Two recent reports say that the FDA is a mess as a result of staff cuts, loss of expertise, and leadership vacuums—a national tragedy by any criterion.

I.  From Timothy Inklebarger at FoodNavigator-USA: Trump purge at FDA and USDA triggers food safety ‘brain drain’: Government data shows deep staff cuts as food safety leaders warn of fewer inspectors, loss of institutional knowledge and delays in lab and outbreak work… Read more

The US Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Workforce Data tool shows the Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services are among the hardest hit, losing 22,253 and 17,406 jobs, respectively, since the beginning of 2025.

II.  ͏ From Gary Schwitzer’s Health News Review:FDA staff “rife with mistrust and paranoia”: Concern about staff “trampled on…perpetual uncertainty…chaos…no stability.”

It didn’t take Dr. Richard Pazdur long to see that he wanted out of Marty Makary’s FDA. The 26-year FDA veteran was hired in November to be director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. He resigned in December. Why?  …Pazdur, looking distraught, spoke of an agency crumbling, with leaders making up rules as they went and longtime, experienced staff members leaving after layoffs and perpetual uncertainty left them unable to do their jobs. At different points, he described “chaos” at the agency with staff having gone through “a lot of trauma,” and said “you do not have stability.

Comment

If your purpose is to dismantle government, this is how you do it.  As I said, a national tragedy.

Last week’s big announcement: Secretary Kennedy and Secretary McMahon Celebrate Medical School Commitments to Increase Nutrition Training for Future Doctors

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Education convened leaders from 53 of the nation’s top medical schools across 31 states today to announce commitments to require meaningful nutrition training for future doctors beginning in the next academic year…A 2022 survey published in the Journal of Wellness found that medical students reported receiving an average of 1.2 hours of formal nutrition education each year.

From the Fact Sheet on the initiative:

Even as our nation spends $4.4 trillion annually on treating chronic disease and mental health, an estimated one million Americans die from food-related chronic illnesses each year. To reverse the chronic disease epidemic, health care professionals must be trained to recognize, diagnose, treat, and prevent diet-related diseases.

Nutrition education is sorely lacking in America’s medical training. Historically, less than 1% of total lecture hours in U.S. medical schools has been devoted to nutrition education. As of 2024, 75% of U.S. medical schools required no clinical nutrition classes. Medical students surveyed in 2022 reported receiving an average of 1.2 hours of formal nutrition education each year. Only 14% of residency programs require a nutrition curriculum; only 14% of current health care providers feel comfortable discussing nutrition with their patients.

The list of medical schools that have agreed to participate is here.

Some background

In January, Secretary Kennedy sent a letter to medical schools calling on them to increase nutrition teaching.

HHS welcomes your participation to implement, beginning in fall 2026, either: 1) a minimum of 40 hours of required nutrition education across all four years of undergraduate medical education; or 2) a minimum 40-hour competency equivalent. We encourage your university to display on a public website a detailed plan for achieving, tracking, and assessing your progress.

The letter suggested 71 nutrition competiencies from which schools could pick.

Some ways your university could do this are:
1. Conduct a comprehensive baseline assessment of your current nutrition curriculum and identify any gaps or opportunities that exist.
2. Identify a faculty champion to lead development and ensure sustained implementation.
3. Formalize your institution’s commitment by posting your nutrition education implementation plan and participation as an active partner in this initiative on your website.

Comment

I have written any number of previous posts about this topic. I taught nutrition to students at the USCF School of Medicine fron 1976-1986 and had a federal grant to do so early on.  Even then, it had been 20 years since the American Medical Association held its first conference on nutrition education in medical schools.  It has now been more than 60 years since those first calls with remarkably little progress.

This is not for lack of trying.

• My most recent contribution to this cause: Nestle M, Baron RB. Nutrition in Medical Education: From Counting Hours to Measuring Competence. JAMA Intern Med. Published online April 14, 2014. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.440.
• In 2024, medial educators, Eisenberg DM, Cole A, Maile EJ, et al., published Proposed Nutrition Competencies for Medical Students and Physician Trainees: A Consensus Statement. JAMA Netw Open. 2024;7(9):e2435425. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.35425  (I particularly like competency #1: “Provides evidence-based, culturally sensitive nutrition and food recommendations to patients for the prevention and treatment of disease.”

But the barriers have been—and remain—formidible.

