Halloween, no matter its origins and promotion of costumes, means only one thing to the candy industry: sales.

And plenty of detailed research helps that along.

America’s Halloween Sweet Tooth: Instacart’s 2025 Candy & Decor Trends: Who loads up on candy the most? Since Utah’s first full year on the Instacart platform, Utah has once again decisively claimed the crown, buying candy 50% more often than the national average in October 2024.

And if you ever wondered which candies sell best?

Selling Halloween candy

• Halloween scare: Candy costs are soaring: Trick-or-treaters may get fewer sweets this year as high cocoa prices haunt the candy aisle.
• Halloween candy sales soar: Trends & treats driving growth:  Halloween is no longer just for kids, it’s a confectionery goldmine… Read more
• Confectionery market to hit $278bn by 2032 as candy sales surge: The confectionery market is entering a new growth phase, driven by evolving consumer preferences, seasonal demand, and innovation in non-chocolate formats… Read more
• No trick: Halloween 2025 candy sales to hit record highs: After Summerween comes the real deal: Halloween, which expects to see recording spending… Read more

Enjoy!

The Institute for Food Technology , which publishes Food Technology, has been exploring

the growing challenge of misinformation and the importance of building public trust in food science. Alongside highlights from IFT FIRST sessions on myth busting and consumer trust, it features Food Technology contributors and thought leaders examining how transparency, empathy, and effective communication can help bridge the gap between scientific evidence and public perception.

Here are some of the articles.

• Fighting Food Misinformation:  To counter science denial, lead with empathy, communication experts advise.
• How Food Companies Can Win Back Trust: Drawing on insights from the IFT FIRST session “How Can Food Companies Earn Trust While Combatting Misinformation?” Linda Eatherton outlines why credibility is the true currency of food innovation and how companies can strengthen reputation through empathy, transparency, and sustained communication. Read more
• A ‘Clear’ Path to Regaining Public Trust in Food and Beverage: Concerns about public trust in the food system have been part of the conversation for years—surfacing even at an IFT FIRST Scientific & Technical Forum in 2023 where experts from Edelman and IFIC discussed how fear and misinformation shape consumer confidence. They emphasized that transparency, speed, and empathy are essential for rebuilding credibility. Read more
• Building Relevance and Trust in the Food Sciences: IFT Immediate Past President Christopher Daubert calls for a balanced, evidence-based approach to debates over ultra-processed foods and reminds food professionals that facts alone are not enough—trust is built through transparency and shared values. Read more
• The Messy, Fine Art of Science Communication: Laura Lindenfeld of Stony Brook University’s Alan Alda Center discusses why empathy, storytelling, and listening are critical tools for scientists seeking to make their work heard and believed in an age of skepticism. She explains how communication grounded in trust and connection—not jargon or defensiveness—can help bridge the gap between scientific expertise and public understanding. Read more
• The Transformative Power of Positivity: Food scientist Kantha Shelke advocates for an “appreciative inquiry” approach to food communication—focusing on what’s strong, not what’s wrong—to shift public perception and reinforce trust in food science. She encourages food professionals to highlight innovation, progress, and the positive impact of scientific advances rather than emphasizing fear or limitation.  Read more
• ‘Ultra-Processed’ Foods and the Question of Consumer Trust:  Food scientist Matt Teegarden questions the Nova food classification system’s broad definition of ultra-processed foods and its influence on how consumers perceive healthfulness and trust in the food system. He calls for more precise, science-based frameworks to guide research, policy, and communication around diet and processing.  Read more

Comment: Here’s some simple advice to food companies worried about why the public doesn’t trust them or their products.  If you want to be trusted, behave in a trustworthy manner.

• Put public health and nutrition first.
• Don’t advertise ridiculous health claims.
• Don’t market ultra-procesed foods to kids.
• Don’t use your ingredient lists to obfuscate what’s in your products (e.g., sugar synonyms).
• If something is wrong, own up to it.
• Don’t condescend to your customers.
• Don’t try to convince them your products are healthy and environmentally sustainable if they are not.

