Happy Friday, and welcome to Food Fix. I can assure you I will never suggest arugula can be used as a replacement for parmesan as Gwyneth Paltrow did this week.
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Last week, I wrote about why Kyle Diamantas could be leading FDA for a while. This week, I wrote about the growing opposition to USDA’s plan to relocate the Food and Nutrition Service.
As always, I welcome your feedback. Send me your thoughts by replying to this email, or drop me a line: helena@foodfix.co.
Alright, let’s get to it –
Helena
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Meet the billionaire trying to clean up the food supply
I’d venture to guess that most of you have never heard of Todd Wagner, a tech billionaire and Hollywood mogul who’s probably best known for co-founding Broadcast.com with Mark Cuban back in the day (it was a big deal, they were among the first to do live streaming). Wagner isn’t well known in the food world — but he’s increasingly having a big impact.
He first got interested in American food policy after noticing his migraines would all but disappear when he traveled to Europe. A lawyer by training, Wagner ultimately did some research and realized that the U.S. was letting thousands of food additives onto the market without much regulatory oversight. He got kind of mad about it.
In 2023, he and film producer Lori McCreary launched FoodFight USA, a non-partisan non-profit aimed at cleaning up the U.S. food supply (back before MAHA was a thing). Since then, they’ve helped pass major food additive reform legislation in California and New York and are also pressing Washington to revamp food additive oversight nationwide.
It certainly helps to have deep pockets and beaucoup connections in Hollywood — Wagner co-owns Magnolia Pictures with Mark Cuban — but he also credits his outsider status as an advantage.
“I’m an entrepreneur. I just look at the problems a little differently. I wasn’t set in my ways of what this would be,” he told me in this week’s episode of American Dish.
In our conversation, Wagner dishes (no pun intended) on some behind the scenes meetings with key leaders, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, HHS SecretaryRobert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
He makes it clear he’ll work with anyone, and he doesn’t see this issue as partisan. He sees the fight against ultra-processed foods as similar to the fight against Big Tobacco: long, messy and ultimately winnable.
“I think the day of reckoning will come, but it’s going to take everything and everyone,” Wagner told me, noting that state attorneys general are circling the question of whether they can eventually go after food companies for harm (and massive health care costs). “We have had conversations with them, and I do think at some point they will bring action.”
It’s an interesting chat, whether or not you agree with Wagner’s take on the American food supply.
Listen to the full episode (follow, subscribe or watch wherever you get your pods)!
More American Dish: While we’re here, if you haven’t been following Food Fix’s new podcast, American Dish, we’ve covered some great topics since launching in March, including: nutrition research and metabolism with Kevin Hall and Julia Belluz; FDA’s food agenda with now former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary; transforming school lunch with Nora LaTorre; the importance of infant formula with Mallory Whitmore; climate change and the Obama era with Sam Kass; the food industry’s take on ultra-processed foods with Rocco Renaldi; and more.
Forked latest: While we’re talking pods, I know many of you listen to Forked, the podcast I co-host with Theodore Ross at the Food & Environment Reporting Network. Next week we’ll have an episode out with Michael Pollan, discussing all things MAHA … and also human vs. AI consciousness. Follow along!
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What I’m reading
How Kyle Diamantas defied expectations as he rose to lead the FDA (STAT). “People in the food world didn’t know what to expect when the Trump administration appointed a little-known Florida attorney as the FDA’s top food official in 2025,” writes Lizzy Lawrence. “They knew Kyle Diamantas worked at Jones Day representing food, beverage, and tobacco-industry clients. They saw the picture of him and Donald Trump Jr. holding giant, dead wild turkeys after a hunt. He had no experience in public health, in medicine or science, or in government. The credentials didn’t scream qualified. And Diamantas was stepping into a center rocked by DOGE layoffs and a defiant resignation by former leader Jim Jones. But more than a year later, leaders in the food industry, public health groups, and FDA career staffers have found that Diamantas exceeded expectations. As Diamantas takes the reins at the FDA, STAT spoke with more than 10 of these stakeholders, as well as former FDA commissioners and Diamantas’ former colleagues. They all described him as thoughtful and serious, someone who does his homework before meetings and listens to the experts in the room.”
