Ray Goldberg died last week at the age of 99.  He was still going pretty strong the last time I saw him last fall at the annual meeting of PAPSAC (Private and Public Scientific, Academic and Consumer Food Policy Group) at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Edmund O’Keeffe, photo

We were an unlikely pair to know each other for so long and to care about each other so deeply.

When I first met him in the early 1990s, Ray was professor of agribusiness (a term he coined) at the Harvard Business School, as representative of Big Ag as anyone could be.  When he invited me to participate in the newly formed PAPSAC, I could not imagine why he would want me there or why I should go.

Contrary to Ray’s recollection, I did not attend the first meeting. I would have had to pay my own expenses, which seemed outrageous given that so many of the participants were CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies and flew to Boston via private jet.

The second year, Ray said they would pay for my travel and persuaded me that the meeting would be worth attending.  Its purpose, he explained, was to bring food business leaders and consumer activists together to share views and to reach mutual understanding.

My interpretation: Ray thought that if we saw how caring the CEOs of agribusiness firms were about feeding the world, we would not object so much to what they did.  That never worked, but he kept on trying.  And I kept on attending, for more than 25 years.

My rationale:

• Ray was impossible to say no to.
• I could learn how agribusiness leaders thought about what they were doing.
• I could say what I thought in a presentation pretty much every year.

Two highlights:

• I witnessed the CEOs of Pioneer Hi-Bred and other agbiotech companies scream at the CEO of Monsanto for alienating the public about genetically modified crops and ruining their businesses.
• I attended the session when Ray had the bright idea of showing the film Food, Inc to the group (he thought they ought to see it).  This did not go over well, and I joined its director, Robby Kenner, in fielding audience attacks.

Despite what I consider to be a total contradiction between the profit goals of agribusiness and the goals of public healthl, Ray continued to insist that we all needed to listen to each other.

His sunny view of humanity is best illustrated by his book  Food Citizenship, which I wrote about in 2018 when it first came out.

The book consists of Ray’s interviews with dozens of PAPSAC participants, beginning with his interview with me.  [The interviews were videotaped and are  available at the Oxford University Press website.  The video of Ray’s interview with me is posted here.]

I always felt like a total outsider at this meeting, and was surprised to find myself at the core of Ray’s attempts to achieve mutual understanding among participants.

We could all use more of that.

As is clear from our interview and Ray’s response to my responses to his questions, we viewed the world of agribusiness very differently.

But I loved him, and will miss him.

• Transcript of the entire program
• Michael Pollan clip

We will act on– on David Kessler’s petition. And the questions that he’s asking are questions that FDA should’ve been asking a long, long time ago.

RFK Jr may have lied to the Senate about vaccines, but it is now evident that he also lied to his supporters about getting toxic chemicals out of the food supply.

Let’s start here: 

Well, it wasn’t his USDA (he’s Secretary of HHS), apparently.

Now we have President Trump’s executive order: PROMOTING THE NATIONAL DEFENSE BY ENSURING AN ADEQUATE SUPPLY OF ELEMENTAL PHOSPHORUS AND GLYPHOSATE-BASED HERBICIDES.

There is no direct one-for-one chemical alternative to glyphosate-based herbicides.  Lack of access to glyphosate-based herbicides would critically jeopardize agricultural productivity, adding pressure to the domestic food system, and may result in a transition of cropland to other uses due to low productivity.  Given the profit margins growers currently face, any major restrictions in access to glyphosate-based herbicides would result in economic losses for growers and make it untenable for them to meet growing food and feed demands.

Never mind the multiple independent research studies and judgment by cancer experts of the World Health Organization that glyphosate is potentially carcinogenic (see account in The New Lede).

Never mind that Bayer, which bought Monsanto and now owns glyphosate, just said it would put $7.5 billion into settling lawsuits over it.

Never mind that glyphosate is in everything, including bread.

Hypocrisy alert: RFK Jr now says he supports the president’s decision on glyphosate.

Resources

• The first piece of proposed legislation to overturn this, the ‘No Immunity for Glyphosate Act.’  Want to take bets on how far it gets?
• Fact sheet from the Center for Biological Diversity

And now, RFK Jr’s defense posted on X:

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.

