The newly released Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) has bad news.

In 2024, more than 295 million people across 53 countries and territories experienced acute levels of hunger– an increase of 13.7 million from 2023.

Of great concern is the worsening prevalence of acute food insecurity, which now stands at 22.6 percent of the population assessed. This marks the fifth consecutive year in which this figure has remained above 20 percent…Malnutrition, particularly among children, reached extremely high levels, including in the Gaza Strip, Mali, Sudan, and Yemen. Nearly 38 million children under five were acutely malnourished across 26 nutrition crises.

Why?

• Conflict
• Economic shocks
• Climate extremes
• Forced displacement

The report makes dismal reading.  These crises may seem remote, but if people cannot survive in their own countries, they will migrate.  We are one world and we will be much better off if everyone else is too.

I was astounded to see this headline:

Kellanova eyes frozen PB&J as next-gen Lunchables push into hot and cold aisles.  Kellanova is developing frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as part of its strategy to expand Lunchables into new temperature zones, aiming to compete with products like Uncrustables and diversify its snack portfolio.Read More

Oops.  It’s not Kellanova doing this.  It’s Kraft Heinz’s product.

Lunchables PB&J is a no-thaw, crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich that also includes a side of grape or strawberry flavored dip. While most ready-to-eat PB&Js are frozen, Lunchables’ offering can be eaten straight from the refrigerator with no need to wait for it to thaw.

Wait!  How did I miss this?  There already are frozen PB&J sandwiches?

People think these are better than putting their own peanut butter and jam on bread?

OK.  Whatever.

(I am so the wrong generation for these things).

[Personal note: my graduation address today at Hopkins has been rain-postponed to 1:00 EDT .  It will be streamed here.]

Food safety is always a difficult topic because nobody wants to talk about it.

• We expect the food we buy to be safe (a quite reasonable expection, in my view).
• Food companies, by law, are supposed to produce foods safely.
• Regulators are supposed to make sure they do.

Any breakdown in rules and regulations causes problems.  Three troubling examples:

I.  Sentient Food: Federal Inspectors Found Antibiotics in Beef ‘Raised Without Antibiotics.’ They Took No Action

These letters, recently obtained by the advocacy group Farm Forward through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal that the world’s largest meat producers — JBS, Cargill, and Tyson — raised cattle that tested positive for antibiotics prohibited under USDA-approved labels advertising the beef as free of antibiotics…These findings were announced last August, but the names of the companies which tested positive for antibiotics were not made publicly available until recently, as part of a new report released by Farm Forward questioning the validity of this popular label.

II.  Phyllis Entis: Manufacturer repeatedly shipped pet food after presumptive-positive pathogen test results

During the 2024 calendar year, Morasch Meats, Inc. (Portland, OR) sold dozens of batches of Northwest Naturals raw pet foods and pet treats after the finished products tested presumptive-positive for Salmonella or Listeria monocytogenes.

Instead of confirming the presumptive result as required by the test kit manufacturer, the company repeated the same rapid test on fresh samples. When the repeat test did not find the pathogen, Morasch released the production batch for sale.

III.  Food Safety News:   Intent or impact? New rules redefine food safety justice

On May 9, President Trump signed Fighting Overcriminalization in Federal Regulations, an executive order directing agencies like the FDA and USDA to limit criminal charges for food safety violations unless companies knowingly break the law. The executive order discourages criminal charges for unintentional violations…while deliberate acts, like falsifying tests, remain subject to prosecution…Critics, including consumer advocates, warn that the executive order, combined with reported cuts to FDA and USDA staff, could weaken deterrence against food safety violations.

Comment: When it comes to food safety, enforcement regulation is essential.  History tells us that unwatched food companies sometimes tend to let safety measures slide.  FDA and USDA food safety inspectors need to be on the job.  FDA inspectors have been cut.  USDA staff cuts undoubtedly will affect meat inspections.   None of this bodes well for the safety of the US food supply.

The effects of all the proposed budget cuts, clearly aimed at cutting taxes for the rich at the expense of the poor, will be painful, but two are especially ironic given the Making America Healthy Again effort.

The first were the farm-to-school programs “in alignment with President Donald Trump’s executive order ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government and DEI Programs and Preferencing.’” These cuts were especially stupid because the programs did not cost much but were a demonstrably a win/win.  Schools got fresh produce, and small farmers got paid.

Now we have a second tiny program to lose funding, SNAP-ED, more formally the USDA’s National Education and Obesity Prevention Grant Program.

Here’s what AI says about this program (not a bad summary, actually).

SNAP-Ed stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education. It is a federally funded, public health program designed to help low-income individuals and families make healthy food choices and adopt active lifestyles within their budget. SNAP-Ed provides nutrition education and promotes healthy food choices, while also supporting physical activity.

Goal: SNAP-Ed aims to improve the likelihood that people eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will make healthy choices within a limited budget and adopt physically active lifestyles.

Evidence-Based: The program uses evidence-based nutrition education and obesity prevention strategies.

Federally Funded: It is a grant program funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

State and Local Partnerships: SNAP-Ed works with state and local organizations to deliver its services.

Focus Areas: SNAP-Ed initiatives include nutrition education (Classes on healthy eating, budgeting, meal planning, basic cooking, and food safety), social marketing campaigns (Community-based campaigns to promote healthy eating and physical activity), and efforts to improve community policies and environments.

Although AI didn’t mention it, SNAP-ED works.  See: SNAP-Ed: The Transition of the Nation’s Largest Nutrition Education Program Into a Pillar of the Public Health Infrastructure

The SNAP-Ed program has demonstrated that its comprehensive approaches are primed to address public health crises along with its ongoing role of helping to eliminate nutrition-related health disparities. Despite the program’s public health focus, community-wide scope, and capacity for sector-level change, SNAP-Ed funding has been static for more than decade, even as its audience and mission have doubled. Funding for SNAP-Ed was only 0.4% of the total 2021 SNAP budget, or $5.15 annually for each of the nearly 90 million people in its audience—roughly the cost of a bag of oranges or potatoes.