Trusted companies have these rules built into their culture.

Their stockholders respect them for it.

So will their customers.

From last week’s The Guardian: “Inside the Republican network behind big soda’s bid to pit Maga against Maha: A Guardian investigation finds the US soda and snack-food industries, threatened by RFK Jr’s movement to change Americans’ eating habits, have turned to a group of well-connected strategists, shadowy pollsters and ‘anti-woke’ influencers.”

The ongoing influence campaign is being spearheaded by the American Beverage Association with help from the Consumer Brands Association, two prominent trade groups in the food industry. Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Keurig Dr Pepper, the three largest soft-drink corporations in the United States, as well as packaged-food conglomerates like General Mills, Kraft Heinz, Mondelēz and Nestlé, are among those that pay dues for the right to have a say in either or both of the trade groups’ strategies.

All three soda-makers identified the Maha efforts as significant threats to their bottom lines in their most recent annual reports, delivered to investors after Trump nominated Kennedy to be secretary of US Health and Human Services. Coke and Dr Pepper went as far as to suggest such risks would be compounded if unnamed “government officials” were to voice health concerns about their products.The three soda makers did not respond to questions about the lobbying effort.

The article goes on to explain the lobbying methods and paid influencer campaigns, at the federal level but also in states considering legislation on food dyes (which take care of many ultra-processed foods) and restrictions on sodas in SNAP.

Whether the MAHA food agenda is real or a smokescreen (see yesterday’s post), anything useful it tries to do will come up against this kind of concerted, well-funded effort, which may be why the second MAHA report backed off on so many issues.

The September 22 New Yorker had an article titled “Mommy Issues,” a profile of an influencer in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.

I was stopped cold by its quoted comment from Del Bigtree, “an anti-vaccine activist who had served as the communications director of [Robert F.] Kennedy’s Presidential campaign.” At a MAHA Action dinner in Washington, DC, Bigtree offered a toast to RFK, Jr, and

thanked the assembled group, singling out [Calley] Means, who, he said, deserved credit for “reaching out and bringing in the food issue, which was such a great cover to get Bobby all the way through.” The room erupted with guffaws.

The real agenda?  Getting rid of vaccines.

Will the MAHA movement make any real progress on major food issues?

I consider food dyes and closing the GRAS loophole to be long overdue improvements, but minor.

If MAHA wants to improve the nutritional healthy of American children, it needs, for starters, to enact policies to:

• Stop marketing unhealthful foods to kids
• Reduce consumption of ultra-processed foods
• Make school meals universally available
• Improve the quality of school meals
• Make sure every child has access to sufficient, high-quality food

When I see a study with a title like this, my first question is “Who paid for this study?”

The title:  Association of Egg Intake With Alzheimer’s Dementia Risk in Older Adults: The Rush Memory and Aging Project. The Journal of Nutrition Volume 154, Issue 7, July 2024, Pages 2236-2243.

The study: It collected dietary data by food frequency questionnaire from older adults (average age 81) and assessed Alzheimer’s dementia after nearly 7 years of follow up.

Results: Eating 1 or 2 eggs a week was associated with decreased risk.

Conclusions: “In conclusion, these findings suggest that more frequent egg consumption is associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s dementia, and this association is partially mediated through the effect of dietary choline on Alzheimer’s dementia…Once replicated in other prospective cohorts and confirmed by clinical trials, these findings may have important public health implications for reducing the population’s risk of AD.”

Funding: Funding for the Rush University qualifications of choline intake was provided through an unrestricted investigator-initiated grant from the Egg Nutrition Center to Think Healthy Group, LLC…The authors and sponsor strictly adhered to the American Society for Nutrition’s guiding principles for private funding for food science and nutrition research.

Conflicts of interest: One author is the Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Dietary Supplements and has received past research support from the Egg Nutrition Center.

