's a similar thing. They have some pilots going at certain bases. He just very much exaggerated the scale of that. What else did he say? [crosstalk] He also didn't correct his interviewee who was saying the administration was removing ingredients from formula, which isn't true. He also said that they were launching cooking classes, which maybe they are doing something small, but the administration has completely eliminated SNAP-Ed funding, which by far was the largest source of nutrition education funding, which included cooking classes for SNAP beneficiaries. So many of these happen constantly that every newsletter every week could just be a roundup of fact checks. I try to not do that. Theodore: Let's back up and let's talk about that for a second. The appearance that RFK Jr. made on The Bossticks, I should point out I want everybody out there who listens to our podcast to understand this genuinely heroic thing that Helena does on all of our behalf. Helena: Just doing my job. Theodore: Whenever RFK Jr. is out there on a podcast, she listens to the whole thing. She doesn't listen to part of it. She's not catching the clips on Instagram. She's not reading the transcript. She listens to the whole thing. I tried. I made an attempt to do that with The Bossticks podcast interview. Couldn't do it. I made it through 8 minutes and 36 seconds. Helena: You can speed it up if you need to. Theodore: Yes, that's true. Helena: You can't go faster than 1.3. That's where I draw the line. Theodore: Let's talk about this podcast a little bit. I looked this up. Helena: I don't know anything about the podcast. You should fill me in. Theodore: I will tell you what the wisdom of the internet has provided to me. It is that, okay, so this is The Bossticks. There's two of them. There's Lauren and Michael Bosstick. They are married. Now, The Bossticks podcast used to be called something Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show with over 200 million downloads. Helena: That's a lot of downloads. Theodore: A lot of downloads. RFK Jr. appeared towards the end of March, and he was sandwiched in between an interview that they did with Valerie Bertinelli of, for me, One Day at a Time fame, and Kyle Richards, who I guess is a Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star. This is not a hardcore political show. I just think it is not. If you listen to it, what's interesting about it, and it gets to your point about how much time you could spend fact-checking RFK Jr., is that he is given an open-ended question, how should we feel in this moment, and just launches into what I think is a fire hose of what the heck are you talking about? Now, these are things that are not entirely untrue, and a lot of them I've heard in his speeches before. There's the one about the keto diet dramatically reducing the impacts of schizophrenia, which is, he's said this before, and if you google that, there's a New York Times headline that pops up right away. Psychiatrist says Kennedy was "not accurate in discussing his keto studies". Food diets are connected to ADHD. There's some research there but far from a done deal. Studies in prison, you can find them on the internet, RFK Jr. says. Typical prison food causes- when you switch from typical prison food to real food, violence goes down 40% to 50%. Use of restraints in juvenile facilities goes down 75%. This is within four minutes, just ripping them off. You have to be very dedicated. You have to make a decision, I think, as a journalist, or a listener, as to whether or not you want to spend your day googling what he's talking about, trying to unpack it. As they say also about the president, there is a kernel of truth in there somewhere. I don't know that by the end of that kernel when it pops into popcorn you've got something that's meaningful. Bless your heart, Helena. Helena: They're all different. If you watch Joe Rogan, or actually some of these other podcasts, like Theo Vaughn, he tries to fact-check in real time, and he'll be like, "Can somebody look this up?" They google it. They'll be like, "Is that true?" It's this very earnest can somebody google that? It is a full-time job to go through all of those things. What I try to listen for when I'm listening to these podcasts is new hints, so where are things going? A lot of times Kennedy is really open about timelines or whatever. Whether or not those actually happen is another thing, but he'll just offer up, oh, we're doing that in April or we're doing that in May. Sometimes that's news to a lot of people. They're like, oh, I didn't know we were doing that in April. I can't remember which podcast it was where he said that the government's going to define ultra-processed foods in April, which is right here. We'll see if they do that. Theodore: Is that happening? Are they ready to do that? Helena: I would be very surprised [crosstalk] if that happened in April. With the dietary guidelines, they were saying that was around the corner for, I don't know, eight months before it actually came out, so this wouldn't be unprecedented. I would be very, very surprised if that comes out in April. Maybe, I don't know. He does often drop crumbs about things that are coming or whatever, and so that's why I listen to them. You're welcome. Theodore: There was one moment I was googling something he'd said, and I still had it on, and it was playing. I wasn't really listening. It just jumps into my attention as I'm looking something up, and I hear him say, "Stuffing things in their pie holes," and then I go back to what I was looking for. It must have been quite a conversation. I think the Bossticks-- This is just the world we live in. I can't even say it's an unusual thing. I don't even think it's a particularly right-wing thing. You