• The focus of medical care on treatment, not prevention
• The lack of qualified instructors (“champions”)
• The lack of nutrition departments in medical schools (departments own curriculum time)
• The lack of curriculum time
• The lack of reinforcement of didactic training at the bedside
• The absurdly short time available for encounters between doctors an patients
• The complexities of diet and health

Yes, medical students should be taught nutrition, no question.  But how?  From my now lengthy experience with all this, I think medical students need to know:

1. How to recognize a nutrition problem in a patient (not as easy as it sounds)
2. How to refer patients to professional dietetions or nutritionists
3. How to identify good ones to work with (not as hard as it sounds)

What I find utterly remarkable about RFK Jr’s list of competencies is how closely most of them resemble the required competencies for dietitians.

And this entire initiative is voluntary.

If Secretary Kennedy really wants medical schools to teach nutrition, he needs get the medical schools to develop a core curriculum and require it, and also get them funded to support that work.

Press account: The New York Times — Dozens of Medical Schools Back Kennedy Plan on Nutrition After Pressure

One last comment: some of the competencies go way beyond dietetics and address food systems, such as:

#48: Regenerative agriculture as clinical intervention: understand practices restoring soil microbiota and yielding nutrient-dense food
#66  Nutrient density and soil health: understand relationship between soil microbiota diversity and minerat/nutrient content of foods
#67 Regenerative agriculture immersion: participate in on-site learning at farms including soil sampling, composting, crop rotation
#70 Environmental contaminant case studies: review clinical cases linking food-based
exposures to patient outcomes

I received this e-mailed message from the Avocado Nutrition Center, sponsored by the Hass Avocado Board (a USDA-sponsored research & promotion—checkoff—program).

Indeed, the New Pyramid does highlight avocados.  What a gift to the Hass Avocado Board!

Comment: As I’ve pointed out repeatedly (see my previous posts on these guidelines), the new guidelines and pyramid have losers (ultra-processed foods, sugars, refined carbohydrates, and even whole grains) and winners (meat, dairy, beef tallow—and avocados.  The avocado board is not missing a chance to take advantage of this.  That’s its job!

This story starts here with this post.

Really? When I go to the Hershey’s site, I get this:

Milk Chocolate (Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Chocolate, Skim Milk, Milk Fat, Lactose, Lecithin, PGPR); Peanuts; Sugar; Dextrose; Salt; TBHQ & Citric Acid (TO MAINTAIN FRESHNESS)

Four kinds of sugar and ultra-processed; it’s hard to believe it could get worse.

Even so, the Reese family doesn’t like what is happening to its iconic brand.

Hershey blasted by Reese’s family over core ingredient changes: Reese family sends open letter to Hershey, challenging whether the confectionery giant is protecting the Reese’s legacy… Read more

Hershey facing criticism from Reese family

• Reese family member accuses Hershey of lowering core product quality
• Brad Reese claims formulations replaced milk chocolate and real peanut butter
• Open letter argues changes threaten brand heritage and consumer trust foundations
• Criticism pressures Hershey to address transparency concerns amid evolving brand strategy
• Debate highlights tension between cost efficiencies and protecting long-held product identity

Comment

As described in yesterday’s post, the chocolate industry is in trouble because of diminishing supplies, increased costs, and climate change.  Hershey’s must think its customers can’t tell the difference between simple real food ingredients and ultra-processed concoctions.

Real foods cost more.  That’s a problem for food companies.

The chocolate industry, it appears, is in crisis.  Here’s my collection of recent items on the topic.  

Trends

• The future of chocolate: An era of bold innovation and ultra indulgence: Chocolate is undergoing a dramatic transformation. From cutting‑edge cocoa‑free innovation to the rise of premium indulgence, discover how makers and brands are reinventing the world’s favourite treat… Read more
• 5 trends powering chocolate’s $245bn boom: Trends shaping the future of chocolate and the opportunities they create for the confectionery industry… Read more
• Mars, Mondelēz, Nestlé, Hershey, and Lindt team up to transform future of cocoa: The world’s biggest chocolate makers are working together to futureproof cocoa and support growers… Read more

