Podcasts about Food policy

Subscribe to UnitedHealthcare's Community & State newsletter.Welcome to the third episode in a special four-part series from Health Affairs on the intersection of food, nutrition, and health. This special series compliments the release of a theme issue on food, nutrition, and health to be released this week.In this episode, Health Affairs' Jessica Bylander and Ellen Bayer discuss the content in the theme issue.Order the Food, Nutrition, and Health Issue. Subscribe to UnitedHealthcare's Community & State newsletter.

This evening, Vince Hall will give an overview of food policy, his work with Feeding America navigating the complexities of solving hunger in America with healthy, nutritious foods, while explaining how policy affects the quality and quantity of food on your plate. Mr. Hall will be joined by Jennifer Steele, who will tell us how food policy affects her work with Meals on Wheels. They will work together explaining how food policy affects the ingredients used to make the appetizers you will be sampling this evening. About the Speakers As chief government relations officer at Feeding America, the largest charity working to end hunger in the United States, Vince Hall leads the development and execution of Feeding America's public policy, legislative, and advocacy strategies to empower communities and improve food security. He helps lead efforts to end hunger by advocating for policy changes, supporting advocacy capacity across the network, increasing neighbor enrollment in public benefits, and building partnerships that amplify our collective voice. Jennifer Steele is the CEO of Meals on Wheels of San Francisco. This organization ensures that older adults in the region have home-delivered meals and services that help them live with grace and independence in their homes. Steele has dedicated her professional career to advocating for those who can't advocate for themselves. Before joining Meals on Wheels, she worked in food insecurity and hunger relief both domestically and internationally. Organizer: Patty James   A Nutrition, Food & Wellness Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hear from Prof. Aled Jones, Director of the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University, as we dive into the role of models in shaping policy, and particularly their weaknesses.  Models are not neutral – they reflect the assumptions, values, and agendas of those that create and use them. Using the energy system as an example, models can (and have been) used to protect the status quo. In part, this is because many of the models are based on the notions of ‘equilibrium' and so they simply can't cope with major structural changes, such as the current energy transition. But it can be difficult for policy makers to switch towards models that are arguably more suited to the job. So, what can we do to supplement the models? One very effective approach is to adopt a structured process of expert elicitation, where we use the insights of experts to uncover vulnerabilities and risks. To bring it to life, we explore how this has worked in the case of the food system. We discuss: The role that models play in shaping energy policy, and how they can lead us astray; How expert judgment and insight can help address model blind spots; and Finally, what are the key lessons for risk professionals? To find out more about the Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR®) Certificate, follow this link: https://www.garp.org/scr For more information on climate risk, visit GARP's Global Sustainability and Climate Risk Resource Center: https://www.garp.org/sustainability-climate If you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback regarding this podcast series, we would love to hear from you at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com Links from today's discussion: Global Sustainability Institute homepage: https://www.aru.ac.uk/global-sustainability-institute-gsi Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, Planetary Solvency Report: https://actuaries.org.uk/news-and-media-releases/news-articles/2025/jan/16-jan-25-planetary-solvency-finding-our-balance-with-nature/ GARP Climate Risk Podcast with Erica Thompson: https://www.garp.org/podcast/the-power-and-pitfalls-of-models-in-climate-risk-management Speaker's Bio(s) Prof. Aled Jones, Director, Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University Aled's work in climate finance was recognised by California and he has received a key to the city of North Little Rock, USA. He is a Co-Investigator on the ESRC Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity, the AHRC Debating Nature's Value network, the Economics of Energy Innovation and System Transition project and leads the BBSRC Backcasting to Achieve Food Resilience in the UK project. He was lead author on the seminal report on resource constraints to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in 2013, was made an Honorary Fellow in 2018 and currently chairs their Biodiversity Working Party.

Welcome to a special four-part series from Health Affairs on the intersection of food, nutrition, and health. This special series compliments the release of a theme issue on food, nutrition, and health to be released April 7, 2025.In the first episode, Health Affairs' Ellen Bayer speaks with Na'Taki Osborne Jelks from Spelman College on the topic of water insecurity.Pre-order the Food, Nutrition, and Health Issue.Related Links:Water Insecurity and Population Health: Implications for Health Equity and Policy (Health Affairs' Health Policy Brief)

Welcome to a special four-part series from Health Affairs on the intersection of food, nutrition, and health. This special series compliments the release of a theme issue on food, nutrition, and health to be released April 7, 2025.In the first episode, Health Affairs' Ellen Bayer speaks with Na'Taki Osborne Jelks from Spelman College on the topic of water insecurity.Pre-order the Food, Nutrition, and Health Issue.Related Links:Water Insecurity and Population Health: Implications for Health Equity and Policy (Health Affairs' Health Policy Brief)

There are many policies that are undergoing change in the area of health and nutrition within our government. We begin talking about a few of them here and want to hear what you have to say! Please drop us a note at between2pastries@gmail.com or leave us a messenge in messenger or facebook! Thank you all for listening!! Want to support our work, catch us on patreon! 

