States have reported upwards of 20,000 cases of Cyclospora-caused explosive diarrhea, some of them–but by no means all—traced to lettuce grown by Taylor Farms in Mexico and shipped to Taco Bell and, apparently, lots of other places.

The best way to keep track of all this—and it is a lot to keep track of—is to read food poisoning lawyer Bill Marler’s blog and Phyllis Entis (the bug lady) at e-FoodAlert.

I wrote about the system-failure issues raised by this Cyclospora outbreak last week.

This week, I want to talk about what to do about it.

I hate to say it, but for starters, do not eat bagged salads until this industry can get its act together and prevent human (for Cyclospora) and animal (for E. coli and Salmonella) waste from getting anywhere near irrigation water used for growing lettuce.

And maybe don’t eat lettuce at all.  You can buy whole heads, remove the outer leaves, wash what’s left, and hope for the best, but if Cyclospora is on that lettuce, it won’t wash off and is still risky.

We need to get the FDA and CDC back on the job to get producers to produce lettuce safely.  For this, I defer once again to Bill Marler.

Here is what they should have done and still could do today:

1.     Restore required Cyclospora reporting in FoodNet…FoodNet measures trends, it does not detect outbreaks. But it was narrowed eleven months before the largest Cyclospora outbreak this country has ever recorded, reinstating it costs almost nothing, and every letter Congress has sent asks for it.

2.    Make cyclosporiasis reportable in every state, not merely nationally notifiable. Those are two different things: notifiable means CDC asks for the case, reportable means state law requires it. The parasite does not observe the difference, and neither should the count.

3.    Publish one national number and update it. CDC currently maintains an outbreak page frozen at 1,947 since July 24 and a surveillance page reading 6,707, while the states themselves report 20,927. Pick a figure, define exactly what it counts, include probable cases, and refresh it on a schedule the public can rely on. An agency that will not publish the size of a problem cannot expect to be believed about the solution.

4.    Grant the citizen petition that has been sitting at FDA since Feb. 4. Stop Foodborne Illness asked the agency to adopt a policy of naming every company associated with a foodborne illness outbreak, recall or no recall. It requires no rulemaking; the Commissioner could grant it this week with a memorandum….

5.     Bring back the Microbiological Data Program, and this time give it a parasite target. The MDP was created under President Bush’s 2001 Food Safety Initiative and tested about fifteen thousand produce samples a year — bagged lettuce and spinach, cilantro, hot peppers, tomatoes, sprouts, melons — for roughly $4.5 million a year, and it accounted for something like eighty percent of all federal produce pathogen testing until it was zeroed out and shut down in December 2012….while we are at it add the parasite to CDC’s national wastewater surveillance network, which reaches roughly fifteen hundred sites and about half the country and does not look for this organism at all.

6.    Put the FSMA 204 traceability rule back on its original schedule instead of 2028. Susan Mayne, who has actually run lettuce tracebacks, said on national television this week that it would have been enormously helpful here, and that without it the same thing happens again next summer.

7.     Name Cyclospora in the pre-harvest agricultural water rule. The only numeric microbial criterion in Subpart E is generic E. coli, and FDA’s own guidance says fecal-indicator testing will not identify this parasite….

8.    Stand up the independent board Frank Yiannas has been asking for since 2025 — an NTSB for foodborne outbreaks, investigating across agency lines, publishing root cause and lessons, with no stake in the reputation of the agency whose work it is reviewing….the point is not to find fault; it is to find facts….

The point here is that our food supply needs to be a whole lot safer.  When food safety rules are in place, followed, and inspected to make sure they are followed, food poisoning incidents go down.

We saw that with meat safety in the 1990s.

Leafy greens have been a food safety problem for a long time.  It’s way past time to get that problem addressed.

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The Examination has released an investigative report in its new “Behind the Buzz” series: “Is it safe to drink Red Bull and vodka? Dubious research tied to the company has shaped energy drink policy. The company paid scientists whose studies largely found that mixing energy drinks and alcohol isn’t harmful, contrary to most research.”

The studies backed by Red Bull have been nearly unanimous in their message: Consuming energy drinks and alcohol together is no more harmful than drinking alcohol alone.

That stands in stark contrast to the vast majority of independent studies on the subject.

The Examination gathered more than 100 studies about the health or behavioral risks of mixing energy drinks and alcohol. Of the studies that received funding by Red Bull or were conducted by researchers who disclosed financial conflicts of interest with the company, 95% concluded that mixing alcohol with energy drinks did not increase those risks. Roughly 80% of independent studies reached the opposite conclusion, The Examination found.

…Laura Schmidt, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco who has examined research funded by the food and beverage industry, described those studies as “marketing dressed up as science.”