Challenges

• Chocolate isn’t doomed, but it’s changing fast:  It may be the end of chocolate as we know it… Read more
• Cocoa prices collapse following record highs: Cocoa prices plunge to two‑year low as surpluses reshape the market… Read more
• Are falling cocoa prices giving an edge to small choc players?  Key players in chocolate already have the year’s cocoa supply locked in. But smaller players may not… Read more
• Nestlé strips ‘chocolate’ from iconic bars as cocoa costs soar:  Rising cocoa costs are forcing confectionery giants to rethink recipes and product labelling… Read more
• Cocoa, coffee, and wine won’t survive with climate cooling alone: Climate cooling isn’t enough to save cocoa, wine, and coffee – industry needs to do more to protect these crops for the future… Read more
• Is Hershey in trouble? Profits plummeting and ingredients under fire: Hershey’s rocky start to 2026 has raised questions about its long‑term direction… Read more

Addressing the crisis

• Alternative cocoa: Ways confectionery’s most under-threat ingredient is being replaced: Chocolate makers has been significantly impacted by the cocoa crisis. Ingredient innovation offers a solution… Read more
• The ‘untapped potential’ of functional chocolate: Functional chocolate is stepping into the spotlight. Discover the ingredients, trends and early innovators reshaping the future of indulgence… Read more
• Can Chocolate Help With Asthma? Hemorrhoids? Feminine Hygiene? December 16 is National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day, which is either a celebration of culinary creativity or an excuse to use juvenile humor. Either way, chocolate has a long history of being marketed as a cure for just about everything. Let’s see what it can actually do—and what it absolutely can’t.

Here’s one place where the MAHA and Food Justice movements agree: on glyphosate.  Here is a post from thefoodbabe (@Vani Hari):

LOBBYING

This refers to U.S. Right to Know’s Bayer lobby tracker.

Federal disclosures show Bayer reported spending $9.19 million on lobbying Congress and the executive branch in 2025, which includes fees paid to at least 13 outside lobbying firms. As of the fourth quarter of 2025, 45 lobbyists were registered to lobby for Bayer under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

The tracker comes from Stacy Malkan’s reporting: Tracing Bayer’s ties to power in Trump’s Washington; From lobby firms to top officials, a look at how Bayer built access and secured favors

The White House invokes the Defense Production Act to guarantee supplies of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides. Regulators reapprove dicamba, a Bayer herbicide twice blocked by federal courts, and clear the way for new pesticides containing toxic, persistent PFAS “forever” chemicals.

And the U.S. Justice Department urges the U.S. Supreme Court to erase billions of dollars of Bayer’s liability for its glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer – placing the weight of the executive branch on the side of a foreign company against thousands of Americans who say Bayer’s products caused their cancers.

Over the past year, the administration under President Donald J. Trump has delivered a string of victories to Bayer, the German agrichemical and pharmaceutical giant that merged with Monsanto in 2018 to become the world’s leading manufacturer of genetically modified seeds and pesticides.

REVOLVING DOOR

The term refers to government regulators taking jobs with corporations and vice versa.  US Right to Know reports:

The Trump administration yesterday handed Bayer another win, urging the Supreme Court in a new brief to side with the German pesticide company in a high-stakes legal case that could wipe out thousands of cancer lawsuits and potentially billions of dollars in liability tied to glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer.

Three out of nine U.S. officials who signed the brief previously worked for law firms that have represented Bayer, raising questions about whether the Trump administration is providing special favors and benefits to Bayer and siding with a foreign corporation against Americans with cancer.

COMMENT

It’s pretty amazing what Bayer gets away with.  Despite Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s insistence that glyphosate is carcinogenic and needs to get out of the food supply, he has now backtracked on that.  In his backtracking statement, he says:

Unfortunately, our agricultural system depends heavily on these chemicals. The U.S. represents 4% of the world’s population, yet we use roughly 25% of its pesticides. If these inputs disappeared overnight, crop yields would fall, food prices would surge, and America would experience a massive loss of farms even beyond what we are witnessing today. The consequences would be disastrous.

This sounds like he’s looking out for farmers.  But glyphosate is used in industrial agriculture, not small- and medium-sized family farms, and certainly not in organic and regenerative farms.  As an herbicide, it’s used on feed for animals and fuel for automobiles.  It’s also used for drying wheat and oats.  It should not be used for food for people at all.

Why is this still allowed?  The Bayer Lobby Tracker makes that clear.

One of the major items on HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s agenda has been to get toxic chemicals out of the food supply.

He’s not doing a good job on that.

Last week, I discussed his hypocritical backtracking on glyphosate.

Here, I mention three more:

DICAMBA

The Environmental Protection Agency has announced its reapproval of the pesticide dicamba as a spray on genetically engineered cotton and soybeans—despite how it drifts onto everyone else’s crops, whether growers want it or not.