The food and nutrition landscape in our schools is really important. School meals affect the health, wellbeing, energy, vitality, and ability to learn for millions and millions of children. And for those whose family struggled to buy food, the importance of school meals cannot be overstated. This makes decisions about what foods are served in schools and where they come from. Highly consequential and raises issues about national and state nutrition policies, the influence of big food companies in shaping this picture and lots more.  It's a good time to unravel all this, which we can do today. Thanks to two experts with us. Dr. Marlene Schwartz is Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences and Director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy health at the University of Connecticut. Mara Fleishman is CEO of the Chef Ann Foundation, where she has been a leader advancing school food change, advocating for scratch cook meals that promote children's health and for more sustainable food systems.   Interview Summary In discussions about school food, it seems there first came a nutrition part, which in more recent years has been joined with a concern about where foods come from. Better connections, say between schools and low whole food systems. Let's talk about both, Marlene, let's start with nutrition. You have been a pioneer in working with schools, an interest that goes back a number of years. What was this food environment like in schools before change began to occur? It was my impression it was sort of a free for all. So, yes, I would agree that it was a free for all. The actual school lunch, what we call the reimbursable school lunch, which is the meal that the federal government gives states and then states give the local food service directors funds to support, that has actually always had nutrition standards. But historically the problem was under nutrition. The standards were very focused on making sure students had enough to eat. There were no maximums. It was really all about making sure that there was at least the minimum number of calories and foods available. But the other foods that were sold in schools, which we call competitive foods, so these are foods that were vending machines and school stores and fundraisers and things like that, were hardly regulated at all. And that is really where we saw a complete free for all. We saw ice cream and chips and soda and sports drinks and things like that. And I remember going to one school here in Connecticut and counting 13 vending machines in the high school. It really was remarkable the amount of unhealthy food that was being sold in schools. You know, I was thinking of that same thing when I was living in Connecticut, I went to my son's high school, a different school than what you're talking about. And I forget the number of soft drink machines they had around the school, but it was in the teens. And when I was a boy, I don't remember any soft drink machines in my schools. Maybe they hadn't been invented yet. I'm so old. But it was really pretty remarkable how much access children had to these things. And as I understand, the importance of those machines in the schools to the companies was more than just what food was being sold. There was a real branding opportunity. Is that right? I think that's exactly right. And I remember over 20 years ago when we were talking to some of the soft drink companies about the vending machines, they were quick to point out that they didn't make all that much money selling soft drinks in schools. Which I felt was them basically admitting that they weren't there because of the income from the sales in schools. But rather it was a hundred percent branding. And that was also really evident by the fact that you had to have a contract. So, the school districts had to have contracts with Coke or Pepsi or Cadbury Schwepps to only sell that company's products. It was blatantly obvious that this was all about marketing and marketing to an audience that they had to go to school, and they were going to be exposed to those logos every time they walked past one of those machines. Yeah. I remember in those days it felt like a victory when the companies agreed to change what was in the machines, but it was what was on the machines that was more important. So, you know, once again, that was a sign of the industry having upper hand. Let me ask you a different question. So there have been some important systemic changes discussed in context to school meals, ones that really could affect the nutrition landscape nationwide. And I'm thinking in particular universal free school meals. Can you tell us what this means and why it's important and what do you think ought to be done? Sure. So universal free school meals, or as the advocates call it Healthy School Meals for All, is a policy that is providing meals at no cost to all students. So typically the way it works in most school districts is there's three categories of payment. There are students who pay quote, full price. There are students who pay a reduced price and there are students who receive the meal at no cost, and it has to do with the income of their household. But what has been shown, interestingly most significantly during the pandemic, there was a policy from the USDA that all students would receive meals at no cost because we were clearly in a national crisis. And in some ways, it was this silver lining of that time because what it showed, those of us who study school meals, is how wonderful it is to be able to provide meals at no cost for everyone there. There are a lot of benefits. Some of it is just the administrative burden of having to figure out each and every household and which category they're in is lifted. You don't have to track which student is which as they're picking up their lunch. But it also really removed the stigma. One of the most surprising things that we've seen in our data is that even students who would have gotten their meal at no cost already were more likely to take a meal when it was provided at no cost for everyone. Because it just became part of what you did. Everybody was eating the school meal. And I think that it always leads to higher rates of participation among all of those sorts of categories of kids. And I think it also really allows the people running the food service to focus on preparing the food and making it the best it can be and not having that burden of the paperwork. And will there come a day, in your belief where this will happen? I hope so. What we've seen is that a number of states, I think it's eight right now, actually passed state policy to keep universal free school meals after the federal guidance that had been out there was lifted after the pandemic was over. And so my hope is that they'll really demonstrate the benefits and that other states will join in. There's certainly a lot of advocacy in a lot of other states to try to do this. And some of the benefits that have also been shown are outcomes like attendance and academic achievement and just really showing that just like we use our public funds to fund the teachers and the building and the water and the library books. It's sort of seen as a basic tool that the school needs to make available to students so that they can succeed academically. And I think that shift in attitude as opposed to seeing the lunchroom as this sort of separate thing from the rest of the school building. I think that shift in attitude will be really helpful overall. That makes good sense. Mara, let's turn to you. I'm really eager to hear about the work of the Chef Ann Foundation. I've followed its work for a number of years, but I'm eager to hear what the most recent iteration of this. So, I'm hoping you can tell us, and also give us some sense of why you got interested in these issues.   Well, the Chef Ann Foundation is actually celebrating its 15th birthday this year. And we help school food programs move from serving more processed heat and serve food to serving more freshly prepared scratch made meals in schools. And we do that through looking at what are the barriers to school food programs actually serving this freshly prepared meal. And there are a number of barriers: training, skill sets, equipment, access to healthier food, local farmers. The reimbursement rate, you know, how much money they get actually for serving these meals. What about the power of the companies that are providing the prepared foods to schools? Yes, that's a big piece. So those are very loud voices that have a [00:09:00] lot of power behind them. Through the passing of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010, there was an increase in nutrition standards change and what Marlene was saying is that while there was some basic before that, after Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act, we had saturated fat standard, sodium, whole grain. But what happened was these big food companies just kind of R&D'd their food to meet these standards. So, we are in a better place today, right? Because we are serving more whole grains. We are serving less saturated fat, less sodium. But one of the big things that the passage of that Child Nutrition Reauthorization did not do was really reduce ultra processed food in school. And that I think is the next horizon for school food, is how to actually help them reduce that ultra processed food. Because there is, you know, a lot of research out there, I'm sure Marlene is familiar with this, that is linking more ultra processed food to diet related disease. So, we go in and really help these school food programs with more culinary training, we do assessments to tell them what kind of equipment they need to serve fresh food. A lot of it is financial training. So, when you're serving a chicken nugget. One chicken nugget that meets the standards. You bring it in frozen. All you have to do is reheat it and put it on the line. If you're making a chicken strip from scratch, you know you have to buy the chicken, you have to buy the breadcrumbs. You have to buy all the ingredients. You have to start looking at your program through a different lens. Your financial modeling is different. Your labor resources are different. Meeting meals per labor hour is different. We provide training on all these fronts to help them run that program. Well, it sounds enormously beneficial. How much do, in the modern day, how much do schools care about these things and how much do parents care about them? Well, I think something that's really exciting, and I think we have the best vantage point for it, is that schools, parents, communities, even government cares way more about it today than they did when the Chef Ann Foundation was launched. We were definitely considered more of a niche nonprofit organization that only worked with kind of districts that were very progressive. But today, we have, waiting lists for our grants. we work in every state in the country. And we now have a cooperative agreement with the USDA, which would never have really been possible 15 years ago. They just weren't looking for partnerships with organizations that were pushing the envelope to this level. So, I think now's our time. It's so nice to hear that because I remember back when the Chef Ann Foundation got started. And that niche role that it played was clear, but there was so much hope that it would expand and it's really nice that it has. And the fact that you're in every state and the USDA is working with you, those are all really good signs. Well, let me ask you another question. This one about equity. How does this work fit into an equity point of view? I mean, that's pretty much the heart of the matter, I think in many ways. I started this work because I worked for Whole Foods Market for 13 years and I was very interested in food systems work. I have three children and my oldest, who's now 23, when she started in kindergarten, I went to lunch with her. They were serving, this was before the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act, they were serving a very highly processed, high sugar, low protein meal. And I was looking around at the cafeteria really looking at who is eating this meal and thinking to myself, what are we doing here? We are not providing the same springboard for every kindergartner to thrive and meet their true potential, right? There were kids coming to school with their very healthy packed lunches and little baby organic carrots and whole wheat bread and no-nitrate turkey sandwiches. And then there was a whole host of kids eating this very ultra processed high sugar, low fiber, no protein meal. And the equity issue that you're speaking of was right there and very blatant. And if we're not going to provide children that same springboard to thrive from, which, you know, is what K 12 is about, right? That's what we're trying to do for everyone then we have some big issues. And to Marlene's point, we disregard food in that equity issue. So, we don't make higher income kids pay for their bus rides or anything else. And we don't kind of create that divide. We don't devalue anything as significantly as we do food. And it's what makes you thrive. I heard once a very interesting statement from a physician who worked on brain development. And he said that if children are not fed correctly during critical stages of their development amounts to a life sentence. That there are just certain things that will never recover no matter what happens. Having a better school food environment helps erase some of that for sure. Not all of it, but at least some of it. And then each of the children are more on a level playing field in terms of their academic achievement because some aren't so much more burdened by a terrible food environment. I can see why this would, would really be so important. Marlene, let's talk about what changes have been made. Both you and Mara have alluded to this, but specifically what's happened over the years in terms of school meals and have there been studies on the impacts on children? Sure. Well, I completely agree with Mara that the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act was a really bright spot, certainly in, in my career, in terms of seeing changes to school meals. So, as I mentioned before, we used to have only minimum calories and things like that. And now we finally have maximum calories based on the age of the child as well as sodium, saturated fat, increasing whole grains, low fat dairy, things like that. The other thing with the smart snacks, so the competitive foods that started to have nutrition regulations. That was a perfect example though of where the companies use their research and development dollars to essentially make a Dorito that fit the standards and a cookie that fit the standards. And I think in some ways that has highlighted the fact that our society is starting to look much more skeptically at highly processed foods. Because I remember standing in my kids' high school a number of years ago after smart snacks went into a fat, and I was in front of the vending machine, and a parent came up to me who knew this was what I studied and said: 'What are you talking about? That school food is healthier. Look at that!' And sort of pointing to all the packaged chips and cookies and other snacks. And I tried, I was like, well, but those are reduced fat Doritos and those cookies are lower in sugar and probably have some whole grains and nobody cared. Parents basically can recognize junk food when they see it. I one hundred percent agree that processed food is the next dimension that we need to really be able to assess, measure it so that we can start to regulate it. And to have that be a new way in which we try to manage the quality of school meals. Before we get to the issue of what sort of research has been done to show the impact on kids, let me follow up on the Doritos example. Well, it sounds like what we were talking about earlier with a Coke machine being so important because of the logo and branding and stuff like that. Sounds like exactly the same things that work here. That the company wants to have Doritos in the school, not because they sell so much or make so much money. But that they brand, it's a chance to brand that particular product or that particular company. And then of course, kids want those when they get out of school and they talk to their parents about getting them. So, it seems like the fact that they get reformulated to be a tad healthier isn't much of a victory is it. No, and I feel like it's almost like the worst of all situations. So, we've done some research on this at the Rudd Center and have a graphic where we show like the school version and then the grocery store version. And it's completely clear that it's the same branding. Nobody would mistake or not think it was the same product. But the grocery store version is not as healthy as the school version. So you're simultaneously - if someone were to know, for example, that about smart snacks and the nutrition standards they could say, well, they sell it in schools maybe it's better. They might be more likely to buy it in the grocery store, but of course what they're buying in the grocery store is worse. And then if you ask folks from the food industry, which I've done, well, why don't you just reformulate all of it? Why don't you only sell the school version in the grocery store? They say, 'oh, well, we are just worried that people won't like it because it's not, you know, as palatable.' It's like a lose-lose proposition. I would like, personally, to see all of those foods removed from schools. And to answer your question about the research though, it's really promising. I mean, there have been a couple of studies that I always go to, to sort of document the positive impact of the regulations that came from the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act. One was a study showing that basically the meals that students eat in school for most American children are the healthiest meals that they eat all day. So that it's sort of the best source of nutrition. And then another study that was looking at BMI trajectories over time and found that particularly among lower income children there was a measurable impact on BMI in terms of reducing the risk of childhood obesity after the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act regulations were put into place. So, I feel like when you have those sort of large national data sets and you can look at impact across the country, it's pretty clear that even though we of course, want to see more change and keep going forward, even the changes we've made so far have had an important impact. Do you think the changes are sufficient to produce impacts on learning and academic achievement and things like that? We have a hard time having enough data to really get at that very specific outcome because so many things have impact on academic achievement. But there definitely have been some studies that have been able to show some impact. But it's a tricky thing to measure. Mara, let's talk a little bit about how the school can be part of a vital and healthy food system overall. Tell us about your work in that space. We look at health in its kind of larger capacity, right? So direct related nutrition results with kids eating certain foods. But in addition, the school lunch program is funded to the tune of $17 billion a year, right? So, if we think about spending those dollars in the food system and how we're going to change the food system we have to really think about how we empower these school food professionals to make the best choices they can to affect change. With approximately about a $4.30 reimbursable rate price of a lunch, it's not easy right now. Labor prices are going up and you have to pay for labor out of that. You have to pay for food cost out of that. But you can prioritize your choices. Some of the things that we work with districts on are what are their top 20 highest volume purchases in the school food program. And how can we look at that top 20 and make some adjustments to purchase things that can impact the environment in a more significant way. Often it is animal protein that's in their top 20. That is really an opportunity for districts to make better choices. Local choices. Higher quality choices. You know, choices that impact not only the health of the environment, but the health of their local economy. But it is challenging because your district has to be able to manage raw animal protein. A lot of the processed animal protein products coming to the districts are pre-cooked, and so they don't have to always know how to manage in a kitchen raw animal protein. And that's usually this barrier that we help districts get over. But once we do, there is this huge opportunity for them to purchase higher quality animal protein. Also fruits and vegetables, right? I always get asked this from parent groups who are looking to change school food. Why can't we just purchase everything organic in schools, right? So that's hard on $4.30, right? You can't. But you can make choices and you can look at the highest volume products or the products that are more affected by pesticides, right? So, if you have a salad bar you know you're serving lettuce every day. You can move to serving an organic lettuce, and that is a huge opportunity to move forward. I think things like that are how we look at the food system in terms of school food. But it's really important not just for us food systems people to be looking at it like this, but for us to be training and teaching the school food professionals about their job and the impact they can make, both on student nutrition and environmental impact. And that's a lot of what we do in our workforce development initiatives. How does seasonal things figure in? Because schools are in session during the months when it's colder in most parts of the country, and the agricultural system isn't going full bore like it might in the summer months. How do you deal with that?  It's really a great point. I know whenever I bring up any kind of exemplary food program in California, people say to me, 'Ugh, California. You can do a lot in California, but what can you do elsewhere?' Well, here where I live in Boulder, the Boulder Valley School district serves close to 15,000 lunches a day. They have 55 schools. It's kind of that perfect midsize district example. And they purchase 40% of their products locally. This is a Northern Climate District. This is Colorado. It takes time. It takes a real steadfast plan. But you, you know, you can purchase potatoes through December. There's a lot of indoor growing right now locally too. So that's also this great opportunity to purchase things like if you have a salad bar purchase, things like lettuce locally, all year long. There's, there's a lot of local wheat production that is happening these days in northern climates and then it's getting milled and processed into different products that you can buy locally. It's very much possible. Can you get to a hundred percent local procurement? Not right now, not at the current reimbursable rate, but there's a lot of room for improvement even in northern climates. When the schools are buying such foods that come from local sources, are they buying directly from the farmers or is there some agent in the middle? It depends. Mostly for local farmers, small local farmers, they're buying direct. And that's a challenge for small and even some midsize districts because of their capacity, their procurement capacity, their administrative capacity. But it is possible. Obviously, it's in some ways easier for big districts like, you know, LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District). We work with LAUSD. It's an amazing district that buys a lot locally. But they have the volume, they have the capacity, they have the administrative support. That's why a lot of our work focuses on small and midsize districts to actually provide them with that kind of structure and support to do it. And to really prioritize the buying processes through their local purveyors. There are some local distributors that have more local products than others. You know, gold Star is a distributor on the West coast that has more local products. But in reality, the prime vendors for these districts are mostly Sysco or US Foods. And they don't carry a ton of local farm product for these districts. So, they're really going to have to create those partnerships. I'm thinking of the farmers and what impact it might have on them. And I could imagine for some farmers at least, it would provide a reliable income source and a reliable customer for their products, which would be helpful financially. And I imagine, although I don't know that there are probably cases where the schools are inviting the farmers to come in and meet the kids, and that's probably good for everybody. Does that kind of thing happen? Yeah, I mean that is huge and as I kind of talked about ultra processed food being the next horizon to look at reducing in school food, I also think how we work with school food programs to connect them and actually have them be stronger customers of local farmers is also this next horizon. One of the new projects that we're working on is called Values Align Purchasing Collectives. So, we're currently doing assessments to determine how we can group small and mid-size districts together to form buying cohorts, basically, to purchase from local farmers. So how can we get them to look at serving some of the same menu items, purchasing together, working together to relieve some of the administrative stress on the districts, but also on the farmer side. So how do we create hubs to do and look at creating a process that can better support? And I think that's the future. Oh boy. That sounds like a very exciting development. Marlene, just you have something you wanted add? Yeah, I'm just so exciting to hear all of that. I was going to mention that we have a new project in Connecticut looking at farm-to-school practices across the state, and really trying to work with districts on both the procurement part of it as well as incorporating more into the classroom. So having that connection with local farmers, having that being part of the sort of educational curriculum. And then really what I've always thought was the goal was to have the cafeteria more of a learning lab. Not having it as this, I guess I said before, separate part of the school, but rather incorporating nutrition education, incorporating this is where that apple came from and teaching students where the food is from and particularly if it's from a local producer. I think there's a lot of excitement around there. I think the USDA is funding a lot of states to do more work in this area, and so it's a pretty exciting time. You know, connecting up what the two of you have just said, Marlene, I remember in the time I was living in Connecticut. Connecticut has a lot of small to midsize towns that are feeding kids and the collaborative that Mara was talking about sounds like it might be a really interesting solution in that kind of a context. I completely agree. I know some of the New England states, and maybe this happens in other parts of the country too, but it does feel like each school food authority is tiny. I mean, we have towns with one high school and to try to have any kind of buying power when you're so small, I think, is a real challenge. So, I know there are some collaboratives in Connecticut, but absolutely supporting, bringing people together to try to negotiate the best prices and things like that, and make those relationships with the local farmers. It feels like a really great strategy to pursue. I'd like to ask you both, what is it going to take or what does it take to make these things happen? You're talking about some very good things when they do happen, but what does it take to make them happen? And Mara, let's start with you. What are the factors you think are really important? We approach our work from a systems perspective. What is the system and what is the biggest barriers in the system that we can kind of selectively tackle, and kind of dig into from a programmatic engineering perspective. For us, and Marlene, I love that you brought up the lunchroom as a classroom, because I think that is really important. I think that's the kind of the ultimate goal and we're so grateful for programs across the country that are working on that kind of thing. What we want to stay focused on at the Chef Ann Foundation is school food professionals. We want to actually educate them. We want to figure out how to provide more professional development, learning, education so that they can start looking at their jobs differently. And the country can start looking at what they're doing differently; and start really looking at the value that they're providing during a school day. So, what it takes, back to your question, is it really takes breaking down the problem to understand how to put some pieces together to test out programs that can look at breaking down that barrier. And for us right now, we're doing a lot with workforce because what we believe is that in 10 years from now, if we have a workforce in school food that has a different perspective of their job, has different skill sets, is a kind of a different workforce than is right now, than a lot of these things we want to tackle as food systems people will be a lot easier. That makes good sense. And Marlene, you've been involved for many years in local and state and national policies. In your mind, what sort of things lead to change? So, that's a good question. I would love to be able to say, oh, it's the research, clearly. That people do studies and they document, this is what we need to do. I think that's necessary, but not sufficient. I think the real answer is parents and people. I had a similar experience going to my daughter's when she was in first grade going and having lunch at her school and looking around and thinking, oh my goodness, what are we doing? I think that it's the fact that even though this is my profession, this is something I study, It's deeply personal. And I think there's a lot of passion behind the importance of making sure our children are healthy. And if I think about the policy makers along the way who have really been the ones that have made the biggest difference, it was off often because they cared about this deeply, personally. And so, I think continuing to tap into that and reminding people how important this is, is how you get the political will to pass the policies that make the real changes. Well, you know, you both made that really important point about how important parents can be. But really impressive that this started as a personal thing, and you were caring for the welfare of your children and that helped inspire your professional work and look where it's gone. It's really very impressive. I'd like to end with a following question. Are you hopeful for the future? Mara, let's start with you. I am very hopeful for the future. I think when you look at what's important to our society, school food is often the answer. I feel like when you look at achievement, school food is often the answer. When you look at diet related illness, school food is often the answer. When you look at building local economies, school food is often the answer. And I am really hopeful because I think there's a lot of incredible work being done right now, and we are moving past piloting and we're moving into research. And we're moving into institutionalizing the work. And I think you can see that through policies, through USDA cooperative agreements with organizations and work that they're doing and through the guidelines. And through the excitement and integration you're seeing in communities with superintendents, school food directors, parents, and advocates. And Marlene, are you hopeful? I am hopeful. I mean, if I think back to, you know, kind of the early days of working on this issue, I feel like we were met with a lot of skepticism. People felt like, oh, the industry's so powerful, you'll never be able to do anything. I feel like there have been a lot of changes. And I think another shift that I've sort of seen over the course of my career is early on, because of the rates of childhood obesity increasing, a lot of these initiatives that was the hook, that was sort of the anchor. And there were positive things about that because it was such a dramatic change that had occurred that you could point to. But sort of the downside is it wasn't just about that. It's about all children. It doesn't matter what your body weight is, it's about diet quality and having food security and getting adequate nutrition. I feel like we've broadened a lot in the field in terms of how we think about the reason why we're doing that. And that has made it much more inclusive, and we've been able to talk about, as Mara said, how it's affecting lots and lots of things outside of individual children. Bios Marlene Schwartz Marlene Schwartz, Ph.D. is Director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health and Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at UConn. Dr. Schwartz studies how nutrition and wellness policies implemented in schools, food banks, and local communities can improve food security, diet quality, and health outcomes. Dr. Schwartz earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University in 1996. Prior to joining the Rudd Center, she served as Co-Director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders from 1996 to 2006. She has received research grants from a variety of funders including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the National Institutes of Health to study federal food programs, school wellness policies, the effect of food marketing on children, and strategies to address food insecurity and diet quality. She is also the recipient of the 2014 Sarah Samuels Award from the Food and Nutrition Section of the American Public Health Association; the 2020 Faculty Service Award from the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences; and the 2021 Community-Engaged Health Research Excellence Award from the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention and Policy at UConn. Mara Fleishman Mara Fleishman's career in food systems advocacy started in her early 20's when she looked to the power of food after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Mara has over 20 years of experience in leading systems change initiatives in the for-profit and non-profit sectors including over a decade at Whole Foods Market where she served as Global Director of Partnerships. In Mara's current role, CEO of the Chef Ann Foundation, she has spent the last 10 years fighting for healthier food for our nation's kids. Mara's niche is system-based change and although she takes on many roles as a leader, her favorite is programmatic engineering; breaking down problems to their foundation and building programmatic solutions through dynamic and integrated approaches. This type of programmatic engineering can be seen through the work of the Chef Ann Foundation, an organization recognized as the national leader in driving fresh, healthy scratch cook food in schools. Mara also serves on regional and national boards, has spoken at conferences and academic institutions across the country, and has been recognized in publications as a champion and national advocate for change.  