Indeed.  This is a classic “funding effect” study.  “Funding effect” is the term coined by the late (and much missed) Sheldon Krimsky to describe how industry-funded studies tend to produce results favorable to the funder’s interest, as has been frequently observed in studies funded by the pharmaceutical, chemical, and cigarette industries.

As for the funding effect in studies of food and health, see my book Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat( Basic Books, 2018)

The Examination’s investigation is particularly valuable because lives are at stake, especially for young men, the core customer for Red Bull.  Highly caffeinated energy drinks magnify the effects of alcohol.  Red Bull is often consumed with alcohol and its marketing does not discourage that combination.

Red Bull is a sugary beverage—One 8.4 ounce can contains 26 grams of sugar and 80 mg caffeine; it provides 110 sugary calories.

Red Bull ingredients: carbonated water, sugar, glucose, citric acid, taurine, natural and artificial flavors, sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), magnesium carbonate, colors, caffeine, and a few vitamins and minerals.

This is basically sugar water with a few electrolytes and taurine added.  The energy boost comes from sugar and caffeine.

The Examination authors describe their methods for identifying studies funded by Red Bull; they used AI.

I wish they had included the raw data—a list of the studies, funders, and outcomes.  As it is, we have to take them at their word, but their conclusion is certainly plausible and consistent with much other published research.

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One Year Later: How H.R. 1’s SNAP Policy Changes Are Reverberating Across the Food System

CSPI ad GFI frame this report in an interesting way, as a tale of two distinct, and sometimes at cross-purposes, Trump administration food agendas.

The first, reflected in Project 2025 and H.R. 1, represents an economic agenda focused on reducing federal spending on food assistance, shifting costs to states, and tightening eligibility so fewer people can access programs.

The second, embodied in the Presidentially-appointed Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission’s assessment report and strategy, is a nutrition and public health agenda: reducing chronic disease by limiting ultra-processed foods in federal programs, promoting whole foods, and emphasizing personal responsibility in dietary choices.

These two strands sit in significant tension with one another.

Do they ever!

In just the first 8 months, 4 million people lost SNAP benefits. More than 750,000 children no longer have access. And we don’t yet know the toll that SNAP and Medicaid losses will have on WIC and free school meal participation stemming from loss of automatic eligibility conferred through SNAP and Medicaid.

That was the intent of the law, no?

And here’s what Senator Elizabeth Warren says:

Impact on grocery stores

SNAP recipients account for an estimated 8% of grocery sales.  Fewer SNAP recipients means less income for grocery stores, especially those in low-income neighborhoods.

Estimated losses due to declining enrollments are about $10 billion.

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[First, a correction to yesterday’s post about peptides.  Peptides are injected, not consumed orally.  Therefore, they are not regulated as supplements.  I should have made this clear.  Sorry.]

I’ve been collecting examples of new foods coming on the market or already here, all of which raise the question: Do we need this?

• Salmon from spirulina? Israeli food tech company commercializes seafood alternative:  SimpliiGood by AlgaeCore Technologies recreates the taste and texture of salmon using algae and innovative decolorization and texturizing processes… Read more
• Study Shows Bamboo May Be a Superfood :Pandas may have been onto something all along. The bamboo-loving bears’ famously simple diet has long puzzled scientists, but new research suggests bamboo may offer a surprising range of health benefits—ones researchers are only now beginning to fully understand. Read More
• From baobab to rooibos: Premium and indigenous ice cream flavors fuel demand in Africa: As ice cream consumption surges across Africa, consumers are driving a shift toward premium products and culturally rooted flavors… Read more
• Global seaweed snack sales could double to $4.66B by 2030: North American and European markets are experiencing the fastest growth in seaweed snacks… Read more
• Are Aldi crystal clear frozen ice cubes ultra-processed?  No, Aldi crystal clear frozen ice cubes are not ultra-processed. They are merely ridiculous. Four cubes of frozen water: $5.
• Why weird works: The most left-field product launches of the past 12 months: Beef for breakfast, ketchup in a smoothie, crisps that taste like a battery – brands have spent the past year testing how far they can push consumers, and in some cases, finding they’ll go further than expected… Read more

And then there is food crime:

• KitKat heist sends urgent warning to CPG sector: Over 400,000 KitKats have vanished in transit, highlighting the increasing threat of cargo crime Read more

That’s the world we live in.  Enjoy!

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Last week, MAHA proudly announced that the FDA Panel appointed by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr had approved 6 of 7 Peptides over the objections of FDA scientists.

The vote is a win for HHS Secretary Kennedy and MAHA, opening a path for compounding pharmacies to prepare BPC-157, TB-500 and four other popular peptides by prescription.”

The vote was close: RFK Jr’s personal appointees outnumbered FDA scientists concerned that the peptides have not been shown to be safe or effective.

RFK Jr believes in peptides and loaded the panel with his appointees; six of his eight appointees sell peptides.