Disastrous for whom, exactly?

I subscribe to lots of food industry newsletters from the William Reed company, all of them written by top-notch reporters who cover topics thoroughly and accurately.  They write about things food companies need to know about.  I do too.  I find them invaluable.

For example: It would never have occurred to me to consider how the guidelines might affect forced labor in the food supply chain.

This collection of articles on the new dietary guidelines comes from FoodNavigator-USA.

• Why the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines need a ‘mulligan’ – and how to fix them: This isn’t a food fight, it’s a structural failure, according to experts who say the new US Dietary Guidelines need a reset, not another round of compromises… Read more
• ‘Highly-processed’ or ‘ultra-processed’? New dietary guidelines reignite a definitional food fight: The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans avoid the term “ultra-processed foods,” prompting both praise and criticism… Read more
• Ultra-processed food fears mount even as consumer understanding about it lags: Americans increasingly factor processing into food choices, but inconsistent definitions and tradeoffs around convenience and cost leave room for clearer communication, according to new IFIC research… Read more
• How the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines are shifting America’s plate – and sparking debate: The newest Dietary Guidelines emphasize whole foods, protein and animal fats – a shift praised by some experts as overdue, but others warn the report is retro and insufficient… Read more
• What ‘healthy’ means to Americans is changing, and so should marketing: Consumers want healthier food but struggle to trust nutrition information, creating both challenges and opportunities for brands, according to new data from the International Food Information Council… Read more
• How the Dietary Guidelines may shape product strategy and development:  The latest Dietary Guidelines may not reinvent the wheel, but they offer manufacturers a roadmap to balance nutrition, consumer preference and formulation strategy across sweeteners, grains and processed foods, according to one expert… Read more
• Federal diet guidelines accused of bowing to Big Meat:  Doctors and nutrition advocates say new Dietary Guidelines for Americans sideline science in favor of meat and dairy industry… Read more
• 2026 beef trends: How new Dietary Guidelines are shaping protein demand:  Dietary guidance, convenience-driven meals and emerging trends like beef tallow may open new avenues for innovation in beef… Read more
• US Dietary Guidelines sideline MyPlate in favor of inverted food pyramid:  The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans spotlight an inverted food pyramid, effectively sidelining MyPlate and sparking debate among nutrition experts and educators… Read more 
• Study finds dietary guidelines linked to forced labor risks in supply chain: Seafood, dairy and red meat carry a higher risk of forced labor, according to a new Tufts and University of Nottingham study that maps labor exploitation across popular US diets… Read more
  

Readers have asked—and expressed considerable frustration—that this blog does not accept comments.  An explanation seems in order.

When I started doing this blog in 2007, I took comments and enjoyed the back-and-forth with readers.

But: sometime in 2012, a troll appeared.  It (or they) posted exceptionally personal and exceptionally nasty comments several times throughout the day.  These disparaged my gender, age, and ethnicity.  They attempted to organize a campaign to get me fired from NYU (my dean at the time thought this was quite funny).

Their tone reminded me of the industry-funded and secretive Center for Consumer Freedom (I’ve written about this group previously) but I had no proof CCF was responsible, although I certainly had my suspicions.

Readers complained that the comments made civil conversation impossible, and asked me to delete them.

I consulted a cyber security expert, who noticed that all the messages, which appeared to come from a great many different people, all had almost identical IP addresses from a spam site in Putnam, Kansas.

If I wanted more information about who was responsible for them, I would need to pay the costs of investigation.

At that point, it was a easier to stop the comments than to have to monitor the site and delete the trolled ones.

So that’s why no comments.

I still get comments sent directly to my email address.  I can’t respond to all of them, but I do appreciate the ones that correct errors and raise interesting issues.

Thanks for reading.

A reader writes (my edit to preserve requested anonymity):

It’s been quite the undertaking to update what to tell patients and clients about the new DGA.  So many resources I’ve always referred to with MyPlate, eating patterns, and more are gone.  I am now having to replace them with other resources and recommendations from the American Heart Association, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and more.  We dietitians are supposed to be fully aligned with the 2025 DGA.  And what about nutrition textbooks?  My suggestion: “integrates the new 2025 DGA through an evidence based lens to foster critical thinking.”