could turn on anything on what used to be MSNBC, which is whatever they call it now. What is it now? They changed the name of it. Helena: MSNow. Theodore: MSNow. It's some of the same, probably a little more facty, but same level of-- Helena: I don't watch it. I don't watch any cable news. I actually think there is something unique, and I don't think it's that it's conservative or right-wing, but this era that we're in, this administration particularly likes podcasts. They seem to have free reign on going on these long form-- You would think that there would be more got to worry about what they're going to say. They don't really seem to have that concern. There's hours and hours and hours of Kennedy. Theodore: I want to move on, but I do want to fact check myself. He didn't say stuffing things in your pie hole. He said, because I wrote this down, stuffing stuff in your pie hole. There you go. Helena: Was he talking about-- I don't remember that. Theodore: He was talking about protein. The point he was making, there was something of a point, was that the kinds of food that Americans eat writ large right now are not only unhealthy, but they are unsatisfying. You don't get as full, so you keep eating. If you eat a protein diet, if you're knocking down steaks one after the other, you might get full, which I don't even know if that's true. A bag of chips makes you pretty full, so does a steak. Is there something substantively different in the amount of full you feel from junk food as opposed to other foods? I don't know. Helena: Yes, there is. Foods that lack fiber and also foods that are already- there's a term sometimes you hear called pre-chewed. They're basically pre-chewed because they've already been processed, masticated. Think about a Pringle, how easy a Pringle is to eat. It's a potato that's been broken down into potato bits and then put back together in a chip. Theodore: Once you pop, you can't stop. Helena: They're delicious. There is actually quite a bit of research that, first of all, you eat faster. It's just easier to eat them, so it's easier to put back more calories before you get some signals from your body I am full. Whereas if you eat a really high fiber- first of all, that high fiber food is probably not as delicious. You have that first thing. It does affect your satiety. When you talk to people like David Kessler, the former FDA commissioner, this is what he talks about, the GLP-1s and the processed foods. He's like, the processed foods took away our satiety signals, and then the GLP-1s give them back because they artificially induce your GLP-1. There's a lot there. Theodore: I want to commend you not only on knowing that and having an answer, but the pronunciation of satiety. That's very good. I see that word. That's not a word you hear out loud often. Well, people write it, but I don't know that I've ever heard it. I would have said satiety maybe. I'm not sure. Helena: Well, there you go. Now you know satiety. A key topic to understand. Theodore: Moving on to Forks and Knives. That's our next segment. That is what we consider to be the main meal, the most important thing that's happening in the food policy and politics world right now. If you're like us, Helena, you're down in DC, I'm up here in the media here in New York, one of the things that's on a lot of people's minds is the midterms. Now, they are coming. They're not here yet. That's not until November. There's a lot of discussion taking place, I think, in the offices of the legacy and non-legacy media right now about what will the impact be on the midterms of MAHA. What's the thing in here? What have you heard about this that might be worth us chit-chatting about? Helena: I feel we have brought up MAHA voters. We've talked so much about this marriage between MAGA and MAHA that's been under strain, particularly over glyphosate, which we've talked about. There's a lot of strain within this alliance. At the same time, we have the midterms looming and everyone's looking going, "Is this going to be a factor?" Either dissatisfaction with MAHA or can Republicans keep MAHA? Does that help them in November? They're facing some pretty tough headwinds, like deeply unpopular war, food prices are not great, gas prices are not great, healthcare prices are disaster. The vibes are not good for keeping control of Congress. I think right now we're seeing so much interest and there's a bunch of polls. Politico had a poll. There was an Annenberg poll. We're going to talk about the Navigator Research, looking specifically at actual battleground voters. There's some interesting things coming out. I think MAHA voters are getting attention because there's increasing recognition that they really played an important role in electing Trump in 2024. Theodore: I think one of the things that stood out for me, and I haven't seen all of this research, but I looked at some of it, there's an interesting- I don't know what to call it. Contradiction may not be the right word. What we see in a lot of the polling is that among MAHA interested voters, whether they are affirmatively part of a MAHA movement is to be discussed, but people who support MAHA issues, they are not happy with the performance of President Trump, and they're not happy with the performance of RFK Jr., but they are happy about MAHA. I'm curious what you think about it because I don't know that that makes much sense because RFK Jr. created MAHA and Trump put him in place to do it. Helena: Well, I think what I've taken away particularly from I think it was the Annenberg poll, there's been so many, but people should go read all of them, there's some really interesting insights, I think one of the takeaways from, I think it was Annenberg, was that MAHA as an idea, whatever people