The FDA raised concerns about conflicts of interest, but to no avail.

This panel is strictly advisory.  The FDA does not have to accept its recommendations.

The big question: Will the FDA accept this recommendation or reject it?

• If the acting head of FDA, Kyle Diamantas, accepts the panel’s recommendation, it will be a political, not scientific, decision.
• If he rejects the panel’s recommendation, he risks losing his job.

At stake: the FDA’s role as a science-based regulatory agency.

Principles anyone?

What this is about

Peptides are small proteins (50 or fewer amino acids), some of which have regulatory actions in the body.  The best examples are GLP-1 drugs.

They have to be injected; if swallowed as pills, they would be destroyed by digestive enzymes.

For what this is about, see the excellent account in the New Yorker: Why Are People Injecting Themselves with Peptides?

The ones just approved by the FDA committee are claimed (without much in the way of evidence) to do fabulous things for health.

Peptide sellers have pushed hard for the FDA to approve them.

Comment

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence for the benefits of injected peptides, but no real science.

Peptides are in a regulatory limbo.  Supplements are virtually unregulated as a result of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994. Consequently, you have no way of knowing if you are getting what the label says you are getting.

But peptides are injected, and not regulated under DSHEA.  That’s what this committee is trying to fix.

Caveat emptor!

I can’t wait to see what Diamantas does on this and what happens to him if he does the right thing and rejects the panel’s recommendations.

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Pub date is September 8. Pre-orders through UC Press get a 30% discount. Use promo code UCPSAVE30.

I am outraged by the Cyclospora outbreak.  It has sickened thousands of people so far (>16,000?), and made some of them very sick.

Cyclospora is different from other foodborne pathogens.  It comes from human waste and cannot be removed by washing (although that helps some) or killed by chlorine.  It can only be removed by microfiltration or killed by heat or, maybe, ultra-violet radiation.

It needs to prevented from getting into irrigation water.

Lettuce producers have known about the Cyclospora hazard for more than a decade.  They have not acted, and neither has the government.

Hence, “Lettuce-Gate.”

Background

People are getting sick from eating some green thing—Lettuce? Parsley? Cilantro?—contaminated with a human-specific species of the parasitic microbe Cyclospora, which infects the digestive tract, causes “explosive” diarrhea, and is spread to vegetables via human feces, most likely through irrigation water.  [See: JAMA patient page: What is Cyclosporiasis?]

This outbreak is remarkable, not only for the large number of people affected, but also because of the inadequate, delayed, and chaotic oversight and response.

And the usual denials and finger-pointing.

• HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr says the outbreak is “under control.” It is not; cases are still flooding in, many of them from Michigan.
• Mexico says there’s no evidence its lettuce is at fault; of course there isn’t.  It’s been eaten already.
• Taco Bell: Says it is no longer using Taylor Farms lettuce.

The DOGE-decimated CDC only issued its first health advisory two weeks after cases were reported, provides much less information than it used to, and is way behind on its tracking.

• Investigation update
• Notice
• Locations—states where cases are occurring
• Timeline

The equally DOGE-decimated FDA has made a mess of communication.  It first reported finding a positive sample in lettuce from Mexico, but then retracted that result saying it was a false positive.  It also reports much less than it used to about outbreaks under investigation on its website: FDA: Investigation of 5-state outbreak of Cyclospora illnesses: Iceberg lettuce (July 2026).   It still says the contaminated lettuce came from Taylor Farms in Mexico, based on the epidemiology.

For detailed analyses of FDA and CDC failure see Phyllis Entis at eFoodAlert and Bill Marler’s.

Yes, Cyclospora is hard to investigate.  Symptoms do not occur for days or weeks after eating contaminated food.  This means the evidence was eaten or destroyed long before anyone got sick.

Food Safety Rules

Everyone who produces food is supposed to assess the production procedures for places where contamination can occur, take steps to prevent contamination at those places, monitor to make sure the steps were taken, and test to make sure the procedures are working.  The FDA is supposed to inspect to make sure all his is happening.

The Food Safety Modernization Act issued rules for produce safety.  These include standards for irrigation water, but these do not apply well to Cyclospora (because it resists washing and chlorine).

If vegetable producers took appropriate steps, contamination risks would be much lower.

But if there is no federal oversight, no inspection, and no punishment for producing unsafe food, producers won’t bother.

They particularly will not bother to test the irrigation water.  Producers hate testing.  If they find something, they have to issue recalls.  These are complicated and expensive.