Join us for a compelling discussion with Nora LaTorre, who leads Eat Real's mission to revolutionize school food systems through technology and data-driven approaches. As a pioneering force in sustainable food systems, Nora brings extensive experience from agtech (Ganaz), global trade (Fair Trade USA), and retail sustainability (Target Corporation) to address one of healthcare's most pressing challenges: the impact of ultra-processed foods on children's health outcomes.Under her leadership, Eat Real has achieved significant policy wins, including the 2024 California school food dye bill, while implementing scalable solutions that are reaching over 500,000 students in 10 states and are on track to reach 1M students by the end of the year. The organization's innovative approach combines digital tracking systems, sustainability metrics, and health outcome data to transform school nutrition programs.In this episode, we explore how emerging technologies and data analytics are reshaping school food systems, measuring health impacts, and scaling sustainable solutions across districts. Nora shares insights on using technology to tackle rising health concerns, from early puberty to declining fertility rates, and discusses how digital transformation in food systems directly impacts population health outcomes.Key Topics:Technology infrastructure for large-scale school food programsData analytics in nutrition policy advocacyDigital solutions for sustainable food supply chainsHealth metrics tracking and outcome measurementTech-enabled approaches to system-level change in school nutritionNora LaTorre, CEO, Eat RealMegan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live

Lester Kiewit speaks to Petronell Kruger, HEALA Programmes Manager, about the growing debate around food labelling and its impact on consumer choices. With the FDA's delayed "healthy" food label initiative in the U.S. and South Africa's proposed labelling overhaul, they discuss whether labelling products as "healthy" can truly influence our decision-making. Petronell also shares insightful examples from Chile, Brazil, and Mexico, and tackles the question of whether pricing strategies, like the sugar tax, are effectively guiding us towards healthier choices.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Karen E. Fisher shares stories of Ramadan at Zaatari, the world's largest Syrian refugee camp located in Jordan. Helena Bottemiller Evich introduces the new administration's appointments charged to “Make America Healthy Again.” Dr. Christopher Gardener drops some wisdom about seed oil. Caroline Eden reflects on her travels through Central Asia and Eastern Europe and considers how the kitchen is a unique space to tell human stories.

Tune into 3Squares Live! for the February 2025 edition to see how one city is tackling climate change through food. Neeti Jain, Strategic Partnerships Advisor for the NYC Mayor's Office of Food Policy, discusses how New York is cutting carbon emissions through plant-powered menus and sustainable food procurement. Learn about the Plant-Powered Carbon Challenge as businesses work to build a healthier, more resilient food system. And see how you fare in Kevin's spices, herbs and extracts quiz! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After 15 years on the federal food and agriculture policy beat, perhaps no other American of her generation has a better perspective on what might or might not happen under the new Administration. RFK Jr and the MAHA movement are having an impact. What could it all mean?

Kicking off series five of the Sustainable Food Trust podcast, Patrick Holden, SFT CEO and organic dairy farmer, catches up with Dani Nierenberg, President of Food Tank. Dani Nierenberg is a world-renowned researcher, speaker, and advocate, on all issues relating to our food system and agriculture. In 2013, Dani co-founded Food Tank with Bernard Pollack, a nonprofit organisation focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters. Food Tank is a global convener, thought leadership organisation, and unbiased creator of original research impacting the food system. Dani has an M.S. in Agriculture, Food, and Environment from the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and spent two years volunteering for the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic. In this first episode of the new series, Dani and Patrick discuss the impact of an extractive approach to agriculture upon our planet and our health. They consider how we can switch to a more regenerative approach – one that restores the soil, conserves water, and reduces the need for agrichemicals. Dani shares her insights on the recent shake-up in US politics and what the new administration could mean for food and farming, as well as exploring challenges relating to certification, labelling and consumer engagement. The conversation also examines the true cost of industrial food production, which typically isn't reflected in the retail price, and unpicks some of the sustainable agriculture challenges currently being faced in California and beyond. Commenting on what gives her hope for the future, Dani gives plenty of reasons to be optimistic, including opportunities for young people in agriculture and the huge potential for collaboration within the food and farming sector. Visit Food Tank here to learn more about their work. And you can find Dani on LinkedIn and X. To listen to more SFT podcasts, featuring some of the biggest names in regenerative food and farming, head to our main podcast page. And to keep up with our news, you can subscribe to our fortnightly newsletter or follow us on Instagram, X or Facebook.   Timestamps: 0:00 – Intro 0:43 – Welcome Dani! 1:28 – Food Tank's impressive global reach 3:06 – Dani's path to agriculture & sustainability 4:40 – The Peace Corps' influence on Dani's work 6:45 – The California wildfires 10:35 – Extractive agriculture in America  11:55 – What does the transition to more sustainable food & farming systems look like? 13:54 – How will the new US administration impact food and farming? 19:03 – How can we reach a wider audience? 21:22 – What did the Democrats achieve on food & farming in the last four years? 23:50 – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Joel Salatin 25:59 – Barriers for young farmers in the US 26:46 – Groundswell film 27:31 – The challenges with certification in organic farming 30:56 – The agrochemical industry's attempts to silence critics 32:53 – The importance of uncomfortable conversations and unusual collaborations 33:34 – True Cost Accounting  39:53 – Taking 'Feeding Britain' international 41:16 – Goodbye and thank you! 42:11 – Outro

Today on Repast, Michael, Diana, and Professors Amy Cohen and Susan Schneider look at the new Trump administration and food policy, discussing background policies, underlying trends, and state initiatives. The four discuss the complex political and cultural dynamics in food policy, agricultural policy and the USDA, nutrition initiatives and the FDA, and trade policy and international food law. They talk about the role of misinformation, big tech, the need for strong leadership, left-right alliances, and the transactional nature of the administration, among other things. This podcast was recorded on January 24, 2025, before the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services or the Secretary of Agriculture was named.   Amy Cohen is Professor and Robert J. Reinstein Chair in Law at Temple University School of Law. Susan Schneider is the William H. Enfield Professor of Law at the Arkansas School of Law and the Director of the LL.M. Program in Agricultural and Food Law. Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. You can find Amy Cohen and Mathilde Cohen's article titled “The 'Second Amendment of Food': Some Reflections on American Liberalism,” here. As always, you can send questions or comments to Diana Winters at winters@law.ucla.edu. 