take that to mean, is much more popular than Trump or Kennedy. This, I guess, tracks when you think about how well some of these issues poll across party lines, but Kennedy's underwater on job performance 12 percentage points. It's like he is not a popular figure writ large. I think he's popular within the MAHA diehards. Theodore: He remains a messianic figure among the actual MAHA people. No question about that. Helena: If you ask likely voters, how is Kennedy's job performance, it's not good. He doesn't poll well. It's interesting MAHA seems to have this appeal that goes much broader than Kennedy and particularly much broader than some of the more controversial things like vaccines and all the criticism and all the work there, which by the way, a federal court has basically blocked all of his changes to the childhood vaccine schedule. They pulled back from that. Theodore: Couldn't the dissatisfaction be about that too? Helena: It could be. Oh, yes. [crosstalk] It all swims together. Theodore: No, but I mean that people could be dissatisfied. All right, you and me might think, hey, the voters are rejecting RFK Jr. and Trump because of what they're trying to do to vaccines. It could also be some of these voters are rejecting Trump and RFK Jr. because they're not doing enough to undermine vaccines. Helena: Potentially, yes. If you look at Politico had a poll that found, I was just going to pull it up, Trump voters are divided on MAHA progress. This just came out. They found that even Trump voters are split almost evenly on whether or not they think enough has been done. 41% of Trump 2024 voters think Trump hasn't done enough to basically implement the MAHA agenda. Then if you look at self-identified MAHA supporters, an even greater percentage of those voters do not think they've done enough. 47% think that they haven't done enough. They don't split that out, food versus vaccines. I don't know. It shows that there's some real dissatisfaction in what's been done and what's been communicated. I would be so curious to see how much of that is from some of this glyphosate fallout because I think that has gotten a ton of attention on social. A lot of people get their news there now. Theodore: That's absolutely true. I think the glyphosate decision the executive order is a big deal. I think if you look at some of the polling, when they look at-- This is the one from, what was it? Was it Navigator? Helena: Navigator. Theodore: Yes, Navigator. Again, they're only looking at likely voters in what they define as battleground-- Helena: Swing districts. Theodore: How they define that, I didn't get deeply enough into the sausage making to see how they identified 62 congressional districts as battlegrounds along with the senatorial races, but take it at least with lots and lots of grains of salt and beef tallow and whatever you need to put in it to let me talk about it. The top concern for these voters is not the glyphosate stuff. It is SNAP cuts. They did not like cutting food stamps for low-income people. That seems to be up there as a biggie. Then if you look at it, the pesticides are there, but it's second. Then third is corruption that they're defining in some way with the Trump administration putting people in charge of these processes that they don't think are trustworthy. Then you get to things like cutting school lunches, not taking on Big Food, cutting the inspection people, DOGE-ing different parts of the government. It takes a while to even get down to tariffs or immigration or farmers. A few of them don't even like consolidation. They don't like mergers. All that stuff. Bottom of the concerns of these voters is worker safety. I think it's noteworthy that those SNAP cuts are still up there as a concern for people because one of the things that is a baseline assumption when we talk about voters is that they have very short memories. You could do something now and not have to worry, not pay the price for it in November. It's not November, but they're still, apparently, if the polling is correct, they're paying a price on the SNAP cuts. Helena: I did find that interesting. If you look at the research that they did on overall what these swing voters want Congress to be focused on, the number one was healthcare costs and then the number two was food safety, even above food affordability. Theodore: That's crazy. I don't know what that means. Tell me what that means, Helena. Helena: It's surprising. I don't know. One poll is just a poll. It's a snapshot. I want to see more research. What I wondered when I saw that was, A, what are people thinking when they think of food safety? Are they wrapping all of this into it? They're thinking about the infant formula situation. They're thinking about recalls. Maybe they're also thinking about all this food chem stuff. Theodore: Or just most of the processed food. Helena: All the concerns that are all getting together. I don't know. Maybe that's all getting lumped together. It was really pretty high. I do think that follows this overall trend I've seen in all the polling I've looked at in the last year or 18 months, which is that you're seeing increasing agreement across both Republican, Democrat, and independent voters that they want to see government more involved in things like regulating the food supply. It's just a theme that you see. It's surprisingly high numbers of support across Republican voters too. Maybe some of that is coming through that they're tired of seeing these headlines about microplastics and health concerns, or ultra processed foods and health concerns, or pesticides and links to workers being exposed to them and having higher rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Whatever the headline is I think there's this general