Schools are the largest restaurant chain in America, bigger than Subway, Starbucks, and McDonald's combined. Nearly 100,000 locations, 30 million kids, and roughly 7 billion meals a year. Right now, the lion’s share of the calories served through this system are ultra-processed at a time when there’s growing concern about chronic diseases among children.

Nora LaTorre is the CEO of Eat Real, a nonprofit that's transforming school meals scale — certifying school districts against doctor-developed standards and helping food service leaders pivot to fresher, more local, more scratch-cooked food. Since 2019, the organization has grown from one district in one state to more than a million kids across 21 states. This expansion has put LaTorre and her organization at the center of an active debate about what the future of school meals should look like in the U.S.

Highlights:

– How Eat Real's certification model works and what the two-year journey looks like for school districts

– Why better food means more kids eat school lunch (which means more revenue)

– The story behind California's AB 1264, which passed with near-unanimous bipartisan support

– LaTorre’s take on how federal preemption is a serious threat to food policy progress

– What the MAHA moment means for school food

– What parents can do to support change at their local school

– The infrastructure gap: transforming school food nationally could require tens of billions in kitchen investment

Where to find Nora LaTorre:

Eat Real

Parent resources at eatreal.org/parents

Follow Nora on Instagram (@nourishedwithnora) and LinkedIn

Mentioned in this episode:

AB 1264 — California's school food bill

Stay in touch:

Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.

Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.

Send ideas and feedback to [email protected]

Check out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.

HHS Secretary Kennedy says the food industry is poisoning us. The White House shares AI videos of him body slamming a Twinkie. And somehow, the trade group representing the companies making those ultra-processed foods — and thousands of other products Americans buy every day — has to figure out how to respond.

The Consumer Brands Association represents the CPG industry, not just food and beverage, but household products and personal care too. It's the largest manufacturing sector in the U.S. by employment — 22.3 million workers, contributing $2.3 trillion to the GDP. And right now, it's contending with one of the most hostile political environments it's ever faced.

Melissa Hockstad, the president and CEO of CBA, is at the center of navigating all of this. She's talking about constructive engagement, transparency, and the long game as major food companies try to stay out of the political wrestling ring, at least publicly.

Highlights:

– How CBA is approaching the Trump administration's anti-Big Food rhetoric, and where they see room for common ground

– The Facts Up Front and SmartLabel programs, and why the industry sees transparency on its own terms as a selling point

–How MAHA laws in Texas, West Virginia, and beyond have the industry turning to the courts and to Congress

– Why CBA thinks "ultra-processed foods" is too complex to define, and what that means for policy

– Front-of-pack labeling: where the Biden-era proposed rule stands now and what to expect from FDA under the Trump administration

– The affordability argument is not landing the way the industry hoped at the state level

Where to find Melissa Hockstad:

Follow Melissa Hockstad on LinkedIn

Mentioned in this episode:

Consumer Brands Association

Facts Up Front

SmartLabel

Stay in touch:

Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.

Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.

Send ideas and feedback to [email protected]

Check out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.

Infant formula isn't some niche parenting topic. It's a public health issue, a food security issue, and in many ways an infrastructure issue.

The 2022 infant formula crisis was one of the most alarming food system failures in recent memory. Shelves were suddenly empty. Parents were driving across state lines to find cans of formula. The Department of Defense was flying it in on military planes. And most of us — including me — realized we knew almost nothing about how infant formula actually works, where it comes from, or how consolidated the industry really is.

Mallory Whitmore, known online as @theformulamom, has spent the last five years building the resource she couldn't find when she needed it most. As an infant feeding technician and now the education lead at Bobbie, a U.S. formula company, she's become one of the most influential voices on formula in the country. With more than 200,000 Instagram followers and a new book, Bottle Service, Mallory aims to give parents guilt-free, evidence-based guidance they're rarely getting anywhere else. Most parents use formula at some point before their babies turn one — it’s high time we stop treating formula as a niche topic.

Highlights:

– What Mallory learned (and all the info she couldn't find) when breastfeeding didn't work for her first daughter

– What it was like to be in the middle of the 2022 Abbott recall, the crisis that exposed just how fragile the U.S. formula supply chain really is

– The shame and stigma around formula feeding, and why "breast is best" messaging isn't landing the way it's intended

– What parents should actually look for in a formula

– Lactose, corn syrup solids, and other misunderstood ingredients

– Why some parents believe European formulas are superior, what's actually different, and the real risks of importing your own

– Operation Stork Speed: the FDA's first serious look at updating infant formula nutrition standards in decades, and whether the panel's expert guidance will actually translate into policy

Where to find Mallory Whitmore:

Follow Mallory Whitmore on Instagram

Check out her book Bottle Service

Mentioned in this episode:

Operation Stork Speed

Stay in touch:

Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.

Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.

Send ideas and feedback to [email protected]

Check out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.

The American diet has become dominated by ultra-processed foods, but it’s taken a while for scientists to even begin to understand what this really means for our health.

One of the researchers at the cutting edge of our nascent understanding is Kevin Hall. A physicist by training, Hall spent 21 years at NIH becoming the country's foremost nutrition scientist before resigning from the agency in 2025.

Julia Belluz is an award-winning health journalist and contributing opinion writer at the New York Times who has done some of the best reporting on nutrition and obesity anywhere.

Together, they wrote Food Intelligence — an Economist Book of the Year. It's one of the most honest and nuanced books about food and nutrition I've read in a long time, and this conversation reflects that.

Highlights:

– Kevin's landmark 2019 NIH clinical trial: how it was designed, what it found, and why it was so controversial

– Why nutrition science is so underfunded — and how that created a vacuum filled by industry, influencers, and ideology

– The MAHA paradox: a movement with the right rhetoric (sometimes) but lacking serious investment in the science to back it up

– What the continuous glucose monitor and biohacking craze gets wrong

– How food environments (not willpower) drive what we eat, and what changing them would actually require

– Kevin's firsthand account of being censored as a government scientist and why he ultimately left NIH after 21 years

– What systemic change could actually look like: SNAP reform, marketing restrictions, and making healthy food genuinely competitive

Where to find Kevin Hall & Julia Belluz:

Check out their book Food Intelligence

Kevin Hall’s website

Follow him on Instagram

Julia Belluz’s website

Follow her on Instagram

Mentioned in this episode:

Kevin Hall's 2019 ultra-processed foods clinical trial — Cell Metabolism

How Washington Keeps America Sick and Fat — Helena's 2019 Politico investigation on nutrition research underfunding

Kevin Hall's departure from NIH — CNN

Stay in touch:

Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.

Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.

Send ideas and feedback to [email protected]

Check out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.

The FDA is nearly a year into its MAHA era. The rhetoric has been bold — food dyes, ultra-processed foods, infant formula, GRAS reform. But what's actually happened? And what might still be coming? Helena got down to brass tacks with FDA Commissioner Marty Makary during a fireside chat on stage at the National Food Policy Conference in Washington, D.C.

Commissioner Makary came into this role as a surgical oncologist and researcher who spent decades at Johns Hopkins — and who had already written extensively about food and nutrition before taking the job (unusual for an FDA commissioner).

In this conversation, they cover a lot of ground: the plan to phase out synthetic food dyes, the coming definition for ultra-processed foods, the overhaul of infant formula standards, GRAS reform, and what front-of-pack labeling might actually look like under this administration.

Highlights:

– Makary sees the food side of FDA as one of the biggest opportunities of his tenure; he thinks it's been under-appreciated for years

– The plan to phase out petroleum-based synthetic food dyes

– FDA's coming definition for ultra-processed foods, expected by April or May, and how it might factor into labeling

– Rethinking front-of-pack labeling: why this administration isn't planning to just move forward with the Biden-era proposal

– Overhauling the infant formula monograph for the first time in decades

– GRAS reform: where the proposed rule stands and what Makary says about FDA's authority to close the loophole

– How AI is being used to speed up scientific reviews and help target inspections

Where to find Commissioner Makary:

Dr. Makary’s website

@DrMakaryFDA on X

Mentioned in this episode:

Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health by Marty Makary

Stay in touch:

Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.

Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.

Send ideas and feedback to [email protected]

Check out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.

Sam Kass calls RFK Jr. "the greatest threat to public health this country has ever faced."

He’s not joking. Sam led Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign, served as senior policy advisor in the Obama White House, and fought some of the most brutal food policy battles in recent memory. He knows what it takes to enact regulation and how hard industry will fight to protect its interests.

Hearing MAHA panic about seed oils and food dyes while the administration weakens the FDA and CDC all while championing beef tallow french fries is downright alarming, he says. And that’s before we even get to the fact that the Trump administration is moving backward on responding to the climate crisis, which is the focus of his latest book, The Last Supper.