For many years in talks that I gave, I showed a slide with an ingredient list from a food most people know. Just to see if the audience could guess what the food was. based on what it was made of. It was very hard for people to guess. A few people might come close, but very few people would guess. And it was pretty hard because the food contained 56 ingredients. This is in one food. And the ingredient list had chemical names, flavorings, stabilizers, and heaven knows what else. But 56 things in one, just one food in the food supply. Pretty amazing to think what kind of things we're bombarded with in foods we eat in our everyday lives. So, one key question is do we know what all this stuff does to us, either individually or in combination? So, how does ingredient 42 interact with ingredient 17? Even if we happen to know what they do individually, which we may not. And, who's looking out for the health of the population, and who has regulatory control over these things? Today we're joined by the author of a new article on this topic published in the American Journal of Public Health. Jennifer Pomeranz is an attorney and is Associate Professor of Public Health Policy and Management in the School of Global Public Health at New York University. The food, by the way, was a chocolate fudge Pop Tart. Interview Summary So, who has regulatory oversight with these things that are added to foods? The FDA has the authority over all of those packaged foods. So, Pop Tarts, all of that type of packaged foods and the ingredients in there. Can you explain the nature of their authority and the concept of GRAS and what that stands for? Yes. So, there are two main ingredients in our food, but there is also color additives and other things that we didn't get to in our study. But the two main ingredients are called 'food additives' and then 'generally recognized as safe' or GRAS substances. And these are the two ingredients that are in all the processed foods. They're both complex substances, but they're regulated differently. GRAS is assumed to be safe. And food with GRAS substances is presumed to be safe as long as there's a generally agreement among scientists that it's safe, or if it's been in use in food since 1958. Food additives, on the other hand, are presumed to be unsafe. And so, foods that have food additives must have the food additive be approved for the condition of use. So actually, the FDA issues regulations on the food additives. Is it true that the FDA authority covers lots of these chemical type things that get put in foods that we discussed? But also, things that occur naturally in some things like caffeine? Yes. And so, caffeine is considered GRAS or generally recognized as safe. The FDA has a tolerance level for cola-type beverages for caffeine. It actually doesn't enforce that as you see, because we have energy drinks that far exceed that type of level. So, there's different types of GRAS substances. But they can be very complex substances that are actually not so different than food additives. Who decides at the end of the day whether something's safe or not? You imagine this battalion of scientific experts that the FDA has on hand, or consults with, to decide whether something's safe or not. But how does it work? Unfortunately, that's not exactly the case. When it comes to food additives, the industry must petition the FDA and provide evidence showing that it's safe. And the FDA promulgates a regulation saying that it agrees it's safe and it can be used for the things that it set forth in the regulation. For GRAS, there are two mechanisms. One is the industry can notify the FDA that it thinks something's safe. And then it actually goes through a similar transparent process where the FDA will evaluate the evidence submitted. Or, shockingly, the industry can actually decide that it's safe for themselves. And they don't have to notify the FDA. And they can add it to their food without the FDA or the public actually knowing. Now they might disclose this on a website or something, but it's actually not even required to be based on peer reviewed literature, which is actually one of the concerning aspects about this. Concerning is polite language for what one might call shocking. So, in the case of some of these things that go into the food, the industry itself decides whether these things are safe. And in some cases, they have to at least tell the FDA that something they declare as safe is going into the food. But in some cases, they don't even have to do this. Right. So, they only have to if they've determined that it's a food additive. But actually, the industry itself is deciding that it's a food additive versus GRAS. Once it made the decision, it's GRAS, it doesn't even have to notify the FDA that it considers it safe. If they do, they are supposed to rely on their own research saying that it's safe. But actually, there's some alarming parts about that as well. The other outside research that's not my own found that the panels of experts that they employ, 100 percent of the people on those panels have financial conflicts of interest. So, that's already worrisome. They're receiving money from the food industry in some way. Yes. To say that the ingredient is safe. Another scary part is that if they do notify the FDA and they're not happy with how the FDA is reacting to their GRAS notification, they can actually request a cease and desist. The FDA will issue a cease and desist letter, and then they can actually go to market with that ingredient. Pretty amazing. Like loopholes that not only a truck can go through, but a train and everything else. That's really pretty remarkable. So one could say that the risk built into this system is hypothetical, and it works pretty well. But is that true? I mean, are there cases where things have gotten through that probably shouldn't have? Or is it just that we don't know? I think there's a lot of unknowns. The Environmental Working Group does that research and they have identified things that they find to be concerning. A lot of it is that we actually don't know what we don't know, right? So even the FDA doesn't know what it doesn't know. And that is, is part of the concern, that you can't just identify this by looking at the nutrition facts label where they list ingredients. Sometimes they just use terms like spices, flavorings, colorings, chemical preservatives. But that could be masking an ingredient that has never been examined and for which It's unclear that it's actually safe. I know there have been some policy efforts in places such as California to prohibit use of some of these things that have otherwise been considered safe by the FDA, or perhaps just by industry. Is that true that's happening more and more? Yes, actually there has been. Because of the gap in the FDA's oversight, we are seeing states, and it's actually a pretty shocking situation, that California banned four ingredients that the FDA did not. And it's saying that those ingredients are not safe to be in food in California. And given what a huge market California is, the thinking is that the industry will have to change their ingredients across the nation. And frankly, they've already taken those ingredients out of the same foods in Europe, where those ingredients are not allowed. So how much do you trust this self-policing by the industry? To be honest, I'm quite concerned about it. The FDA has the authority to review substances post market, so after they're already in the ingredients. But we see that it can take years or even decades. In the case of, remember, partially hydrogenated oils, which were artificially produced trans-fat. It took decades for them to get that removed from the food supply, despite significant research showing that it had caused health harm. So, even when there is evidence of harm, it takes quite a long time for the FDA to remove it. And in the case of another ingredient recently where California banned it, then the FDA decided to ban it. So, it does worry me that even their post market authority is not being utilized to the extent that it should. Let's think about what a good set of defaults might be and how this might actually play out in practice. If you'd assume these things that go into foods are not safe by default, then the question is what would it take to make sure they're safe before they're allowed in the food supply? And it would take toxicology studies, studies with lab animals perhaps, studies with humans. I don't know exactly how these things are tested, but one can imagine it's not an easy or a quick process. Nor probably an inexpensive one. But somebody would have to do it, and if government can't do it, you can't rely on industry to do it. I wonder if the default might be fewer things in the food supply and whether that might not be a pretty good thing? I love that you said that because that's the conclusion I came to as well. Why do we need all these new ingredients? We already have ultra processed foods, which are by definition contain all these ingredients that we don't really know what they are. And why do we even need new ingredients? I think they could even put a moratorium on new ingredients and say, let's take a, take an analysis of what we've got in the food supply at this point. And to be honest, it would take Congress to act to change FDA's authority to give them more authority to do what you just suggested. And of course, resources, which would be personnel like you described. So maybe that chocolate Pop Tart that has 56 ingredients could get by with 41 or 32 or 17. And you know, maybe we'd be just fine having it with fewer ingredients. One interesting thing that I've heard about, but I'm not an expert in because my background isn't law, is I know it's possible for outside parties to bring lawsuits against government for failing to execute its duties. Has there been any talk about possible lawsuits taking on the FDA for failing to protect the public's health with regard to these things? Well, actually, there was a lawsuit already. These consumer protection organizations sued the FDA, arguing that they weren't protecting the public. And that they were actually ceding authority to the industry, which, they by definition are. But according to the law, because Congress didn't require them to review these ingredients pre market, the court found that the FDA did not violate the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. And so, they were operating according to the law. But also, to your point, I could see other lawsuits would be possible about them not actually exercising their post market authority to protect the public. Those could be from private lawsuits or a state attorney's general. There are different ideas there. So, what do you suggest going forward? You know what? Don't eat the Pop Tart. I think you got to avoid the many truly ultra processed foods and go for the lower processing levels. It's kind of that original advice. If you can't understand the ingredient list, maybe pick something different. And there are options within the same categories, right? There are potato chips that have three ingredients and there's potato crisps that have something like 12. So there are different options in that way. Bio Professor Jennifer Pomeranz is a public health lawyer who researches policy and legal options to address the food environment, obesity, products that cause public harm, and social injustice that lead to health disparities. Prior to joining the NYU faculty, Professor Pomeranz was an Assistant Professor at the School of Public Health at Temple University and in the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple. She was previously the Director of Legal Initiatives at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. She has also authored numerous peer-reviewed and law review journal articles and a book, Food Law for Public Health, published by Oxford University Press in 2016. Professor Pomeranz leads the Public Health Policy Research Lab and regularly teaches Public Health Law and Food Policy for Public Health.

In the Season 3 premiere of The Business of Wellness, host Jaclyn London, MS, RD, dives deep into the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, spearheaded by RFK Jr., nominee for Secretary of Health. With her unique expertise as a registered dietitian, consultant, and author, Jaclyn unpacks the promises, pitfalls, and scientific inaccuracies in MAHA's approach to food, nutrition, and public health. Jaclyn brings her professional insight into the broader systemic issues behind America's rising rates of chronic disease and why focusing on food additives, seed oils, and GMO crops distracts from meaningful public health solutions. She also explores how media narratives, wellness influencers, and Washington's incentive structure fuel confusion about food and health. In this episode, Jaclyn breaks down: The MAHA movement's stated goals, including transparency in food production, promoting regenerative agriculture, and reforming the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The science (or lack thereof) behind claims about artificial food dyes, glyphosate, seed oils, and ultra-processed foods. Why removing artificial ingredients from products won't solve America's public health crisis. Free-market, bipartisan approaches to solving America's health crisis  Listen to Learn: What MAHA's critiques of Big Food and Big Pharma get right—and wrong—about food and health. Why food additives, seed oils, and GMO crops are NOT the root causes of America's chronic disease crisis (and where to look instead...) How media, Big Tech, Big Wellness, and policy incentives create confusion about food and nutrition. Evidence-based, free-market solutions to improve health that could gain bipartisan support. The critical role of dietitians and practitioners in connecting science, policy, and consumer behavior. Timestamps: 00:00 – Intro to Season 3 and RFK Jr.'s MAHA Movement 04:57 – Behind RFK Jr.'s nutrition philosophy and Jaclyn's unique perspective 11:31 – MAHA's goals: Transparency, Big Food, and Dietary Guidelines reform 20:31 – Where concerns about food additives come from 28:32 – Individual experiences vs. public health science 31:11 – The erosion of trust in public health institutions and food safety 38:14 – Global nutrition policy vs. America's food culture 45:09 – Big Tech, Big Wellness, and their role in public health narratives 54:10 – What's wrong with the Dietary Guidelines vs. the Advisory Committee 01:00:50 – Who should profit from helping Americans get healthier? About Jaclyn London, MS, RD: Jaclyn London is a registered dietitian, author of Dressing on the Side (and Other Diet Myths Debunked), and host of The Business of Wellness. As a consultant and media expert, Jaclyn helps brands, investors & policymakers to build practical, science-based strategies to help consumers live healthier lives. Follow The Business of Wellness on Apple Podcasts and Spotify for more evidence-based insights into the intersection of nutrition, business, culture,  and public health Rate, review & share your questions about & topic suggestions on MAHA for future episodes. Connect w/  @jaclynlondonrd on Instagram  

Greg Brady spoke to Brian Ronholm is the Director of Food Policy for Consumer Reports. He leads CR's advocacy efforts to advance a safe and healthy food system about the US banning red dye from foods. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greg Brady spoke to Brian Ronholm is the Director of Food Policy for Consumer Reports. He leads CR's advocacy efforts to advance a safe and healthy food system about the US banning red dye from foods. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The CPGGUYS are joined in this episode by FMI CCO Mark Baum. FMI, the food industry association, provides leadership to retailers and wholesalers of food, beverage, and consumer products, along with their manufacturer/supplier trading partners, by facilitating growth and collaboration, and promoting their role in feeding families and enriching lives.Find Mark Baum on Linkedin at : https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-baum-28b8822/Find FMI on Linkedin at : https://www.linkedin.com/company/fmithefoodindustryassociation/Find FMI online at : https://www.fmi.org/Hear Mark's earlier episode with Liz Buchanan from NielsenIQ on retail media here : https://podcasts.apple.com/az/podcast/retail-media-insights-with-fmis-mark-baum-and/id1517335575?i=1000675428315Here's what we discussed with Mark : 1. A lifetime of leadership. Take us through the years and how you got to FMI.2. There's few closer to the industry's challenges than you. What are today's challenges for retail? 3. Retail media : love it, hate it - it's occupying mindshare. Demystify what matters here and why is it so important?4. Let's talk FMI - what are your pillars of strategic influence in the industry?5. How does FMI accomplish outreach to brands and retailers? Why should brands be investing more with FMI? I believed it was the sensible thing to do.6. With upcoming changes in government, how are you preparing to engage with all the constituents your serve?7. How does FMI stay abreast of trends in the industry? How does your staff get trained? What trends are you following? 8. Tell us finally about all year events, education and programming you offer to your stakeholders? Who should take advantage of what?CPG Guys Website: http://CPGguys.comFMCG Guys Website: http://FMCGguys.comCPG Scoop Website: http://CPGscoop.comRhea Raj's Website: http://rhearaj.comLara Raj in Katseye: https://www.katseye.world/DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPGGUYS, LLC or the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGGUYS, LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. CPGGUYS LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we presented in this podcast.

In this episode, Sarah welcomes Heather Bradford, a certified nurse-midwife, assistant professor, and researcher, to discuss the critical issue of weight bias in healthcare. Heather shares her journey from clinical practice to academia, where her experiences and observations inspired her groundbreaking research into how weight bias impacts patient care and outcomes, particularly in obstetrics.Together, they unpack the subtle and explicit ways weight bias manifests in healthcare settings, explore its far-reaching consequences on patient health and trust, and challenge providers to reflect on their own biases. Heather also highlights the need for systemic changes and shares insights from her research, including practical steps providers and nurses can take to provide more equitable, compassionate, and effective care.This thought-provoking conversation invites all healthcare professionals to reexamine their approach, up-level their practice, and contribute to better outcomes for patients in larger bodies. Tune in for an eye-opening discussion that's as empowering as it is essential.Helpful Links:- Take our Physiologic Birth Class! - Bill Mahr Attack on James Cordon's Fat Shaming- Haes Framework- Implicit Association Test - Used to Measure Implicit Bias- Rebecca Puhl - Leading International and National Expert on Weight Bias- The UCONN RUDD Center for Food Policy and Health

Kathleen Williamson of UConn and Tracy Stefano, East Hartford Public Schools (East Hartford, CT), introduce the Connecticut WSCC Partnership and its collaboration with the East Hartford Public Schools. Host: Helene Marcy, Director of Programs & Communications at the UConn Collaboratory on School and Child Health Guests:  • Tracy Stefano, K-12 Supervisor of Health & Physical Education, East Hartford Public Schools • Kathleen Williamson, Assistant Research Professor, Department of Educational Psychology, UConn Resources Read a transcript of the podcast. Connecticut WSCC Partnership website UConn Collaboratory on School and Child Health (CSCH) website UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health website East Hartford Public Schools website WSCC Blueprints CSCH Social Media Links: BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads   Produced, directed and edited by Helene Marcy. This recording has been made available for informational and educational purposes only. The Connecticut WSCC Partnership: the First Year in East Hartford was created by the UConn Collaboratory on School and Child Health and recorded in December 2024. Copyright © 2024 by the University of Connecticut. All rights reserved.