grassroots feeling of something's not right here and maybe the government needs to be more involved. That's, of course, not what we're getting with this administration. [crosstalk] We're getting straight up actively deregulatory approach at EPA. I don't know how much that's broken through, but definitely some of the loudest MAHA voices, Alex Clark, Zen Honeycutt, Kelly Ryerson, these people who are very loud on social, have been really bashing the administration over their approach at EPA. They're having a big rally at the Supreme Court April 27th. Interesting to see who shows up for that. Theodore: There are a lot of things that are interesting in that to me. The generalized sense that there's something wrong with our food system, I agree with you that I think that cuts across the political spectrum and geographic boundaries. What I also think is interesting, and I don't have evidence for this, but I think that the average American still goes into the grocery store right now and buys whatever they want, and they don't think about safety. They think it's safe to go into the store and buy an apple or buy a carton of milk. Helena: You have to. You have to just have trust in that, or you can't eat. I think about that a lot. I've covered food safety for so long. Every time I see my little one, my youngest is not quite two, when she's eating fresh berries, or whatever, produce usually is when I think of it, I'm like how much trust I have in that supplier in Mexico or wherever that they use clean water, that they had very stringent food safety protocols for the whole operation. The level of trust all the way through is really high. The number of people and entities and government institutions and everything in between that has to be trusted is pretty remarkable. People want assurances. They don't want to see these headlines. Theodore: I'll tell you, one of the things that I think is interesting about it is that if you were to read-- As those of you listening to the show know, I'm the editor-in-chief of the Food and Environment Reporting Network. We're a non-profit news organization. We do all kinds of journalism beyond just this podcast, investigations, reporting, all about the food system. If you were to look in our reports, the reports that I provide to our institutional funders, our email newsletters, all the things where I'm explaining FERN to people, one of the key things I say is that Americans have increasingly begun to define themselves politically, socially, culturally, through their understanding of food. When we talk about this lack of trust and lack of concern about food safety, and then we say, but everybody still trusts the food that they eat, I think it's getting at that way of defining ourselves in all of these ways. Food is just much more important in American society than it was, not necessarily in how we put it into our bodies, but what we think about it. I think that's reflected in some of the polling, and I think it may be reflected at the polls when people go and vote in midterms. Helena: This has been brewing for a long, long time. You can go back to the '70s and all the critiques about the food system, and all the back-to-land people, and lots of thinkers. Then in more recent times, you get Eric Schlosser, and you get Michael Pollan, you get Marion Nestle. All of these critiques, and then all the documentaries. That eventually creates a completely mainstream narrative of concern about the status quo, and I think that's where we are. Now it's very much embedded on the right too. It's new, for sure. It's a new American narrative that's really taken hold. Theodore: Absolutely. For those Democratic thinkers out there, and we've done some coverage about this at FERN, and I know you've written about it in your newsletter, the Democrats need to get on the stick about these Helena: It's just weird how little you hear. Jane Black had a great story-- Theodore: With FERN? FERN and The New Republic. FERN and The New Republic, yes. Helena: I was going to blank on where it was published. She got some good quotes in there from leaders. There's just so much hesitance to even touch this stuff right now, because a lot of Democrats just don't want to work with Kennedy in any way, shape, or form. They don't want to work with this administration in any way, shape, or form. It's created this very noticeable vacuum. Democrats are not leaning in on these issues. There'd have to be some message, or some alternative, or some agenda, or something there to talk about, but I don't know. I haven't seen much of anything. Theodore: Well, when you put it in those terms, and you're like, well, the solution is to work with RFK Jr. on these issues, I guess maybe the stick is going to be okay by itself without them for a while, because they don't want to do that. That's not going to pay off for them well. Helena: Even going into the midterms, what's the Democrats' message on this stuff? Theodore: Now that's a good point. Helena: Is your average congressional candidate going to be leaning in on this stuff? It's also really hard, because Congress isn't doing anything on this stuff. What are you running on? Are you running on that Congress is going to do something? It's a bit of a conundrum. Certainly Congress could be working on these things. There's a number of things they could do, but I'm not seeing any active debates on those. Theodore: I'm sure you're going to be following this issue. I know that with us at FERN we're definitely following this issue. We're going to be putting together stories about this very subject now and all the way up to November. It's our way of understanding what's going to be happening in the country. These elections are a big deal. This is how we situate ourselves as nonprofit