Federal court decisions in 2020 and again in 2024 said such approvals were unlawful.

As the Center for Food Safety puts it,

Since its first approval in 2016, dicamba drift has damaged millions of acres of farmland and caused devastating damage to orchards, vegetable farms, home gardens, native plants, trees, and wildlife refuges across the country. Experts have found dicamba drift damage to be the worst of any herbicide in the history of U.S. agriculture. Yet the current approval provides even fewer protections from dicamba drift and damage than past approvals.

The first lawsuits have already been filed.

MERCURY

RFK Jr particularly wanted mercury out of fish.

Mercury gets into fish from two sources: volcanos and coal-burning power plants.  We can’t stop volcanos, but we sure could insist that coal-burning power plans clean up their emissions.

No such luck.

The New York Times writes: E.P.A. Plans to Loosen Mercury Rules for Coal Plants, Documents Show

In particular, the administration is taking steps to improve the economics of coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, by rolling back several regulations that would have made it much more expensive, if not impossible, for many coal plants to keep operating. Over the past nine months, the Energy Department has taken the extraordinary step of ordering eight coal-burning units that had been headed for retirement to stay open and keep running….the E.P.A. is arguing that it would reduce “unwarranted costs” for utilities that own and operate coal plants across the country.

COMMENT

To state the obvious, what all this tells us is that when public (or even personal) health comes up against corporate health, corporate profits win.

Make America Healthy Again?  American corporations, yes,  American citizens?  Not so much.

Since passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, supplement products became basically unregulated.  The FDA is no longer allowed to monitor these products and only gets involved in situations of egregious harm.  Otherwise, you have no way of knowing if their labels have anything at all to do with what is in those bottles.

Here are recent items on safety and adulteration issues with supplements (particularly turmeric), and the Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman’s comments on corruption in the supplement industry.

SAFETY

• New outbreak traced to moringa capsules under investigation: Investigators from the Food and Drug Administration are looking into a new outbreak of Salmonella Newport infections traced to moringa powder capsules. The implicated capsules are sold under the Rosabella brand…there is great concern that consumers may have the moringa capsules in their homes because of their long shelf life, which stretches into late 2027. This outbreak is separate from an outbreak of Salmonella Richmond infections traced to Member’s Mark and other brands of moringa.
• South Korea re-evaluating turmeric, green coffee bean due to adverse reports: South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) is re-evaluating the safety and functionality of turmeric extract and eight other functional ingredients.
• Health Canada calls for warnings on turmeric/curcumin supplement labels: Health Canada has mandated warning labels on turmeric and curcumin natural health products (NHPs) to indicate the risk of hepatotoxicity, following a review that found potential liver health risks, although rare.

ADULTERATION

• Ginseng aduleration remains a significant concern, says BAPP review: A scoping review by the ABC-AHP-NCNPR Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program highlights that nearly 25% of commercial ginseng products may be adulterated, especially dietary supplements, due to species substitution and presence of undisclosed pharmaceutical ingredients.
• Turmeric adulteration presents significant opportunity for responsible industry: More than one quarter of turmeric supplement may be adulterated, according to a new comprehensive literature review by the ABC-AHP-NCNPR Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program (BAPP)…. Read more

CORRUPTION

Paul Krugman on dietary supplements: How the Kakistocracy Became a Quackistocracy

It may seem strange to think of the wellness industry as a corrupt and corrupting force comparable to the fossil-fuel sector. But wellness is big business. McKinsey estimates that U.S. spending on wellness is running at around $500 billion a year, while spending on nutritional supplements alone was close to $70 billion last year.

And sellers of nutritional supplements, unlike companies selling pharmaceuticals, are effectively allowed to make false, outlandish claims about what their products do…It’s OK to peddle snake oil with false medical claims as long as you mumble some content-free boilerplate.

And where do the snake-oil salesmen peddle their wares? Largely on right-wing media. After all, that’s where they can find customers who have the right mix of anti-intellectualism and disdain for experts. And the snake-oil purveyors are, in turn, a key part of the extreme right’s financial ecosystem.

I wrote about this almost five years ago. The relationship between quack medicine and right-wing extremism has a long history…But now we have entered a new era. As many observers have noted, the Trump administration is a kakistocracy: rule by the worst. A history of personal corruption is no longer a bar to high office — it’s practically a requirement.