Thomas Gremillion, J.D., M.A. is the Director of Food Policy at the Consumer Federation of America (CFA). He oversees research, analysis, advocacy, and media outreach for the group's food policy activities, and monitors food safety activities at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and in Congress, where he advocates for strong food safety protections for consumers. He also coordinates the Safe Food Coalition, a group of consumer, trade union, and foodborne illness victim organizations dedicated to reducing foodborne illness by improving government food inspection programs. Prior to joining CFA in 2015, Gremillion practiced environmental law at Georgetown University Law Center's Institute for Public Representation. He also served as an associate attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Gremillion is a member of the D.C. and North Carolina bars. He also holds an M.A. degree in International Relations from Andina Simón Bolívar University in Ecuador. In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak with Thomas [22:27] about: Initiatives and advocacy work by CFA and its Safe Food Coalition to improve national food safety and protect consumers from foodborne illness The pros and cons of the structure of FDA's reorganized Human Foods Program Concerns about efforts to delay or weaken FDA's Food Traceability Final Rule and industry's ability to comply by the January 2026 deadline Questions raised about federal oversight of food inspections following the high-profile Listeria outbreak linked to Boar's Head deli meats The need for standardized pathogen testing protocols for facilities that process raw and ready-to-eat (RTE) foods CFA's perspectives on USDA's proposed framework for reducing Salmonella in poultry products The implications of the Supreme Court's recent overturning of the 1984 Chevron ruling for the food industry, and regulatory agencies' ability to protect public health. News and Resources News Congress Members Urge FDA to Ban Red Dye 3 in Food [3:10]Policies on Antibiotics in Meat: Many Top Restaurants Receive Failing Grades, Only One Gets A+ [6:23]Poor Hygienic Design, Difficulty Communicating Risks are Barriers to Low-Moisture Food Safety, Study Shows [15:20]EU Expands Responsibility for Listeria Criteria in RTE Foods to Additional Food Business Operators [19:05] Resources “New Technology Applications in the Fight Against Foodborne AMR”—Editor's Note, Food Safety Magazine December ‘24/January ‘25 Facilities Focus: Food Safety Factors to Consider in Hygienic Design and Infrastructure (Webinar On-Demand) We Want to Hear from You! Please send us your questions and suggestions to podcast@food-safety.com

Are you spending more for food these days? Who has been footing the bill for the Cheap Food Policy for the past 80 years? The Farmer.

One downside I find when I spend too much time on the internet is that there's an overwhelming viewpoint that the system is broken and there's not much we can do to change that – or that food, in general, is disconnected from all other components of our lives. But I think these attitudes forget that a lot of empowerment comes through advocating for better policies across the board.  My guest today is absolutely LEGENDARY when it comes to just that: Joshna Maharaj. Joshna sees food as our common denominator as humans and understands it holds the power to solve many problems we're facing. As she sees it, good food policy automatically means good health, agriculture, labour, and environmental relationships.   Joshna Maharaj is a chef, speaker, author & activist who wants to help everyone have a better relationship with their food. She believes strongly in the power of chefs & social gastronomy to bring values of hospitality, sustainability, & social justice to the table. Joshna works with institutions in Canada to build new models for food service. Her first book, entitled Take Back the Tray (May 2020), captures the lessons & experience from her work in changing institutional food systems around the globe. She is an enthusiastic instructor of both culinary and academic students, constantly finding ways to make food stories come alive. Joshna has just started a Master's in Gastronomy in Dublin, Ireland and is enjoying the delights of being a student once again.  In our conversation today, we talk about how to tackle the prickliness of food policy and what happens when we break down the silos of industry, government, and hospitality to build better values and relationships with food. Learn More from Joshna:  Instagram: @joshnamaharaj Book: Take Back the Tray

In this week's Plantbased Business Hour episode, Elysabeth discusses whether or not the 2024 presidential election will change U.S. food policy. Subscribe! For plant-based media/branding consulting and public speaking, reach out at elysabeth@elysabethalfano.com. For more information, visit ElysabethAlfano.com. For more information, visit ElysabethAlfano.com. Connect with Elysabeth on Linked in here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elysabeth-alfano-8b370b7/ For more PBH, visit ElysabethAlfano.com/Plantbased-Business-Hour.  

In this week's Plantbased Business Hour episode, Elysabeth discusses whether or not the 2024 presidential election will change U.S. food policy. Subscribe! For plant-based media/branding consulting and public speaking, reach out at elysabeth@elysabethalfano.com. For more information, visit ElysabethAlfano.com. For more information, visit ElysabethAlfano.com. Connect with Elysabeth on Linked in here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elysabeth-alfano-8b370b7/ For more PBH, visit ElysabethAlfano.com/Plantbased-Business-Hour.

When we talk about problems with food insecurity and the food system, we tend to reference challenges at the national or international level. And of course, work at that level really needs to be done. But increasingly, there is a unique focus on regional food system strategies and right sizing solutions to best fit those unique characteristics of a particular locale. In today's podcast, we will talk with Rachel Sabella, director of No Kid Hungry New York. She leads the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the No Kid Hungry campaigns across the state of New York. Interview Summary Rachel, it is such a pleasure to have you with us on the show today. We've done several podcasts with No Kid Hungry staff in the past and discussed topics like your Summer EBT Playbook for state governments. I'm really interested to learn more about your work in the state of New York. Thank you so much for having me, Norbert. We have been so lucky to have No Kid Hungry on here to share the stories. And I'm excited to give you some updates about what we've learned with Summer EBT, and to talk about how things look in New York these days. So, can you help our listeners understand more about No Kid Hungry New York as an organization? What is your approach to addressing childhood hunger? No Kid Hungry is a campaign of Share Our Strength. And I have the honor and privilege of representing the organization across the state of New York as we work to create solutions, to draw more attention and awareness, and to help connect more kids and families with meals. We believe that every kid needs three meals a day to grow up healthy, happy, and strong. But too many children, and I know we'll talk more about this, are missing those meals. We really take an approach of working directly with communities. I don't know the right answer for each community. But my job and really my privilege is to work with school districts, with elected officials, with community organizations to look for challenges and work together to overcome them and really change systems. I can appreciate that local communities look very different and appreciate if you're talking about New York City versus upstate New York. Can you tell us a little bit about how you all think differently about the cities versus the more rural areas of New York State? I appreciate that question. I think all of my colleagues can hear me say, we almost run two different campaigns in New York. Because the approach in New York City, where there is one school district in five boroughs, but a large concentration of students, the largest school district in the nation, versus the rest of the state, is different. But ultimately, the challenges are the same. How are we communicating with families? What solutions are out there that we can implement? We really focus on listening, sharing tools, sharing toolkits, thinking about, in some communities, what they need are materials translated in different languages, so families understand that SNAP benefits are available, or summer EBT benefits. Or as in other communities, it's how can families get to a centrally located place to pick up meals? We really spend our time learning and listening and sharing these programs so that they can find the solutions that work best. This is wonderful. I grew up in Georgia, I should just note. And I grew up in rural Georgia versus Atlanta. And we always talked about two Georgias, the Atlanta region versus the rural areas. And I can appreciate just how different some of those challenges are. But you're right, the central issue of access to food is similar and how you address those issues will look different in those regions. I want to span out and talk about some national data that just has come out. USDA has reported food insecurity rates in the U.S. and we saw that hunger actually increased. And we see that for childhood hunger, food insecurity in general, it has risen since the 2019 pandemic. Why is this happening for children? It's a challenging time. I think something that came out of the pandemic was right away, people said, families are struggling with hunger. What can we do? The stories on the news. We saw it no matter where you were in the country, with the lines to pick up food. And we saw government responded very quickly. There were expanded SNAP benefits. There were no cost school meals provided to every child across the country. We saw pandemic EBT implemented. We also saw the expanded child tax credit. At a time when families were facing tremendous challenges, there was that support from the government. But many of those programs have now ended. And in these economically challenged times, incomes haven't changed. Some people are still dealing with an unemployment crisis. We hear a lot from families as well that they're underemployed. There may be a job, but it's not that same income. And without these expanded government programs, families are facing challenges. How is this looking specifically in New York State? Are there specific challenges happening in the state? I think so, and we have specific challenges in New York, but as we talked about earlier, I think we see every state is facing that. In New York State right now, hunger rose for child food insecurity. We're looking at one in five children in New York State. If we look at New York City, it's one in four children could face food insecurity this year. I often say that hunger hides in plain sight because I hear from people, well, they have a house. Well, with a set budget, they're paying to keep that roof over their heads, they're paying for their electricity bill, and what is the number that can shift in the budget, unfortunately? It's for food. We did a survey earlier this year, and four in five families in New York State found that it became harder to afford groceries. Their incomes just were not remaining at the same levels. And in those surveys, when we dig in a little bit, it was highest in rural communities and parents of school aged children. They are fighting hard for their families, but with all these economic challenges, as a society, we have to do more to help them. Thank you for sharing those insights. And I remember early in the pandemic, some colleagues at Tufts and I did a qualitative study talking to families who were using little free pantries. Those ‘lending library boxes' where people were putting food and one of the stories that we heard that kept coming up was. It was about price inflation, which was interesting because this was at the early part of the pandemic, and we did worry what happened to those families as inflation increased. And this was before some of those policies came into place about summer EBT and other food assistance programs. But now that those programs have gone away and inflation is starting to let up, but it's still a challenge for families. I really appreciate the way the campaign is thinking about these issues. You've already mentioned earlier that the No Kid Hungry team has worked on the summer EBT playbook as you prepared for a national launch of that program. Could you first just give us a brief overview of what the playbook is and then how has the rollout gone in New York State? Even to take it back a step, Summer EBT was a new program launched this year. Every state was eligible to opt into this program, which provided a grocery benefit for eligible children and families. Before this, it was available in certain states that were part of a pilot, and No Kid Hungry had been advocating for this to be nationwide. We also knew that there was going to be a short amount of time for this program to launch. So, what we did was bring all our tools and resources together, our staff members, and we said, what do states need to implement? We partnered with organizations like Code for America, like APHSA, and to really see what is this? So, is it tools to get the word out about the program? Is it about implementation? Is it connecting states that face similar challenges to learn from each other? What the state agencies did this year to implement this program in year one, in about six months, was pretty unbelievable. And we also hope that as we're learning from this, we're going to see even more exciting changes in year two. In terms of New York and summer EBT, we have been seeing so thrilled to see the uptake of the program, the outreach and awareness for summer EBT in New York. In August, Governor Hochul convened an event to celebrate the launch. We had members of Congress, we had No Kid Hungry, we had families there talking about this program. We heard from families how challenging the summer months have been and how this made that difference to get meals to kids. We've been working with the New York City Council on doing trainings for staff members. So many people trust their local elected official's office to get answers. How do I get a new card? How do I check my balance? We are learning a lot, we're seeing materials in different languages, and again, what we're excited to do is recap year one, and how do we learn more and make it even easier for families to access in year two? This is amazing work, and I, I know it's really a challenge when folks, if you will, leave money on the table. And so, helping people connect to the resources that they have legal rights to is a critical role that you all are playing. What do you hope will happen as you learn from the playbook as it was applied in New York? What do you hope to share with other states in this process? We want to show other states our best practices, what worked really well, what's something that we would tweak a little differently. We also want to make sure that those states that weren't able to opt in this year, because there were more than 10, I think about 15, that did not opt in. We want them to see what they can do and how they can use this program to connect kids with meals. But also, this money is reinvested in local communities. Families are using it at grocery stores, at local markets. In New York, we're really excited to see how they're using it at green markets, getting those fresh fruits and vegetables, supporting agriculture. This program while it addresses hunger, it's also an economic engine. And we want to make sure everybody understands that and are using those dollars in a valuable way. I want to ask you a last question, and it's sort of a big question about child hunger. So, what is the outlook of child hunger in New York, and what gives you hope about addressing this challenge? One of the things that gives me tremendous hope Is when we did our survey of New Yorkers, 93 percent of New Yorkers believe that solving childhood hunger should be a bipartisan issue. They don't see the politics of this in New York. We have seen that increasing the SNAP minimum benefit is a bipartisan solution. We have seen no cost school meals for all children has bipartisan support. I think we see New Yorkers recognize they want to make a difference. We get questions all the time. How can I help? We have media outlets sharing the deadlines, putting the updates out for families. We see elected officials in New York State that are paying attention to what's happening in their backyards and their local communities. And they want to make a difference. I hope that what we are seeing in New York translates into other states, translates to the federal level. There is an excitement right now around school meals, and we're hearing a different dialogue. It's something that people like you and I, we know the difference it makes, but I'm hearing from family, from friends, 'Rachel, I read this story on School Meals," tell me about this. My hope is the excitement, the enthusiasm and the interest really changes the conversation and helps us drive forward solutions that will ensure that someday there is no kid hungry. BIO   Rachel Sabella has been a respected advocate, strategist and leader for nonprofit organizations for more than 20 years. She has been the Director of No Kid Hungry New York, a campaign of Share Our Strength, since 2018. In this role, Ms. Sabella works closely with stakeholders across New York State to ensure children have access to the nutrition they need to grow and thrive. She oversees grant-making, awareness building, programmatic and advocacy priorities for No Kid Hungry New York and manages relationships with state and local policymakers. Since March of 2020, she developed and oversaw a strategy to distribute more than $9 million in emergency grant funding to organizations across the state of New York and Puerto Rico to connect more kids and families to meals. She has led successful advocacy campaigns at both the city and state levels on issues including expanding access to school meal programs and SNAP in order to connect more New Yorkers with meals. Ms. Sabella also serves as a member of the NYS Council on Hunger and Food Policy and was appointed to Mayor-Elect Eric Adams' transition team. Prior to this role, Ms. Sabella served as the Director of Government Relations and Policy for the Food Bank For New York City. During this time, she led advocacy campaigns to grow and strengthen resources for anti-hunger programs, which led to unprecedented support for food pantries and soup kitchens in New York City. Her advocacy efforts also led to the creation of 25 school-based pantries that distribute food, menstrual and hygiene products, and household cleaning supplies to families in need.