The cost of this program is roughly half a billion dollars a year, not even a rounding error in the federal budget.  Cutting it does no good for anyone, undercuts the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) agenda, and is thoughtless and unnecessary.

Resources

• House Agriculture Committee — Reconciliation bill FY 2025
• Section-By-Section (See: 10011)
• One-Page Overview: Restoring Accountability & Prioritizing Work
• One-Page Summary: Renewing the American Dream: Prioritizing Work in SNAP
• SNAP Integrity and Farm Security Full Committee Markup (livestream link)

I would not think the avocado industry would need to fund research on the benefits of avocados—surely the Superbowl takes care of sales—but its trade association is very busy.

The Hass Avocado Board has its own USDA-sponsored checkoff marketing program.

It also sponsors The Avocado Nutrition Center, where you can read all about the research studies it funds.

The avocado is well-loved but little-understood.

That’s why the Avocado Nutrition Center works to grow the world’s scientific understanding of the avocado.

Misinformation will fill the void if the pace of scientific knowledge does not match the pace of the avocado’s growing popularity.

I love avocados.  But really?

Apparently so.  Here are two recent examples.

I.  The Effect of Daily Avocado Intake on Food and Nutrient Displacement in a Free-Living Population with Abdominal Obesity. Current Developments in Nutrition, Volume 8, Issue 10, 2024, 104451, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cdnut.2024.104451.

Conclusion: Incorporating 1 avocado daily led to favorable modifications in the dietary composition of participants, including an increase in potassium and fiber intake, which can improve diet quality.

Sponsor: Hass Avocado Board.

II.  Avocado consumption during pregnancy linked to lower child food allergy risk: prospective KuBiCo study. Pediatr Res (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-025-03968-4.  Thanks to Charles Platkin for this one.

Conclusion: Avocado consumption during pregnancy was associated with lower odds of infant food allergies at 12 months, even when accounting for potential covariates.

Conflict of interest: Three of the authors work for the Avocado Nutrition Center, Hass Avocado Board.

Comment: These are standard examples of what the late Sheldon Krimsky called the “funding effect,” the strong tendency of industry-funded studies to produce favorable outcomes.   They raise the question: Would independent researchers do one-food studies like these if they were not funded by an interested party?

My new book, The Fish Counter, comes out June 10.  I will say more about it then.  In the meantime…

My interview about it with Nutrition Action’s Bonnie Liebman. 

Which fish are healthy and sustainable? It’s complicated

Seafood is good for you. That’s no surprise. But it’s not easy to find species that don’t contain mercury, PCBs, PFAS, or other contaminants, aren’t overfished, and aren’t linked to human rights abuse…  Read more here

5 food experts making sense of MAHA’s vision for a new way of eating

Marion Nestle

Marion Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University, molecular biologist, and the author of more than dozen books, has been a prominent voice on nutrition and advocate for food policy reform for years. But as a New York Times headline recently declared, “At age 88, she’s meeting her moment” in the MAHA-verse.

Nestle isn’t on board with all of Kennedy’s food concerns — she’s pretty neutral on seed oils, for example. But they share many criticisms of the food industry, arguing that the rise of addictively delicious, nutritionally deficient ultra-processed foods is linked to higher obesity levels in the U.S. and favoring measures like banning soda from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. (Nestle wrote the book on the soda industry’s threat to public health, 2015’s “Soda Politics.”) As such, Nestle’s commentary is a valuable guide to understanding the logic behind Kennedy’s proposals, whether or not you agree with them.

It’s actually six others: Dariush Mozaffarian (Tufts), Susan Mayne (former FDA official), Eri Schulze (UPSIDE Foods), Jerold Mande (Nourish), and Helena Bottemiller Evich (Food Fix).

I’m happy to be in their company.

I get asked all the time about what’s happening with the dietary guidelines.  I have no inside information, but am exhausted at the thought that we have to go through all this again.

By law, dietary guidelines have to be re-done every five years, even though they always say the same things: eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains; eat less sugar, salt, and saturated fat; balance calories.  OK.  They take take more than 150 pages to say that, but that’s what it all boils down to.

Will they be different in the new MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) era?  I can only speculate.

To review the process:

• A scientific advisory committee reviews the research and writes a report.  This one released its report in December.
• Now, the Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services appoint a committee—or somebody—to write the actual guidelines.

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins says the two departments are working on them and they will come out “hopefully early fall.”  If they do, this will set records.  The guidelines typically are released in late December or early January.

The secretaries have promised they will not continue the tradition of “leftist ideology”  I’m not sure what tradition that is, exactly, although I suspect it means “plant-based.”

I can’t wait to see what happens with:

• Beef: USDA has always been sensitive to the demands of beef, corn, and soybean farmers.  Suggestions to eat less beef are typically phrased euphemistically (“eat lean meat”).
• Fats: RFK Jr wants seed oils replaced with beef tallow.
• Sugar: USDA has always been sensitive to the concerns of sugarbeet and sugarcane producers, historically a powerful lobby.  RFK Jr says sugar is poison.
• Ultra-processed foods:  The scientific advisory committee ducked the issue.  The MAHA folks are concerned about them.
• Emphasis on plant foods: Will the guidelines continue to promote their health benefits?
• Calories: The “C” word.  Will the guidelines bring back a discussion of calories, their principal food sources, and how their intake is affected by ultra-processed foods?
• Sustainability: The “S” word.  I would guess this one stays off the table, but you never know.

This one will be fun to watch.