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!

The Trump Administration, in its efforts to downsize government, has once again picked on a little known agency that produces data essential for food system analysis and the kind of work I do.  So I take this personally.

In Trump I, it took care of the USDA’s Economic Research Service, which shows few signs of recovering from staff losses.

This time, it’s the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, which among other things, runs the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Stat News reported that the CDC team running top survey on health and nutrition is laid off.  

Oops.  A mistake, apparently.

As Civil Eats explained the head-spinning events,

On Oct. 10, the administration sent out reduction in force (RIF) notices to seven agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services. This initially included 1,300 employees from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who direct the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).

By the next day, 600 of those employees were reinstated, STAT News reported. However, 100 NHANES planners who work at the National Center for Health and Statistics were still included in the RIFs. That is until Wednesday, when a federal judge issued an order temporarily blocking those layoffs and future RIFs issued during the shutdown.

It’s hard to know where to begin.

As ConscienHealth put it, Data? Who Needs Data? 

After all, NHANES merely collects ongoing national data about dietary intake and health and forms the basis of what we know about trends in dietary patterns, disease risk, and obesity, among many other things.

It’s not perfect—no nutrition survey can be—but the people who run it try to do the best they can to survey a nationally representative sample, interview that sample in person, and cross check to make sure responses are as accurate as possible.

We need this information as a basic for public health policy.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest issued a statement.

It should go without saying that if you want to make Americans healthier, you have to have a basic understanding of what they actually eat and how their health is changing over time….The importance of NHANES for monitoring population health through direct and objective measurements cannot be overstated. Not only is NHANES used in the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s analyses…it is also used in developing the Dietary Reference Intakes which set nutrient recommendations for individuals in the U.S. and Canada. NHANES data has also been used to track the rates of certain health conditions and to provide population reference statistics.

Despite mouthing encouraging words about tackling chronic, diet-related disease, this administration’s actions almost always put real solutions further out of reach. The firing of the NHANES staff is another example, and an indication that the administration would rather push its political agenda than collect the data necessary to address the very real problems it has identified.

This is yet another example of Health and Human Services’ undermining its own agenda.  If you don’t measure it, you can ignore it.

• Hence, let’s end collecting data on food insecurity.
• Hence, let’s end collecting data on diet and disease.

I’m indebted to Elaine Watson of AgFunder for posting this on X (Twitter): “New report accuses Big Food of ‘corporate #greenwashing.’ @Danone and @Nestle hit back”

This seemed worth a look and I went right to it. “Danone and Nestlé hit back after new report accuses Big Food of ‘corporate greenwashing.’”

The 38-page report comes from the New Climate Institute: “Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2025: Food and Agriculture Sector Deep Dive: Assessing the Transparency, Integrity and Progress of Corporate Climate Strategies.”

It compares the climate promises and actions of five companies—Danone, JBS, Mars, Nestlé, and PepsiCo—with respect to deforestation, transition from animal- to plant-based products, emissions from fertilizers, reduced waste, and other measures.

Here’s the summary:

Its conclusions:

• We find that agrifood companies present measures that are unlikely to lead to structural, deep emission reductions in the sector.
• We find that agrifood companies’ emission reduction targets are currently undermined by the undefined role for land-based carbon removals.
• Standard setters need to anchor the need for deep and structural emission reductions in their voluntary standards and guidelines, guided by key transitions for the sector, and need to call for separate targets for emission reduction and removal.

Danone and Nestlé argue that they are committed to reducing their environmental impact and making good progress.

Comment

It would be nice if they were.  But to point out the obvious: food companies have no market incentive to reduce their environmental impact if it is going to raise their costs.   Of course JBS comes across as Very Poor; it is a meat company and meat production releases much greater emissions than for any other food. It is much to the advantage of Big Food to pass the externalized costs of production onto taxpayers, which is what they now do.   This situation calls for regulation.  At the moment, regulation is an unlikely possibility, but we can always hope—and work toward that goal by holding corporations accountable for their greenwashing promises.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has published a report measuring progress on achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators for food and agriculture.

I am particularly interested in SDG #2: Zero Hunger: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

For example, for Indicator 2.1.1 for Target 2.1 (“By 2030, end hunger….”), the report says:

Updated global estimates point to some progress in decreasing world hunger in recent years. An estimated 8.2 percent of the global population may have faced hunger in 2024, down from 8.5 percent in 2023 and 8.7 percent in 2022. It is estimated that between 638 million and 720 million people faced hunger in 2024.