Tandy Hogate is joined by Rachel Lord, the advocacy director for Alaska Food Policy Council to discuss systemic ways to increase food security in the state.

In today's podcast, we're discussing Fast and Furious. But it's not the movie series starring Vin Diesel. Instead, the catchphrase describes rapidly increasing and somewhat confusing food system environmental impact reporting. Food firms, farmers, and governments all have a clear need for more quantitative environmental impact data in order to measure and understand factors such as carbon footprint, sustainable agricultural practices, and food supply chain processes. But there is no single standard for such reporting and different measurement methodologies make it difficult to assess progress. What's more, greater transparency regarding environmental impacts and food systems will affect trade and supply chains. Our guest today is Koen Deconinck from the Trade and Agricultural Directorate of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD for short. Interview Summary You and your colleagues at the OECD recently published a paper called Fast and Furious: The Rise of Environmental Impact Reporting in Food Systems. Can you tell me a little bit about the paper? Sure. A while ago we were talking to one of the world's experts on sustainability in food systems. He alerted us that there was a major change happening in how people think about sustainability in food systems. He told us in the past, it was thought of almost as a checklist, right? People would say, here's a list of practices that you should or shouldn't use. And then we'll come and confirm whether that's the case on your farm. Then you either get certified or you don't. And he said, you should pay attention because there's a big change underway. We're more and more moving towards actually quantifying things like what is your carbon footprint? What is your water footprint? And so on. He convinced us that this was actually a major change that was happening. Oddly enough, outside of the role of the practitioners, not that many people have been paying attention to it. That is why we wrote this paper. This is a really important shift because just thinking about this in terms of economics, evaluating outputs versus the methods that you get to those outputs can have really significant implications for the various actors involved. So, this seems like a good move, but it seems also kind of complicated. I would love to hear your thoughts about that particular move. Why did you think, or why did you all realize this was a challenge and opportunity at the same? That's a great question. It actually gets to the heart of what we're describing in the paper. Starting with the good news, we do think that this has an enormous potential to improve sustainability in food systems. Because we know from the scientific evidence that there are big differences between different kinds of food products in terms of their average environmental impact. For example, beef tends to have more greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of products relative to poultry and then definitely relative to plant based alternatives and so on. You can see these kinds of average differences. But then the data also shows that within each kind of product category, there's huge differences between different farmers. And what you can do if you start quantifying those footprints is it actually unlocks different kinds of levers. The first lever, if you think about carbon footprints, which is maybe the most intuitive example. The first lever is people know the carbon footprint of different kinds of food products. They could shift their diets away from the products that have a higher footprint towards products that have a lower footprint. For example, less beef and more towards poultry or towards plant-based alternatives. That's one lever. A second lever is that if you can also start to get even more precise and use data that is specific to each producer, not just an average, then also within each product category, people can start shifting towards the producers that have a lower environmental footprint. So, for example, people will still be drinking milk, but then they can shift towards milk producers that have a lower carbon footprint. And the third interesting lever that you can unlock is if you have that data at a supplier level. Suppliers could then say, well, I changed my practices. I changed my inputs. I've done things differently to reduce my impact. You actually can stimulate innovation by each individual farmer, each individual company in the supply chain to lower that impact. And that is something that you can do if you're quantifying those impacts, and that is very difficult or even impossible to do with this previous checklist-based approach. So that's one of the reasons why we're, we think that this has tremendous potential if we get it right. That's right. Just saying that you're doing sustainable practices isn't sufficient. It's really critical to evaluate what kinds of greenhouse gas emissions or other environmentally problematic outcomes of that producer or firm is what really matters. But I have to ask you just how difficult, how realistic is it to be able to measure the environmental impact of every farm? That's a really good question. And of course, if you think about agriculture compared to other sectors, one of the big challenges for agriculture is indeed that there's just so many producers, right? I talked to people who work in the steel industry, and they say that their industry is complicated, but there's basically only 1000 steel factories around the world. That's not that many. The latest evidence suggests that there's more than 600 million farmers worldwide. So clearly, we're talking about a completely different order of magnitude, order of complexity. And the second difficulty is that when we talk about measurements, for a steel factory, in theory, you could put sensors in the chimney and sort of measure that. For agriculture, that's really not practical. Scientists would sometimes do that because, you know, otherwise it's hard to know what greenhouse gas emissions you have in agriculture. But it's clearly not something that you're going to do on 600 million farms. So, what people do instead is, scientists would do the primary research. There are different ways of doing that, to try and estimate which kinds of practices have which kinds of environmental impacts. If you have a cow and it has this kind of diet, how much methane is it burping and how is it affected by differences in the kinds of feed that you give the animal and whether it's inside or outside and so on. And then based on that very detailed research, that then gets simplified into a simpler model, a simpler tool, so that the farmer can plug in some key performance indicators from their farm. I can say ‘I have these many cows, this is the feed rations that I'm giving to them. These are the kinds of manure management options that I have.' And then that tool is a simplified tool that basically gives you an estimate of those emissions. And once you have a tool like that, of course, the challenge is already a lot easier. Because then, if your tool is user friendly and you can sort of focus on just a couple of key parameters that farmers would know, then, of course, you can scale it up. And there are actual examples like that. In Ireland, there is a scheme called Origin Green, which is an initiative by the Irish government to promote exports of Irish Agri food products. They cover something like 90 percent of all the beef and dairy farms in the country. And as part of the initiative, they do the audits anyway, but as part of that initiative, they also quantify the carbon footprint. They basically have farm level data for 90 percent of the farmers. New Zealand similarly has had a big campaign called Know Your Numbers, where they've convinced farmers to use these kinds of calculation tools to get a good insight on how much the emissions are on their farm. So, it is definitely not straightforward. But at the same time, we do see that it is actually happening. It is actually feasible. Thank you for sharing that. This is really impressive work that's happening in the European context and in New Zealand. I have to ask, how challenging is this for small or medium sized producers? I mean, both in a European or Northern context, but particularly when we start thinking about the fact that Agri food chains are global and, and so there can be production practices in the Southern countries that would be of concern. How do you think about this in this context? It is a really important issue. And actually, we've been here before. If you go back something like 20 years ago, and I think you actually did some research on this yourself back in the days, Norbert. There was a big increase in food safety standards, food quality standards. And these were not necessarily public standards. It was quite often retailers who started to impose that on their suppliers. And we did have all those concerns, right? Because on the one hand, it was making food safer and higher quality for consumers. But on the other hand, there was this risk that it would actually exclude, especially the poor producers, the small and medium sized enterprises from those supply chains. There's been a lot of research about that and it turns out that in the end, it was more nuanced than what people feared initially. But of course, we definitely have the same concern now. And there's a few elements to it. One is simply the difficulty of actually quantifying those things. I mentioned a few of these calculation tools and a few of these initiatives. So far, most of the investment in these things has been in high income countries. And even if you look at the underlying science, most of the research has happened in richer countries. So, if you go to tropical agriculture, we even have less scientific evidence that you would use to build a simplified tool like that. Then there's, of course, the challenge of actually getting farmers to use that. So, governments in developing countries typically don't have the same kind of capacity that the government of New Zealand, or the government of Ireland has to help farmers do that. So, there's definitely a role there for development cooperation, technical assistance, things like that. But there's also another concern, which is that one of the important drivers of the environmental impacts of food products is actually your productivity. There are many parts of the food system where your environmental impacts might be roughly the same, no matter whether you are actually very productive or not. So, if you have the type of variety of rice or wheat that you're using that just has relatively low yields, then, of course, you divide the total environmental impact by a smaller number. So, automatically, your relative impact is bigger. And typically, that is what we find in the Global South. So, typically, the producers there will have much lower productivity levels. And studies do find that they tend to have higher environmental impacts, all else equal. So even if they were able to quantify it, there is actually an additional risk that then they would still get excluded. What that means is that this rise of quantified environmental impact reporting is something that we need to pay close attention to. And development corporation agencies and everybody else should be thinking hard about how we are going to make sure that producers in the Global South are not only able to quantify, but also able to improve those environmental impacts. For example, through sustainable productivity growth. This is really helpful. And thank you for sharing that. And you're right. I did think about these issues. I was influenced rather by the experience of increasing food safety standards. I would say one of the differences that we saw with food safety standards was how safe can food be? I mean, we want our food to be extremely safe, but there are always these tradeoffs. With environmental impacts, I think it feels a little different. And I really appreciate the concern of the difference between these small and medium sized enterprises, particularly out of a developing country context. I've got to ask sort of a broader question. Why is all of this happening now? This increase of environmental sustainability measures, both in terms of the technical work and the demand. I mean, what's bringing all of this together? It is actually a pretty interesting story because it appears that, the way we look at it, there's been some changes on the demand side and on the supply side, so to speak, right? So, there's this growing demand for more information. Consumers are increasingly conscious about these things, even though it's not clear yet if this really translates into their shopping behavior. Civil society organizations, of course, have long been asking for more information on that. Governments, in some cases, are also pushing for that. One clear example there is in the European Union. There is this new rule in the EU. It's called the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. That's quite a mouthful. And one of the things it does is it requires all large companies to report not only their own emissions and the emissions from the energy that they're purchasing, but also their emissions upstream and downstream in their supply chain. People sometimes call this Scope Three Emissions. This has huge ramifications because it means that for the supermarkets, a large part of their Scope Three Emissions are the emissions from food. They would then probably ask the food manufacturers 'well, give us more information on your carbon footprints.' And in turn, for the food manufacturers, a large part of their carbon footprint comes upstream from the agricultural sector. So, everybody would be turning around and asking their supplier and all the way up the supply chain for more information. All the way, not only to the farmer, but even further up to the fertilizer companies and so on. So, there's definitely this push on the demand side. And, I guess governments and citizens and civil society, those are sort of the usual suspects, so to speak. There's also unexpectedly a lot of pressure from investors. We see organizations of investors pushing hard for more transparency. Their logic is that sooner or later, stricter regulations on the environmental side are going to come. For some of the companies that we're currently investing in, we have no idea how hard that would hit them. So, those companies need to disclose more information because we as investors need to know how much money is at risk if we invest in a business that is, for example, linked to deforestation and things like that. So, that's the demand side. But what is really interesting is that at the same time on the supply side, it's also becoming easier to actually provide that information compared to five or 10 years ago. Some of this is because people have been working in obscurity for a long time, trying to develop certain methods and databases. A lot of that work has been coming to fruition in just the last few years. For example, there's been development of new reporting standards, there's been development of new databases, there's been development of new methods, people are now using satellites and so on to try and quantify things like land use change, deforestation impacts and so on. A lot of these things are now converging and blending with each other. We do think that the combination of this greater demand and greater supply that is driving what we're seeing now. And of course, some of these initiatives are still at a relatively early stage. At the same time, I think the direction of travel is clear. So, we think that demand is not going to go down. It will keep getting easier to supply that information. We think that this is what explains this fast increase that we're seeing. This is really intriguing, and it makes me wonder how global value chains are going to be realigned. Going back to this idea of small and medium sized producers who may not be able to have the monitoring, or if you think of even larger firms who feel uncomfortable with having some outside agency evaluating the carbon emissions or other greenhouse gas emissions from their farm. I can imagine that this could realign value chains. Is this a fair assessment? Is this a concern? I agree with you that this is something people should be looking at. At the moment, there's not yet any data on that. I don't think anybody has really researched that. We see in general that many researchers aren't really paying attention to this trend, which was actually one of the reasons we wrote this paper. But what you're describing is exactly one of the questions we have as well. There are a few ways that this could play out. You could imagine that if it's only some markets that are getting very interested in this kind of information, you might have a situation where companies in a producing country decide to just send the sustainable stuff to the countries that care about sustainability. But they keep producing the unsustainable stuff for all the other markets. In that case, the total impact for the environment might actually be limited. But there could also be other cases where companies think, well, since a large part of our customer base is asking for more sustainability, we might as well make everything sustainable just to be on the safe side. You might have other cases where companies start working backwards because they want to make sure that what they are selling is sustainable. So, you might actually have situations where a retailer starts working with suppliers or where a food manufacturer starts working with suppliers to make sure that their production is sustainable. This is again something that we have seen in the wake of these food safety standards about 20 years ago. This was a really surprising development and there was a lot of investment from other companies in the supply chain to help farmers start meeting these stricter food safety standards. So, one possibility is that something like that might happen for environmental sustainability as well. At the moment, these are all really just hypotheses. And so I really hope people will start to investigate this more seriously, because I think it is very important also for policymakers to understand what has happened. I'm really appreciative of you making the point that there is just a great deal of uncertainty in this space and that there is a need for researchers to explore this issue. And I agree the food safety concerns of 20 or so years ago is a good example. But I think there are going to be some differences and I'll be intrigued to see how that plays out. I am interested to understand, are there any risks besides the ones that we've kind of touched on, any other risks or downsides to this movement that we're seeing? Yes, there are actually. Because the story I told so far was maybe a little bit on the optimistic side. I was explaining how it's becoming easier to supply the information in part because we now have better reporting standards. That is one part of the story. That's sort of the glass half full view of it. The glass half empty view is that actually, at the same time, there's also a fragmentation. There are also many different initiatives, and this is why we call it fast and furious. So, there's lots of different initiatives that are competing for attention. And you do end up with situations where you might have different ways of calculating certain environmental impact. Different ways of reporting it. And then it's not necessarily clear when somebody is reporting something what exactly they were using as methods. And so that poses an enormous risk, because if every supermarket or every country starts coming up with its own way of doing things, its own way of reporting, then the end result is just going to be confusion and frustration and transaction costs. And then the benefits for the environment won't even be there. So, it is really important if you want this to go well, that people get together, stakeholders, governments, researchers, to get together and try to align as much as possible on common reporting standards, common methodologies, etc. So that it's clear for everybody that the data that we're looking at is comparable. This is important, and I can imagine if we think about international accords on addressing climate change and how it takes a lot of effort to get agreement on those, you can imagine that when we're talking about these kinds of measures and getting concordance on that, there could be some real challenges. We've already touched on this, but I'm interested to know, are there other policy implications of the work that this paper is doing? Is there something we should be paying attention to? Well, one idea that I hope people would start taking seriously is I want people to start thinking in timelines and cycles. And let me explain what I mean by that. There's a lot of different initiatives out there. And you can even start to see a little bit of a hierarchy, how different things, some of these standards are building on other standards. Some of these databases are then in turn using some of those other standards. There's a kind of a logic that is emerging there. One of the problems that happens now is that it's not really clear when all of these elements are going to get updated. So, suddenly one of those standards might get updated and then now all of these other standards that build on that or those databases that build on that are suddenly no longer consistent with that original standard. And then there's some confusion and then it's not really clear whether the data you are using is actually still consistent with the original standard. One idea that I'm advocating for is that people should all explicitly define a certain iteration cycle where they say, look, every four years, for example, or every three years, every five years, we are going to review the standard. We'll give everybody 12 months of warning, and we'll have a stakeholder process, and we'll have a scientific process behind that so it's clear for everybody what we're changing and why. But this way, you know well in advance when each of these building blocks is going to get updated. Then that would make it a lot easier for everybody to make sure that what they're doing is aligned with those standards. And an additional benefit of doing it like that, I think, is these things are moving so fast and there's still so much new science and new technology coming in, that we have to keep the possibility open to keep improving and updating those methods and those standards as well. If you announce in advance that we'll do this on a three year cycle or a four year cycle or whatever it may be, I think that could help us strike a balance between the need for that flexibility, but at the same time that need for stability. Because of course, if things keep changing all the time, then you're never quite sure whether the numbers you're looking at make sense or can be compared. I think that idea would be very helpful. And that will probably require quite a bit of coordination between all the different stakeholders who work in that space. And I think that would be a very good thing to do. BIO Koen Deconinck is an economist in the Trade and Agriculture Directorate of the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) in Paris. He was lead author of the OECD report “Making Better Policies for Food Systems” (2021) and has worked on market concentration, seed markets, evidence gaps, resilience, and environmental impacts of food systems. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Leuven and has published research in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the European Review of Agricultural Economics, Food Policy, and Business History, among others. He currently works on measurement of carbon footprints and other environmental impacts of food.  