Comment: At first glance, this is a standard egg industry funded study with an outcome favoring frequent egg consumption.  But egg consumption in this study—one or two a week—does not seem frequent to me.  What this study may really be about is choline, a conditionally essential nutrient (we make our own, but not always enough).  The “important public health implications?” Eat more eggs and take choline supplements, I guess.  If only.

Fabio Parasecoli, Agata Bachórz, and Mateusz Halawa.  The Pierogi Problem: Cosmopolitan Appetites and the Reinvention of Polish Food. University of California Press, 2025.  239 pages.

My esteemed NYU colleague, Fabio Parasecoli, is lead author with Polish colleagues on this food studies instant classic.

What, you might well ask, is the pierogi problem?

Most foreigners regard this stuffed dumpling as the sole Polish dish of note.  While for the majority of Poles this may not be an issue, a new category of food professionals, experts, and entrepreneurs has been trying to change this state of affairs.  We call them “tastemakers,” as their often-explicit intention is to transform their fellow citizens’ experience and evaluation of food, introducing new standards of quality and categories of judgment  Their ultimate goal is to improve Polish gastronomy and its image abroad, while establishing an autonomous and legitimate culinary field in which cultural values, economic priorities, and power positions are constantly negotiated. (p. 177)

In short, foreigners (us!) view Polish food as heavy, fatty, and bland—except for pierogi—whereas it’s really much better than that.  This book tells the story of how all this happened.

As for negotiation of power positions, see the Appendix, “Exploring Food in Poland: Literature and Autoethnographic Reflections,” in which the authors discuss their own hierarchical issues throughout the writing of this book.  Academic that I am, with my own experiences as a co-author which ranges from the impossible to joyful, I loved reading this professionally analyzed personal account.

Click here to watch a video of Fabio Parasecoli’s discussion with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett about Polish food.

CivilEats’ Lisa Held writes: The Industry Ties Within Trump’s Food and Ag Leadership: Many of the president’s top officials at the USDA, EPA, HHS, and FDA have connections to chemical, agribusiness, or fossil fuel interests.

Really?  Yes.  And the list is long.

As Lisa describes the situation,

The picture of influence is all the more noteworthy because no president has been louder about “draining the swamp” of corporate influence in D.C. Those calls have gotten even more strident around food issues as a result of Trump’s alignment with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is a frequent critic of corporate influence on government policies…To begin to track the influence that industry may exert on the food system over the next four years, Civil Eats dug into the backgrounds of the most prominent individuals currently working on food and agriculture within federal agencies.

She then goes through the list, agency by agency.  Two examples :

I.  Mindy Brashears, USDA Undersecretary for Food Safety (nominated, not yet confirmed)

Brashears has consulted for Cargill, Perdue, and other meat industry giants. She held the same role during Trump’s first term, during which she played an essential role in keeping meatpacking plants running at the height of the pandemic. Congress later called her the “meat industry’s go-to fixer.” In her most recent ethics disclosure forms, she says she’ll resign from positions with Boar’s Head and the Meat Institute, the trade and lobby organization that represents the country’s biggest meatpackers, upon confirmation.

II. Calley Means, Special Advisor (to HHS Secretary RFK Jr)

Means often acts as Kennedy’s mouthpiece on MAHA priorities related to food and health. He is an outspoken member of the team, often accusing government employees of being beholden to industry. Because he’s a special government employee, Means does not have to fill out financial disclosure forms.

Means co-founded Truemed, a company that directs health savings account dollars toward wellness products and memberships that reportedly raised more than $32 million in venture capital earlier this year. Truemed has extensive partnerships with makers of supplements (an industry that wants HHS to loosen regulations), health technology, and other wellness products.

Comment

The list of food (and drug) officials with financial conflicts of interest is long and extensive.  This situation explains the non-regulatory approaches to food issues, and leaving such approaches to states.  If you are hoping that this administration will do anything to refocus production agriculture on food for people (rather than feed for animals and fuel for cars or planes), stop junk food marketing to children, improve school food, reduce ultra-processed food consumption, regulate the content and labeling of supplements, or anything else that might reduce food industry profits, it’s best to keep expectations low.