But the figures are considerably higher than they were in 2017, as shown here.

I also want to know what’s happening with chronic, noncommunicable diseases related to obesity.  For that, you have to go to the official UN progress report on the SDGs.

Target 3.4 41. Globally, in 2021, it is estimated that 18 million people under the age of 70 died from a noncommunicable disease. This figure represents more than half of deaths among people in this age range. The risk of premature death from any of the four main noncommunicable diseases (cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes) has decreased since 2015, but, despite increased awareness, the world is not on track to meet the target for the reduction of noncommunicable diseases by 2030.

Comment: Public health has a lot of work to do.  The SDGs were a great idea (with terrific iconography) but the 2030 deadline is fast approaching with attainment of most goals still well out of reach.  That is one reason why the destruction of the public health apparatus in the United States is so alarming, and the withdrawal of US support for international public health so deeply disappointing.

I wondered what this headline from FoodNavigator-Europe meant:

Nutritional dark matter: The next frontier in food science: The discovery of ‘nutritional dark matter’ is unlocking new paths for smarter food innovation, targeted health benefits, and precision nutrition… Read more

I went right to it:

What is Nutritional Dark Matter? A summary of key insights

• Nutritional databases track only 150 of 26,000+ food compounds
• Most food chemicals remain unstudied but may impact human health
• Poor nutrition causes one in five adult deaths worldwide
• Foodomics links diet to genes, microbes, and disease mechanisms
• Industry must adapt to new science shaping future food innovation

As for foodomics, this term “brings together genomics (the role of genes), proteomics (proteins), metabolomics (cell activity) ad nutrigenomics (the interaction of genes and diet.”

Translation

• “Dark matter” refers to the chemicals in food that have not (yet?) been identified as essential to the human diet but might have physiological functions.
• “Foodomics” explains how all that might work.

Bottom line: While waiting for the scientists to investigate “dark matter,” the implications of the concept for dietary advice are obvious: Eat whole foods, processed as minimally as possible.

But we already knew that.

I’m indebted to Consumer Lab for its testing and discussion of Protein, Energy, and Nut Bars.  

Full disclosure: I don’t like these products much.  I don’t like their soft texture or off flavors.  The Environmental Working Group doesn’t much like them either, mainly because they are ultra-processed, contain artificial sweeteners, and are highly caloric.

Consumer Lab’s tests found some of these bars to contain more fat, carbs, and/or sugar alcohols than listed on their labels.  The test results are in CL’s Nutrition Bars Review of bars from Aloha, Barebells, Clif Bar, David, GoMacro, IQ Bar, Kind, Kirkland, Larabar, Perfect Bar, Pure Protein, RxBar, and Quest.

CL is particularly concerned about the sugar alcohols commonly used in high-protein bars.

The distributor of one of the David bars deemed by CL as not approved (nearly five times as much fat as on the label and, therefore, more calories) argued that CL had used the wrong testing method.

At issue is the number of calories provided by the ingredient, esterified propoxylated glycerol (EPG), a poorly digested fat substitute.  CL thought it should be labeled and its calories counted.  The distributor disagreed.

CL says “EPG is a way to add fat to a protein bar (making it less dry), while hiding most of this fat and possible calories from the label.  But we think this is dishonest to consumers….”  It then goes on to discuss the potential binding of EPG to fat-soluble vitamins and causing oily urine and stools.  It wants amounts of EPG disclosed on labels.

Comment: The FDA says EPG is GRAS.  While the arguments about its calories continue, my bottom line is simple.  EPG is a marker of ultra-processing.  I would just as soon avoid it.

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has just signed the bill, “Pupil nutrition: restricted school foods and ultraprocessed foods of concern: prohibition.”

This bill prohibits ultra-processed foods in federally funded school meals (K-12, breakfast and lunch), as well as competitive foods sold as snacks.

This means that

From the midnight before to 30 minutes after the end of the official schoolday, at each school, the only competitive foods that may be sold to a pupil are fruit, vegetable, dairy, protein, or whole grain rich food items; foods with a fruit, vegetable, dairy, protein, or whole grain item as its first ingredient; or combination foods containing at least one-quarter cup of fruit or vegetable.

These foods must also meet the following standards:

Press reports

• Press release: Gov. Newsom signs first-in-the-nation law to ban ultraprocessed foods from school lunches
• NBC News: California becomes the first state to phase ultraprocessed food out of school meals
• CNN: California enacts nation’s first law to define and ban ultraprocessed foods
• AP News: New California laws requires schools to phase out ultraprocessed foods