Taylor Fresh Foods, Inc

• Was slow to issue a recall.
• Eventually recalled lettuce products in 27 states. 
• Said the FDA apologized for claiming it had found a positive test result (the FDA did not apologize).
• Gave $1 million to president Trump’s campaign (the White House denied involvement).  [Source: Bloomberg]
• Called the White House to try to delay having to issue a recall.
• Did all else it could to prevent having to recall.
• Was warned about Cyclospora hazards in 2013 when the FDA did an  environmental assessment.
• Is located in Mexico 800 feet away from a public swimming pool facility—a potential source of fecal contamination of irrigation water.
• Has a long history of outbreaks since 2009.
• Claims each outbreak as “an isolated event, our branded products are not involved, we acted quickly.”

What don’t we know?

Food safety attorney Bill Marler presents three maps of the United States.

• Confirmed cases from Taco Bell
• Where the recalled lettuce went (many more states)
• All 2026 Cyclosporiasis cases (practically every state)

This predicts lots more cases to come.

The solution?  Treat irrigation water.  Require it to be treated.

Where are the CDC and FDA in all of this? 

• Decimated by DOGE—huge staff losses in both agencies.
• Weakened by cuts to public health spending.
• Handicapped by delays in implementing a federal food traceability rule.
• Not helped by the USDA’s plans to move food safety labs out of Washington DC.

One root cause: consolidation

Farm Action asks: If it isn’t Taylor Farms, then who?  It points out that “Just four companies—Taylor Fresh Foods, Cultrale-Safra, Itochu, and Bonduelle—control 54% of the U.S. fresh-cut salad market.”

The Bigger the Corporation, the Bigger the Diarrhea Outbreak

The fact that lettuce from one farm or one shredding facility could possibly have sickened thousands demonstrates the dangers of concentrating food production among a few large corporations. But the risks of corporate power run even deeper. Taylor Farms and other large produce corporations have long exerted political power to weaken food safety regulations, contributing to crises like this one. Taylor Farms representatives even met with the White House last week in an effort to distance the company from the outbreak…Recent budget cuts to federal and state health agencies further diminish the government’s ability to hold corporations accountable and protect consumers…

Advice to the Produce Industry

• Sales of salads are already down.
• Fix this.  Start testing.

Advice to Eaters

1. Cook your veggies: The New York Times has a handy recipe for stir-fried lettuce.
2. Avoid risky bagged salads and other hazards, and eat other fruits and vegetables.

What is Congress doing?

Writing letters, according to Bill Marler.

But only one of them focuses on traceability.  And we still do not know how Cyclospora got into the lettuce.

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Here’s how I learned about this one:

KSM-66 ashwagandha may support cognition and sleep in children: Supplementation with KSM-66 ashwagandha root extract in gummy form for eight weeks is well tolerated and may enhance cognitive performance and sleep quality in children between the ages of 6 and 12, according to new research…. Read more

One look and I immediately wanted to know: Who paid for this?

To its credit, NutraIngredients said so right away:

Shri Kartikeya Pharma, India, which manufactures and supplies KSM-66 ashwagandha extract, provided financial support, the test product and a matching placebo for the study.

I dug up the original paper:

• The study: Saxena A, Lopresti A, Sharif M, Elon N, Suri R and Langade DK (2026) A clinical assessment of the therapeutic effects of Ashwagandha root extract on cognitive performance, sleep, and fatigue in children aged 6–12 years. Front. Nutr. 13:1742138. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2026.1742138
• Rationale: “Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera L.Dunal) is an adaptogenic herb known to reduce stress and enhance well-being in adults.”
• Methods: randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled, parallel-group trial in children with parent-reported concerns related to attention, concentration, or memory.
• Results:supplementation significantly improved speed of information processing, and non-significantly improved delayed word recall, Stroop task accuracy, Corsi block span, choice reaction time accuracy, and parent-reported sleep quality.
• Conclusion: “These findings suggest that an eight-week supplementation with ARE is well tolerated and may enhance cognitive performance and sleep quality in children.”
• Funding: “The author(s) declared that financial support was received for this work and/or its publication.This study was sponsored by Shri Kartikeya Pharma, India, which provided financial support, study intervention (Ashwagandha root extract), and a matching placebo for both study sites. The Sponsor had no role in data analysis, interpretation, or manuscript preparation.”
• Conflict of interest: “The author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.”

Comment

Most of the study results were non-significant; “may enhance” equally means “may not enhance.”  As always, I’m amused by the denial of conflicted interests, as if funding by the maker of the supplement was not sufficient as a conflict.  I think it is.

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Pub date is September 8. Pre-orders through UC Press get a 30% discount. Use promo code UCPSAVE30.

I walked into Autumn Leaves Books in Ithaca last week to talk to them about my event there on September 12, and was surprised and delighted to see my forthcoming book with Lisa Sutherland—for the first time!

Its official publication date is September 8.

If you pre-order it through UC Press, you get a 30% discount. Use promo code UCPSAVE30.

Early Reviews

“An entertaining examination of an industry whose many customers have a sweet tooth.” — Kirkus Reviews