American Dish Titelbild

American Dish

American Dish

Von: Helena Bottemiller Evich
Jetzt kostenlos hören, ohne Abo

From Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” to Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign, America is in the midst of a food and nutrition policy awakening. Why are diet-related disease rates so high in the U.S.? What are the potential solutions? What does the science say? Award-winning journalist Helena Bottemiller Evich cuts through the noise to help us understand what’s really happening with our food system and our plates.Copyright 2026 Helena Bottemiller Evich Hygiene & gesundes Leben Kochen Kunst Lebensmittel & Wein Politik & Regierungen
Folgen
  • The decade-long fight to get SNAP online with Nick Green

    The decade-long fight to get SNAP online with Nick Green
    Sep 16 2026

    A long list of investors said no to Nick Green and his co-founders as they were trying to get Thrive Market off the ground. They were rejected so many times they eventually turned to the people who understood the problem they were trying to solve: moms, wellness influencers, and anyone else whose life had been shaped by not having a decent grocery store nearby.

    Twelve years later, their persistence paid off. Thrive Market has grown into a profitable, membership-based online grocer with 1.7 million paying members, hundreds of millions in annual sales, and a reputation as the Whole Foods-meets-Costco of e-commerce. Thrive Market was also an early advocate of piloting SNAP EBT benefits for online grocery purchases, pioneering a decade-long fight to take the policy nationwide.

    Nick Green is a co-founder and CEO of Thrive Market. We talk about that long SNAP fight, what's happening to enrollment right now as millions of households drop off the program, and Nick's case for why the market might be a faster route to change compared to policymaking.

    Highlights:

    • The nearly decade-long fight to get SNAP EBT accepted online
    • What the GOP reconciliation package changes for SNAP beneficiaries and states
    • Why Thrive bans more than 1,000 ingredients
    • How the company thinks about glyphosate, additives, and the murky definition of "ultra-processed."
    • Where Nick thinks the private market can move faster than government on food dye and additive rules

    Where to find Nick Green:

    LinkedIn

    Thrive Market

    Thrive Market on Instagram

    Mentioned in this episode:

    USDA SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot

    Thrive Market becomes first online-only retailer to accept SNAP EBT

    Stay in touch:

    Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.

    Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.

    Send ideas and feedback to info@foodfix.co

    Check out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

    Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    52 Min.
  • What the cyclospora outbreak tells us about food safety in America, with Bill Marler

    What the cyclospora outbreak tells us about food safety in America, with Bill Marler
    Sep 2 2026

    It's been a rough summer for anyone paying attention to food safety in America. Every few days, it seems, we see new headlines about new recalls and foodborne illness outbreaks. And the media is paying a lot more attention to them on the heels of the big summer cyclospora outbreak tied to iceberg lettuce (which is now the largest foodborne outbreak we’ve had in three decades!) What’s going on? Is this the Trump administration to blame here, or has the system been broken for a long time? And what can we eat?

    To sort through it, we sat down with Bill Marler, widely considered the top food safety plaintiff's attorney in the country (and a thorn in the food industry’s side). Marler is also the founder of Food Safety News (where Helena used to work pre-2013) and is an outspoken advocate for stronger food safety regulations in the U.S.

    Marler's read on the current moment isn't exactly what you'd expect from an outspoken, left-leaning lawyer who spends his days suing food companies: he blames not just this administration, but more so Congress's decades-long unwillingness to stay on top of food safety policy and the funding needed to make real reform a reality.

    Highlights:

    – Roughly 32,000 people (by state counts) have been sickened by cyclospora this summer, and CDC estimates suggest the real number could be dramatically higher

    – Why the CEO of Taylor Farms is calling Bill Marler these days

    – Why cyclospora is so much harder to trace than E. coli or Salmonella

    – Marler connects the dots between the FDA's delayed food traceability rule, agency staffing cuts, and how long it took to identify Taylor Farms as the source

    – Fifty infants were hospitalized for botulism linked to contaminated infant formula last November, and it still hasn't gotten a single congressional hearing

    – Helena and Bill's takes on personal risk: how they each shop for produce

    Where to find Bill Marler:

    Marler Blog

    billmarler.com

    Mentioned in this episode:

    Food Safety News

    Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food (Netflix)

    Stay in touch:

    Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.

    Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.

    Send ideas and feedback to info@foodfix.co

    Check out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

    Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    52 Min.
  • What's on the tray in America's prisons with Daniel Rosen and Leslie Soble

    What's on the tray in America's prisons with Daniel Rosen and Leslie Soble
    Aug 19 2026
    HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. often talks about reforming prison food in the same breath as school food, a genuinely unusual thing for a top health official to say. At the same time, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has quietly put out requests for information about outsourcing food service to the same private companies that serve colleges, elementary schools, and military bases. Are these two positions aligned? What would it take to actually improve food served in prisons? Why does it matter? We dive into all of it with two of the country’s top experts in prison food.Daniel Rosen co-founded the Carceral Nutrition Project after six years incarcerated in Virginia and Washington, D.C. Leslie Soble is a folklorist and ethnographer whose research became Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison, which just won a James Beard Award (Soble is also a founding board member of the Carceral Nutrition Project).Together, Rosen and Soble lay out what's actually on the tray, who's profiting from it, and why the whole "you did the crime, you do the time" doesn't actually make sense when you consider how to feed incarcerated people.Highlights:Prison and jail systems spend $1.50 to $2 a day feeding someone, a fraction of what the federal school lunch reimbursement coversThe wild imbalance between healthcare and food spending in correctional facilitiesHow privatization works (about a third of prison food service is outsourced)The science connecting better nutrition to lower violence in correctional facilitiesWhat the Trump administration is/isn’t doing to reform prison foodWhat national standards for prison food could actually look likeWhere to find Daniel Rosen and Leslie Soble:Carceral Nutrition ProjectEating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in PrisonAdditional Reading:"Private Food, Public Harm" — the CSPI/Carceral Nutrition Project report on privatized prison food serviceGesch et al. (2002) Gesch, C.B., Hammond, S.M., Hampson, S.E., Eves, A., & Crowder, M.J. "Influence of supplementary vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids on the antisocial behaviour of young adult prisoners." British Journal of Psychiatry, 181, 22–28. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.181.1.22Zaalberg et al. (2010) Zaalberg, A., Nijman, H., Bulten, E., Stroosma, L., & van der Staak, C. "Effects of nutritional supplements on aggression, rule-breaking, and psychopathology among young adult prisoners." Aggressive Behavior, 36(2), 117–126. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.20335Schoenthaler & Bier (2000) Schoenthaler, S.J., & Bier, I.D. "The effect of vitamin-mineral supplementation on juvenile delinquency among American schoolchildren." Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 6(1), 7–17. https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2000.6.7Schoenthaler sugar studies (1980s) Schoenthaler, S.J. (1983). "The Alabama Diet-Behavior Program." International Journal of Biosocial Research, 5(2), 79–87. (Pre-DOI era; search via Google Scholar)Systematic review: dietary/nutritional interventions on behaviour and mental health of prisoners (2024) — 933 studies screened, 11 included; found consistent ~30% reductions in violence across intervention types.Australian pilot RCT on dietary supplementation and aggression in adult male prisoners (2020) — feasibility study for a larger omega-3/multivitamin RCT; prisoners below the 6% omega-3 index threshold were 4.3× more likely to have elevated aggression scores.Omega-3 multi-centre RCT protocol (2021) — pre-registered protocol for a large-scale replication of the Gesch/Zaalberg findings.Gut microbiota and mental health in new inmates (2022, PubMed) — inmates showed higher anxiety/depression scores and markedly shifted microbiome structure vs. controls; SCFA-producing genera depleted.Gut microbiome in impulsively violent female convicts (2021, Karger)Nutritional criminology: ultra-processed food and health/justice (2024, PMC)Crime and Nourishment: UPF, brain, and behavior — narrative review (MDPI)Is prison food really food? (2023, Health & Justice) — documents sodium/sugar-heavy, UPF-dominant prison diets and links to diabetes, mental health, and behavior.Nutrition associated with violent and criminal behaviors (2025, PMC)Stay in touch:Sign up for Helena’s must-read weekly newsletter: Food Fix.Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.Send ideas and feedback to info@foodfix.coCheck out Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.
    Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen
    49 Min.
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
Noch keine Rezensionen vorhanden