The Dish on MAHA and Food

In this episode of Unconfined, reporter Helena Bottemiller Evich and Theodore Ross of the Food and Environment Reporting Network, co-hosts of Forked podcast, tease out the contradictions and paradoxes of food policy in the age of Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  

By Tom Philpott                                                                                                                                                                            Subscribe to Host Notes

Helena Bottemiller Evich is probably the best and most accomplished food-policy reporter on the scene in Washington, DC. In her near-decade stint as a food and agriculture correspondent at Politico, she delivered numerous important investigations—on research showing that carbon emissions are likely sapping the nutritional quality of our food supply; on how the Food and Drug Administration devotes a shockingly low percentage of its resources to food; on how the first Trump Administration repressed climate change research at the U.S. Department of Agriculture; and the dysfunction that led to a devastating baby food shortage in 2022. That same year, she went independent, launching the must-read Substack newsletter Food Fix. With Donald Trump back in the White House and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. running the sprawling Health and Human Services Department—which oversees the FDA—Helena has emerged as an important chronicler of how U.S. food policy is playing out in the topsy-turvy world of the Make America Healthy Again movement, named for the slogan Kennedy embraced when he threw his support behind Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign.  

On this special episode of Unconfined, we’re teaming up with Forked, the podcast Helena co-hosts with Theodore Ross, editor and chief of the Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN), to produce a joint episode. Ross is a heavy hitter, too. FERN churns out top-quality reporting on everything from systemic abuse of refugee meatpacking workers to how industrial-scale pecan farming is sapping New Mexico’s water supply. In Forked, Bottemiller Evich and Ross focus on the DC machinations of MAHA and what it means for our food, and that’s our topic here. Tune in!