A reader in Texas, Jennifer Windh, wrote me about food practices in her kid’s suburban Houston elementary school.  She reports:

Many elementary school cafeterias are selling students ice cream and other junk food for lunch. This is happening in my school district and several nearby, and I suspect it’s fairly widespread. This is particularly ironic given RFK Jr’s recent visit to the state to celebrate the passage of “Make Texas Healthy Again” legislation — a core aspect of which was student nutrition and physical education!

From her observations, “It is shocking to see the cafeteria sell 5 and 6 year olds ice cream for lunch.”

As she explains, kids go through the lunch line and get their meals.

Then, the cashier asks “Would you like a snack?” Most students grunt and point to an ice cream item on the picture menu posted on the sneeze guard next to the register, and the cashier sets the selected item on their tray.  The kids go sit down, and immediately rip open and eat their ice cream.  They do not eat their entree or fruit or vegetables first. Of course not! They are six years olds.

Ten minutes into the lunch period, a staff member announces that any students who packed lunch may go buy snacks, and up go another set of kids to buy ice cream, which they then take back to their seat and slowly enjoy for the rest of the lunch period, ignoring whatever other foods their parents packed for them. At the end of the meal, kids throw away tons of untouched or half eaten entrees, fruit, vegetables, and milk, but only empty ice cream wrappers.

In her report on the ice cream sales, she notes:

• Students do not have to eat lunch first, or eat any lunch at all.
• There is no limit on the number of ice creams students can buy.
• Students can buy ice creams for their friends.
• Parents are not informed about these purchases.

Note that kids getting free or reduced-price meals will not be able to do this unless they also have parental contributions to lunch money account.

Here’s what they cost, according to the a la carte price list.

What on earth is going on here?

Try this.

Despite this graph, Jennifer Windh writes that she “submitted a public information request and learned that our district (Tomball ISD) sold just over $301,000 last year in a la carte ice cream items to students in grades K through 6.”

Wow!  Deja vu.

This reminds me so much of the soft drink pouring rights contracts I wrote about in 2000 in Public Health Reports.  These were contracts between soda companies and schools to promote exclusive sales of their drinks in elementary, middle, and high schools (later, protests got them out of elementary schools at least).  The payments for these contracts put schools in the position of pushing kids to buy as much soda as possible, regardless of how they might compete with nutritious school meals.  As I said in that article,

The quality of “competitive” foods sold outside the cafeteria has long been a source of concern to nutritionists and school food service directors, as these foods often are higher in fat, sugar, and sodium than is desirable and students consume them instead of the more nutritious foods provided by federally supported school meal programs.

So where is the USDA in all of this?

USDA has rules for “competitive” snacks sold outside the school meals programs: “Smart Snacks in Schools.”  All snacks must meet nutritional standards, as this example does (for others, see Hershey Ice Cream Promotional Materials).

There are time-and-place restrictions, as shown in Guidelines for Competitive Foods by State.  Let’s look at Texas (my emphasis):

The Texas Public School Nutrition Policy prohibits elementary schools from serving competitive foods (or provide access to them through direct or indirect sales) to students anywhere on school premises throughout the school day. This includes school stores, fundraisers and vending machines. Elementary schools may allow one nutritious snack per day under the teacher’s supervision. Middle schools may not serve competitive foods from 30 minutes before the start of the first lunch until 30 minutes after the last lunch. High schools may not serve or provide access to competitive foods during meal periods in areas where reimbursable meals are served and/or consumed. FMNV, including carbonated beverages, are not allowed to be provided to students until after the end of the last scheduled class. In 2013, the Governor passed into a law a bill limiting sanctions for schools that sell FMNV.

Under USDA rules, these ice creams meet nutrition standards.  I’m not sure they meet either the letter or the spirit of the time-and-place rules.  In any case, they undermine the purpose of school meals and for that reason alone schools ought to firmly restrict their sales.

Texas school food advocates: get to work!