In May 2022 the Indian government responded to a heatwave that had cut crop yields by unexpectedly banning wheat exports. Ministers spoke of the need for domestic food security, and the important of reducing wheat prices for the India's citizens. But the policy was unpopular with domestic farmers and in countries that imported wheat, where prices had already risen following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Allan Hsiao talks to Tim Phillips about how common these policy interventions really are – and the consequences for governments and trade, consumers and farmers.

Erica Hall is Executive Director and Board Chair at Florida Food Policy Council. Executive Committee Member of the Sierra Club, Florida Chapter. As well as a National Board of Director Member of the National Sierra Club.  The Florida Food Policy Council (FLFPC) works to address gaps and affect policy within the food system through integrity and collaboration for the benefit of all Floridians and the environment.  Food Policy Councils (FPCs) provide a unique forum for diverse stakeholders to come together and address common concerns regarding food policy including food systems, food security, farm policy, food regulations, health, and nutrition. Stakeholders include people such as farmers, city and state officials, non-profit organizations, chefs, food distributors, food justice advocates, educators, health professionals, and concerned citizens.  With Erica, we talk about the intersections of her work, challenges in the food systems today, the importance of land, urban agriculture, and their impact in the community. Erica also mentions the Farm Bill, which urgently needs support.  Contact: https://flfpc.wildapricot.org/  Farm Bill: https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/farm-bill/index

Dr. Trey Malone Profile: https://ag.purdue.edu/directory/tjmalone#:~:text=Trey%20Malone%20is%20an%20agri,on%20agri%2Dfood%20supply%20chains.Trey's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/treymalone MS-MBA Joint Degree: https://agribusiness.purdue.edu/degrees/ms-mba/Dr. Trey Malone is an agri-food economist and the Boehlje Chair in Managerial Economics for Agribusiness in the department of agricultural economics at Purdue University. His work focuses generally on strategic marketing and strategic decision making especially as it relates to what universities can do for industry. He has published over 60 research articles in outlets including Food Policy, Journal of Business Venturing Insights, and the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Before Purdue, he worked as an ag economist with the University of Arkansas, and before that at Michigan State University. His insights have been featured in popular press outlets, including the New York Times, TIME Magazine, CNBC, CNN, USA Today, Fast Company, and Popular Science. And now the Future of Agriculture podcast. This episode has been a long time in the making. I've known Trey, at least from a distance for years. He almost came on the show earlier this year, but then was offered his dream job to move from Arkansas to Purdue so we put it on hold until now. In addition to being an ag nerd, I've always had an interest in economics, specifically what drives markets and what drives behavior. I read Freakonomics years ago and am a listener to podcasts like Planet Money. So why it took me so long to realize that what i”m trying to do here with the Future of Agriculture is bring together my science and tech nerdiness with my business nerdiness is beyond me. When I say that this show is really at the core about ag economics, a lot of you long time listeners are probably saying “DUH!”, but to be honest I never consciously thought of it that way. I share all this with you because I'm hoping this episode is just the start of featuring many other economists. No, i”m not going to stop covering agtech or sustainability or science or the other topics we we cover here on the show. But I do want to make a concerted effort to highlight the interesting work our countries 2,000+ ag economists are doing. And this episode with Trey is a great place to start.

A farmer was asked what he’d do if he won a million-dollar lottery.

Access to healthy food should be a right, but in reality, it's often a privilege due to systemic inequalities. What if the food on your plate were not just nourishment but also a reflection of deeper power dynamics and historical struggles?   Today's guest, Andrea Freeman, is a trailblazer in food politics, exposing the disturbing ways food has been weaponized throughout American history. In her new book, Ruin Their Crops on the Ground, she uncovers how food policies—from the Trail of Tears to today's school lunch programs—have been systematically used to marginalize and oppress, with echoes of this injustice still reverberating in our modern food systems.   As a professor at Southwestern Law, her expertise in Constitutional Law and Food Policy has led her to challenge the structures that keep nutritious food out of reach for vulnerable communities. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and NPR, and she is reshaping the conversation about race, law, and food justice. Join us as we discuss her latest book and explore how the fight for food justice is a fight for equality itself. You won't want to miss this eye-opening discussion on the hidden politics behind what we eat.   “There is a long history of the United States using food as a tool of oppression and subordination as part of racial capitalism, as part of colonization and enslavement and then attempts to Americanize immigrants. That part of history had that very intentional racist tone. I mean, that's what it was, right? I mean, that was outwardly the motivation. When you talk about food oppression in the present, it is more baked into the system from that history. And I think instead of describing it as something intentional, we can think of it as something more like deliberate indifference or neglect.” - Andrea Freeman   What we discuss in this episode: - How Professor Freeman became interested in advocating for food justice through legal work. - The role of food in the United States' strategy to control and oppress Native American populations. - The historical influence of corporate interests in shaping modern food policies. - Why the fast food industry disproportionately targets BIPOC communities. - Food inequality in the U.S. vs. the U.K. - How schools are used as dumping grounds for surplus food commodities.   Resources: - Book: Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch - https://www.amazon.com/Ruin-Their-Crops-Ground-Politics/dp/1250871042/ - Book: Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice - Kindle edition by Freeman, Andrea. Professional & Technical Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. - https://www.amazon.com/Skimmed-Breastfeeding-Injustice-Andrea-Freeman-ebook/dp/B07YR2FB9F? - Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXmnBbUjsPs - Sign up for Project Adapt: https://www.projectadapt.io/ - EarthAnimal.com/Switch4Good 20% off code: Switch4Good - https://earthanimal.com/shop/?only=235174,243429   ★☆★ Help us remove dairy from the Dietary Guidelines for Americans! ★☆★ https://switch4good.org/dietary-guidelines-for-americans-2025/ ★☆★ Click the link below to support the ADD SOY Act! ★☆★ https://switch4good.org/add-soy-act/ ★☆★ Share the website and get your resources here ★☆★ https://kidsandmilk.org/ ★☆★ Send us a voice message and ask a question. We want to hear from you! ★☆★ https://switch4good.org/podcast/ ★☆★ Dairy-Free Swaps Guide: Easy Anti-Inflammatory Meals, Recipes, and Tips ★☆★ https://switch4good.org/dairy-free-swaps-guide ★☆★SUPPORT SWITCH4GOOD★☆★ https://switch4good.org/support-us/ ★☆★ JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP ★☆★  https://www.facebook.com/groups/podcastchat ★☆★ SWITCH4GOOD WEBSITE ★☆★ https://switch4good.org/ ★☆★ ONLINE STORE ★☆★ https://shop.switch4good.org/shop/ ★☆★ FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM ★☆★ https://www.instagram.com/Switch4Good/ ★☆★ LIKE US ON FACEBOOK ★☆★ https://www.facebook.com/Switch4Good/ ★☆★ FOLLOW US ON TWITTER ★☆★ https://twitter.com/Switch4GoodOrg ★☆★ AMAZON STORE ★☆★ https://www.amazon.com/shop/switch4good ★☆★ DOWNLOAD THE ABILLION APP ★☆★ https://app.abillion.com/users/switch4good

One of the nation's most esteemed journalists on food and food policy, Corby Kummer is Executive Director of Food & Society at the nonprofit Aspen Institute. He spearheads several initiatives, including Food as Medicine, Food Justice and Open Access to support minority -owned startup food businesses. His work has opened conversations about food policy, food insecurity and regenerative farming to raise awareness and foster solutions.The Connected Table is broadcast live Wednesdays at 2PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).The Connected Table Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.