journalists. We look at what's happening on these things. I think, unless you have more you'd like to say, we should move on to our next thing. It's The Good Vibe. That's something in the food system, in the food politics and policy world that we can take some hope from. I don't know if this qualifies. Maybe this is just me being a bit curmudgeonly that Casey Means and her appointment to be the Surgeon General of the United States seems to be getting, as my grandfather used to put it, the hook. That's not slicing. That's the vaudeville hook where they yank you off the stage. Helena: Well, it seemed like that for a minute, but I don't know if you saw last night. We're recording this a week so things could change. That looked to be the case because Trump made a comment that was something like, well, I could pull her basically. Theodore: People are saying that maybe we should. Some people think we should pull her. Helena: It definitely opened that door. Then Carolyn Levitt, the press secretary for the White House, gave a statement to the Washington Post pretty recently as of when we're recording this that was very confirming we're sticking with her, we support her, we want Congress to confirm her. She's in real trouble in the Senate. There's been some reporting that there's just not a clear path for her to even get out of committee. Theodore: Because of vaccines, which is an interesting thing to think through. She's not overtly anti-vaccine like RFK Jr. She's kind of a vaccine underminer, I think, was how I'd put it. Helena: I don't know enough about the concerns of each individual, but I think definitely for Murkowski and Cassidy, those are top of mind things. Theodore: Collins too, Means-- Helena: I don't know that Collins brought up-- In fact, I'm trying to remember. She, remember, was not happy with her psychedelic use and promotion. Theodore: I would love it if she goes down because of psychedelic mushrooms. That would be [crosstalk] Helena: I don't know. There's a lot of these things where they seem like they're not going to go. Then somehow, some deal is struck and they go. We do not know what's going to happen here. I think it's interesting that MAHA's facing a little more resistance generally on the Hill. That's what I'm taking from it. I don't know specifically what it is. I think she pledged pretty clearly to not be overtly critical of vaccines as Surgeon General. In a public health emergency, would she be the nation's doctor urging everyone to get whatever the vaccine was that was needed in that emergency? I think that's where the concern is. I don't know what's going to happen there. It's not my job to tell people what to think about this nomination. I think the concerns that Republicans are raising on her nomination are proxy. They're a temperature check on where MAHA stands on the Hill generally. I think there's a lot more hesitancy now. The measles cases are weighing on a lot of lawmakers. They're looking at the resurgence of measles in this country and going, "I don't know that that's the direction we want to go." Theodore: I think it's interesting because you're saying it's a test of MAHA's power on the Hill. I think that's true. You could also connect that to the polling we saw where voters, they find that the MAHA movement itself, whatever its goals are, they like that. They don't like RFK Jr. They don't like Trump. The fact is not all the MAHA movement likes Casey Means. She is not sufficiently anti-vax for them. Helena: There's definitely a fringe element within the anti-vax prong of MAHA. They do not like the Means siblings at all. They really think there's a conspiracy there. I'm not touching that because it seems bonkers. I don't know where that is all coming from. There is a contingent that does not like her. I think broadly, Casey Means is very popular within MAHA. That's not necessarily enough to get you through Senate. Theodore: By the way, you said anti-vax prong, which I think is a fair way to conceive it. Given the logo that we have on Forked, which is a fork, it should be anti-vax tine, I think. We should go for that. Helena: Oh, no. I don't know. You do see a pretty significant pivot away from they're really not talking about vaccines. They're really not leaning into that. I think that's very clearly a political decision going into the midterms. Theodore: All right, well, do you have something you-- Helena: I don't have a good vibes, other than it's nice out. Finally, it's nice. It's not cold. For those of you out there, we're taping this on March 31st. It is a beautiful day here in Brooklyn, where I live. Apparently, it's nice in DC too. I think we should leave then on a note of good weather. Helena, before we go, though, why don't you tell us about that newsletter of yours? I hear it's pretty good. Helena: Yes. If you are not getting Food Fix, my weekly newsletter, which you can get for free, go to foodfix.co and get on the list. People really like it. It's informative. I'm trying my best to keep everyone up to speed on what's going on. There's a lot. Theodore: You're doing a very good job. I really like Food Fix. You guys should all go check it out. Helena, thank you so much. I always leave these conversations knowing a lot more than I did when I started. Sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad, but I do appreciate it. I will see you in a couple weeks. Helena: We'll see you soon. All right, bye. Theodore: Forked is a production of the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Our executive producers are me, Theodore Ross, and Tom Laskaway. 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, non-profit reporting, go to www.thefern.org. [END OF AUDIO] Forked Ep. 19_mixdown.mp3 (Completed: 04/01/2026) Transcript by GoTranscript.com