Perfect!  I love “integrates the new 2025 DGA through an evidence based lens to foster critical thinking.”

That’s what we all need to be doing with students, patients, clients, colleagues, friends, and family.

Let’s hear it for critical thinking!

Resource

I’ve been sent a link to a webinar on precisely this topic.  I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet but I sure hope the speakers got into the weeds.

If you think food prices are increasing, you are right.

I’ve been sent an analysis from Trace One.

Trace One says “grocery prices rose 0.7% in December, the largest one-month increase since October 2022—underscoring how food costs remain a major pain point for households even as broader inflation cools.”

Some of its findings:

• Grocery inflation has outpaced broader inflation since the pandemic began.
• Beef products have seen the sharpest price increases.
• Average household grocery spending is nearing $700 per month nationally.

Comment

I’m kind of shocked by what food is costing these days.  In writing What to Eat Now, I could see that prices doubled since I wrote What to Eat in 2006.  BPut now they’ve gone up even more.  This is fine if income is going up too.

But what if it’s not?

And what if SNAP benefits are cut?

These are tough times.

To many people, full-fat milk tastes better and is more satisfying, which is reason enough to prefer it.  But the “drink full-fat milk” advice in the new dietary guidelines doesn’t make much sense to me.  Most of the nutrients in milk are in the whey portion and vitamins A and D are added to low fat milk.  This makes low- and full-fat milk pretty much equally nutritious.   Also, full-fat milk is just as processed as skim milk; the dairy industry removes the fat and adds it back to the desired percentage.

But the dairy industry wants to sell more full-fat milk and sponsors research demonstrating its superiority.  This recent example replaced their typical dairy consumption with whole milk.  If they had the right kind of intestinal bacteria, they lost weight.

The study: Qin P, Berzina L, Geiker NRW, Sandby K, Krarup T, Kristiansen K, Magkos F. Associations Between Gut Microbiome Enterotypes and Body Weight Change During Whole Milk Consumption. Nutrients. 2026; 18(4):563. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu18040563

Background: Evidence is accumulating that gut bacterial communities modulate the outcome of dietary interventions.

Objective: To assess how gut microbial enterotypes correlate with obesity-related outcomes during one month of whole milk consumption.

Methods: This post hoc analysis used data from a previously published trial, which included a lead-in phase during which men with abdominal adiposity replaced habitual dairy product consumption with 400 g/day of whole milk for one month. We compared body weight, urinary metabolites, fecal metabolites, and gut microbiome composition and function based on shotgun metagenomic sequencing at the beginning and at the end of the lead-in phase between individuals with the two most prevalent enterotypes, the Bacteroides1 (B1) enterotype (n = 24) and the Ruminococcaceae (R) enterotype (n = 38).

Results: Individuals with the B1 enterotype, but not those with the R enterotype, exhibited decreases in body weight and the relative abundance of Streptococcus thermophilus. Multiple linear regression analysis identified enterotype as a strong predictor of body weight change (p = 0.0034). In addition, urinary taurine level change was positively associated with body weight change in B1 individuals, not in R individuals.

Conclusions: Our findings reveal an enterotype-specific response to an identical dietary modification, underscoring the value of integrating enterotype information into nutrition-intervention design and personalized nutrition strategies.

Funding: The FerMetS study and analyses were funded by research grants from Arla Food for Health and the Danish Milk Levy Fund. Dairy products were provided by Arla Foods amba.

Conflicts of Interest: NRWG has received grants from the Danish Agricultural and Food Council. FM has received grants from Arla Foods A/S. The funder had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or the decision to publish the results. The remaining authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Comment

I checked the Arla Foods website.  It says: “Arla Foods is the 4th largest dairy company in the world and a cooperative owned by more than 12,700 dairy farmers.”  The relationship between the microbiome and body weight is truly fascinating and this study suggests that some kinds of bacteria are better than others for maintaining a healthy weight.  The authors make the point of this study clear in their conclusion: “In summary, our findings suggest that individuals with the B1 enterotype may be more prone to weight loss in response to whole milk consumption…..”  They view whole milk as a diet aid.