Sam doesn’t hold back in this interview.

Heads up for those with kids: There are some expletives in this conversation.

Highlights:

– How Big Potato fought the White House over what counts as a vegetable in school lunch and WIC

– The reason why Sam's first cookbook didn't include white potatoes

– The trans fat ban fight

– How climate change has moved from future threat to present crisis

– Why seed oils and food dyes are a distraction from what actually matters for public health

– Fact-checking the narrative that Michelle Obama "caved to industry"

– Democrats lost the food issue to Republicans — can they get it back?

Where to find Sam Kass:

Follow Sam Kass on Instagram

Check out his book, The Last Supper

Mentioned in this episode:

Bold Fork Books

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010

Marion Nestle's Food Politics blog

Fed Up documentary

COP 21 Paris Climate Agreement

How I Built This: Spindrift — Bill Creelman

Stay in touch:

Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.

Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.

Send ideas and feedback to [email protected]

Check out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.

She says she hates politics. She's also been on the White House lawn with the FDA commissioner, helped pressure food companies to drop artificial dyes, and is now one of the most influential voices within the Make America Healthy Again movement.

Vani Hari, better known as the Food Babe, built a massive following pressuring food companies to ditch controversial ingredients long before MAHA was a thing. How did she go from an activist food blogger to one of the most dominant forces in food policy?

Note: This interview originally aired on Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with Theodore Ross with the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Helena and Ted spoke with Vani in late January — before the glyphosate executive order dropped and before Vani announced a rally at the Supreme Court.

Highlights:

– The glyphosate fault line - why the Trump administration’s alignment with Bayer in a Supreme Court case has infuriated MAHA advocates, and what Vani thinks should actually happen

– The farm lobby is a much harder target than Big Food, and what that means for MAHA's agenda

– MAHA's political future may hinge on what happens at the EPA before the midterms

– Comparing American food ingredients to their European counterparts has become a potent political argument

Where to find Vani Hari:

Food Babe website

Vani Hari on Instagram

Mentioned in this episode:

Forked podcast

Trump executive order on glyphosate/Defense Production Act

New Dietary Guidelines

Stay in touch:

Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.

Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.

Send ideas and feedback to [email protected]

Check out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.

The Trump administration says we're being poisoned by our food system. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talks about ultra-processed foods, pesticides, and corporate capture of our health agencies. It's rhetoric that in many ways sounds like it came straight from the progressive food movement.

Marion Nestle helped build that movement — and so far she's not impressed.

An emerita professor at New York University, Nestle is 89, has written 17 books about food policy, founded the field of food politics, and writes the must-read blog foodpolitics.com.

She's earned the right to be blunt. And in this conversation, she is.

Highlights:

– Marion's career journey and how food politics became a field of study

– How to identify ultra-processed foods

– Why it took so long for UPFs to become part of the conversation

– The gap between MAHA rhetoric and policy reality

– GLP-1 drugs as an existential threat to the food industry

– The dietary guidelines' inherent conflicts (promoting agriculture vs. telling people to eat less)

– School food funding and why every school should have a garden

– What Marion would actually do if she were in charge of food policy

Editorial note: We recorded this conversation before the Trump administration released the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025-2030.

Where to find Marion Nestle:

Sign up for her must-read daily blog at foodpolitics.com

Check out her latest book, What to Eat Now

Other books by Marion Nestle

Mentioned in this episode:

The Lancet series on ultra-processed foods

Kevin Hall's NIH research/clinical trials on ultra-processed foods

The latest MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) report

Marion Nestle's 2013 article about GRAS

GRAS reform proposal heads to White House for review

Stay in touch:

Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.

Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.

Send ideas and feedback to [email protected]

Check out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.

Everyone is suddenly talking about food policy. But this conversation has been building for a long time, and I've been closer to it than most.

I'm Helena Bottemiller Evich, and I've spent years in congressional hallways, school cafeterias, and farm fields, covering the stories that people in power would rather keep quiet. Now, as these once-wonky topics go increasingly mainstream, I'm launching a podcast to help make sense of all of it.

American Dish is where I'll talk with some of the smartest and most influential people in food policy about what we're eating, why we're eating it, and what the government is — and isn't — doing about it. Every two weeks, expect the complexity, the nuance, and the practical and political realities that don't fit in a headline.

New episodes drop every two weeks starting March 4th!

Stay in touch:

Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.

Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.

Send ideas and feedback to [email protected]

Check out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.