Best Of BPR 7/25: Pushing Back Against DEI Pushback & Kamala Harris' Food Policy

In this episode, we welcome Karen Gardner, senior policy associate at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. We'll discuss how food policy and retail environments impact communities, and how to advocate for a better food environment.   Karen (she/her) advocates for policies that improve healthy food access through the food retail environment. She has worked in food policy for over a decade. On This Episode, You Will Learn:  What drew Karen to the field of food policy How the diverse food landscapes that make up the US are similar and different to each other How you as a listener can contribute to a better food policy system and what advocacy looks like How to ensure that companies are actually bettering their practices and what to look out for Connect with Yumlish! Website Instagram Twitter Facebook LinkedIn YouTube  Connect with Karen Gardner! Website  Facebook LinkedIn --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yumlish/message

We're back on our mission to get to the bottom of why providing soldiers with healthy food is such a challenge for the Army, and this time we have an insider with decades of experience in running Army food service operations. Jeremy M. Deck is a Vice President at the national insurancebrokerage firm HUB International specializing in commercial risk management, employee benefit, and human resources consulting. Although the bio he sent us focused heavily on his work in the insurance industry, that's obviously not what we're here to talk to him about. Jeremy's professional career, spanning over two decades in the Army, exemplifies dedication to leadership, operational planning, and management. His military service, culminating as the Food Service Director for the US Military Academy at West Point, makes him a perfect person for us to bring on to discuss one of our favorite issues: how the Army feed's its soldiers. Jeremy possesses a passion for service to the community through involvement and outreach as a member of several organizations locally. Jeremy volunteers as a mentor with the national non-profit American Corporate Partners, an organization that places industry mentors with service members exploring post-military employment. Additionally, his community involvement includes board service with the non-profit Eating for Your Health a 501c3 non- profit based in Princeton, New Jersey, that aims to promote health through cooking and eating whole, nutrient-dense foods. These are only two among many volunteer efforts he's a part of. Jeremy holds an MBA from the University of South Carolina's Darla Moore School of Business where he specialized in International Business and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. We also owe a shout out to George Dailey, for making this episode happen. He was the one who first referred us to Jeremy and said he had a night and day impact of the food service operation at West Point.

As the produce industry prepares for the Food Traceability Final Rule, Frank Yiannas, the former FDA Deputy Commissioner of Food Policy and Response and Steve Statler, chief marketing officer and head of food safety with Wiliot share how technology can help those in the produce industry become more efficient in this “Tip of the Iceberg” episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of the Running Wine Mom podcast, Samantha Cieslinski interviews Brian Ronholm, the Director of Food Policy at Consumer Reports. They discuss the findings of a Consumer Reports investigation on Lunchables and the implications for consumers. The investigation revealed concerning levels of heavy metals, phthalates, and sodium in Lunchables and similar products, raising questions about their safety and nutritional value, especially for children. Brian shares his advocacy initiatives to promote a safer and healthier food system, including addressing immediate and long-term threats to food safety. He also discusses the role of emerging technologies in shaping the future of food safety and regulation. The most pressing issue facing the food industry today is staying on top of emerging threats. The article highlights concerns about heavy metals and phthalates in Lunchables, which can pose risks to consumers, especially children. The difference between school Lunchables and regular Lunchables is that the companies involved in the school lunch program modified the product slightly to meet certain nutrition standards. The conversation discusses the issue of high levels of lead and sodium in Lunchables and similar lunch and snack kits. It highlights the health risks associated with these contaminants, such as high blood pressure and cardiovascular problems. The conversation also explores the regulatory standards for these products and the lack of preventive measures. It emphasizes the need for transparency in the food industry and the importance of consumer awareness and education. The conversation concludes with suggestions for parents, ongoing efforts in the industry, and the need for stricter standards and regulations.Links:Consumerreports.orgcr.org/foodadvocacy@consumerreports

During a recent event, speakers came together to celebrate food diversity, scientific advances, and community innovation. This week's episode of “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” features two panels from the program moderated by Dani. First, panelists discuss the power and privilege that shape food and agriculture systems, what we can learn from looking back at traditional foodways, and why communities must be engaged in growing their own food. Then, speakers explore the educational approaches that are nurturing the next generation of food systems leaders, the value of bringing culturally relevant ingredients into the classroom, and how programs can connect food, nutrition, and planetary health.  Speakers include Rachel Atcheson, Deputy Director for the New York City Mayor's Office on Food Policy; Sheryll Durrant, Board President of Just Food and the Food and Agriculture Coordinator for the International Rescue Committee; Jessica Harris, an author and journalist, leading expert on foodways of the African Diaspora and Professor Emeritus at Queens College; Tony Hillery, CEO and Founder of Harlem Grown; Michael Kotutwa Johnson, a member of the Hopi Tribe in Northern Arizona, an Indigenous Resilience Specialist at the School of Natural Resources and the Environment and an Associate Faculty at the Indigenous Resilience Center at the University of Arizona; Stephen Ritz, Executive Director of Green Bronx Machine; Karen Washington, a farmer and activist with Rise and Root Farm; and Marion Williams, National Program Director for Wellness in the Schools. This event was held in partnership with the Periodic Table of Food Initiative, Food EDU, The Rockefeller Foundation, the American Heart Association, and the Alliance of Bioversity International - CIAT.  While you're listening, subscribe, rate, and review the show; it would mean the world to us to have your feedback. You can listen to “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” wherever you consume your podcasts.    

Scientific Sense ® by Gill Eapen: Prof. Chris Barrett is Professor of Applied Economics and Management and an international professor of agriculture at Cornell University. He is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Food Policy and edits the Palgrave Macmillan book series Agricultural Economics and Food Policy. Please subscribe to this channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ScientificSense?sub_confirmation=1 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scientificsense/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scientificsense/support

Join us for Part 3, our final episode in of our 3 part seriese of learning what the Jefferson County Food Policy Council teams are doing. The first episode focused on the School Food Pilot, while Part 2 highlighted the Community Leadership that is taking place. In this episode we will hear about the teams working on the Supply & Food Chains.   https://www.jeffcofoodpolicy.org/ javier@jeffcofpc.org

A generation ago, food marketing to kids was found mostly in two places: Saturday morning cartoons and the cereal aisle. No more. Children are now targeted throughout the grocery store, on billboards, product placements and, most dangerously, on digital media. Jane and Liz talk to Jennifer Harris of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health and Charlene Elliott of the University of Calgary to understand how the problem has exploded, in particular for tweens and teens, who are now believed to be even more vulnerable to advertising messages than young children.  Further Resources: More than a Nuisance: Implications of Food Marketing for Public Health Efforts to Curb Childhood Obesity (Annual Review of Public Health) Food marketing to teenagers: Examining the power and platforms of food and beverage marketing in Canada (Appetite) Tracking teen food marketing: Participatory research to examine persuasive power and platforms of exposure (Appetite) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Food is a justice issue with Miele Kennedy. Access to fresh, healthy food is a right, not a privilege. Dive into this deep conversation with Black Girls Eating and Community advocate and liaison Miele Kennedy.   In the latest episode of Black Girls Eating, we dive into a rich conversation that merges the zest of black girl magic with the critical topic of food accessibility and nutrition. Our hosts, Candace and Tanorria, welcome a special guest, Miele Kennedy, an advocate making waves in the Indianapolis food scene. Miele's name, which means eternal and everlasting in Swahili, is a testament to her enduring impact on the community. As an administrator for the Division of Community Nutrition and Food Policy, she is at the forefront of bridging the gap between resources and residents grappling with food system inequities.   The episode unfolds with a candid discussion about the challenges of food deserts and the fact that one in four Marion County residents faces food insecurity. The conversation then turns towards personal stories, with Miele sharing a heartfelt tale of her activism journey that began as early as four years old. Listeners will be captivated by the discussion of the role of local food entrepreneurs in transforming the food landscape and the importance of supporting community-focused initiatives like the Indy Fresh Market. The dialogue delves into the complexities of food advocacy, the roots of food insecurity, and the systemic barriers perpetuating disparities in access to fresh, nutritious food.   This episode isn't just about food; it's a call to action. It challenges us to rethink our relationship with what we eat and how we support our communities. From the importance of cultural food traditions to the influence of capitalism and white supremacy on our food systems, no stone is left unturned. Black Girls Eating doesn't shy away from heavy topics. Instead, it embraces them, offering insights and solutions that will inspire you to make a difference. Whether you're a foodie, an activist, or someone who cares about social justice, this episode is a must-listen.   So, what are you waiting for? Please tune in to Black Girls Eating for an episode that's as nourishing for the mind as it is for the soul.   Don't forget to check out their resources and recommendations, and if the conversation stirs you, consider joining the food advocacy movement in your community. Your plate and your voice have the power to enact change. Listen now, and let the flavors of justice and empowerment fill your ears.

Episode #298. Ever wondered why you just can't stop eating certain foods? Psychologist Tera Fazzino, PhD has the answer. Discover the science of hyper-palatable foods, how they're making their way into your kitchen, and where they overlap with the tobacco industry in this insight-packed conversation. You'll leave this episode with a better understanding of why hyper-palatable foods are so prevalent, what to look out for, and how you can better navigate the grocery store. Dr Fazzino also breaks down the policy-level change she would want to see to create a healthier food landscape for everyone. We cover: Introduction to Hyperpalatable Foods and Brain Reward Systems (00:00) Exploring Brain Reward Mechanisms Triggered by Hyperpalatable Foods (02:45) The Influence of Hyperpalatable Foods on Brain Reward Functions (12:58) Food Addiction Explored: A Psychological or Physical Issue? (17:01) Identifying Susceptibility Factors in Food Addiction (20:59) The Impact of Mental Health on Consuming Hyperpalatable Foods (23:44) Comprehensive Analysis of Hyperpalatable Foods and Their Ingredients (26:38) The Critical Role of Sodium in Food Palatability Enhancement (30:27) Debating the Reduction of Sodium Consumption: Benefits and Challenges (35:26) The Intriguing Connection Between the Tobacco and Food Industries (45:52) Are All Ultra-Processed Foods Created Equal? A Critical Examination (58:24) Identifying Hyperpalatable Foods Commonly Found in Homes (1:04:48) Protein's Interplay with Hyperpalatable Foods: A Detailed Study (1:09:39) Examining Caloric Intake and Overeating Tendencies with Hyperpalatable Foods (1:16:48) Unveiling the Hidden Mechanics of Hyperpalatability: Satisfaction vs. Energy Density (1:19:18) Practical Strategies for Managing Hyperpalatable Food Consumption (1:22:59) Global Health Impacts of Hyperpalatable Foods: An In-Depth Review (1:28:39) Future Trends in Food Policy and Public Health Concerning Hyperpalatable Foods (1:33:18) Replacing Sugar with Artificial Non-Nutritive Sweeteners: Pros and Cons (1:41:11) Concluding Remarks on Hyperpalatable Foods and Health (1:44:14) Learn more about Dr Tera Fazzino here, and discover her lab at https://fazzinolab.ku.edu/. Sponsors: If you want to improve your health, you need to measure where you're currently at. InsideTracker analyses up to 48 blood biomarkers including ApoB, LDL, HDL, A1C, and more before giving you advice to optimise your health. Get a 20% discount on your first order at insidetracker.com/simon. Stay hydrated with LMNT - a meaningful dose of electrolytes in a science-backed ratio. Receive a free LMNT sample pack with any order when you purchase via drinklmnt.com/simon. Eimele Essential 8 is a comprehensive multivitamin that is scientifically formulated to complement your plant-rich diet, increase and sustain your energy, support the immune system, as well as heart and brain health. Head to Eimele.com and use code SIMON at checkout for 10% off your first order. Whoop, the most advanced fitness and health wearable available. Your personalised fitness and health coach to recover faster, sleep better, and train smarter. Claim your first month free on join.whoop.com/simon. Want to support the show? The best way to support the show is to use the products and services offered by our sponsors. To check them out, and enjoy great savings, visit theproof.com/friends. You can also show your support by leaving a review on the Apple Podcast app and/or sharing your favourite episodes with your friends and family. Simon Hill, MSc, BSc (Hons) Creator of theproof.com and host of The Proof with Simon Hill Author of The Proof is in the Plants Watch the episodes on YouTube or listen on Apple/Spotify Connect with me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook Nourish your gut with my Plant-Based Ferments Guide Download my complimentary Two-Week Meal Plan and high protein Plant Performance recipe book