Stephen Miller pushes false claim that SNAP requires no proof of financial need (truthout). “During a roundtable meeting on Tuesday discussing supposed fraud in federal programs, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller falsely claimed that safety net programs do not require documentation of financial hardship from applicants,” Chris Walker writes. “Citing as a specific example the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as ‘food stamps,’ Miller claimed such programs are ‘based on the honor system…on the idea that you can trust the average person, through their own morality, to abide by the rules.’ The claim was such a blatant lie that videos of Miller’s remarks shared on X resulted in a context fact-checking box. Indeed, the federal government’s SNAP website makes it very clear that applicants need to prove a lack of income to receive benefits. States also impose their own requirements, which they readily list for would-be applicants.”
Ozempic may be reshaping the brain, scientists say (Washington Post). “Ozempic was supposed to be a gut story. Then Allison Shapiro looked at the brain scans,” writes Ariana Eunjung Cha. “An assistant professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz, she was part of a team studying 13 teens and young women with a hormonal disorder affecting the ovaries who were put on GLP-1 drugs. As part of testing to catalogue the effect of the medication on their bodies, Shapiro took snapshots of their brains before and after. She was astonished to find extensive changes. Within only a few months, the brain connections in the salience network, which helps target attention, had multiplied. Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs were initially understood as a metabolism breakthrough: medicines that act like hormones to control hunger, blood sugar and weight. But as researchers probe deeper into how the drugs work, early evidence suggests that GLP-1s may also be reshaping parts of the brain. The emerging research on GLP-1s is part of a larger scientific shift away from treating brain and physical health as separate domains. Increasingly, researchers see them as tightly intertwined.”
Kimchi can’t save us from microplastics (Bloomberg). “Next time you host a summer barbecue, may I suggest that, in addition to mustard and pickles, you add kimchi to the spread?” writes Lara Williams. “Not only is this Korean specialty delicious with burgers (including the plant-based ones I opt for) and good for the gut, but it may also help rid your body of nanoplastics, the ultra tiny particles made by the breakdown of larger flakes, fibers and films. The kimchi study, conducted by scientists from the intriguing World Institute of Kimchi, part of the government-funded Korea Food Research Institute and founded with the goal of promoting the tasty cabbage, found that a bacterium strain derived from kimchi absorbed nanoplastic particles much more readily than a control strain under lab conditions made to resemble the human intestine.The research, published in a peer-reviewed journal, is by no means conclusive… But even if kimchi were able to expel every last scrap of plastic squirreled away in our bodies, we’d still be dealing with it throughout our environment.”
Opinion: This is a pivotal moment for school meals — and for our children’s health (Agri-Pulse). “I visited the Charles Rice Learning Center in 2016 to better understand the critical role of school meals,” writes Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association. “I sat down for lunch with students at the elementary school, located near the American Heart Association’s Dallas headquarters, and saw firsthand what healthy school meals make possible. Ten years later, as we approach the 80th anniversary of the National School Lunch Act, it is again time to assess what’s working — and what’s at risk — as we look at the future of school meals that serve tens of millions of children across the country daily. School meals do far more than curb hunger — they fuel learning, shape lifelong eating habits and provide a dependable source of nutrition for children from financially struggling families. What kids eat at school matters — especially now, as school meals sit at the center of a consequential national debate.”
More ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water? What is the EPA up to? (The MAHA Report). “Much controversy has surrounded the May 18 announcement by EPA of proposed rule changes to Biden administration regulations that direct the cleanup of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in Americans’ drinking water,” writes John Klar. “Health & Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said he strongly supports the EPA’s new tack. Despite widespread criticism from the legacy media and many in the MAHA base, I agree with Secretary Kennedy: the recent EPA policy shift signals an acceleration of PFAS cleanup, not a dangerous step backward. There are regulatory and logistical parallels between the recent PFAS decision and the desire by supporters of the MAHA agenda to eliminate glyphosate and other herbicides. It isn’t as easy as snapping fingers or voting for Kennedy. Nor is it as simple as reversing the industrial capture of regulatory agencies. The EPA has laws to follow, and can’t unilaterally ignore them.”
FDA supports grouping several phthalates for cumulative risk assessment (Food Safety Magazine). “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published a literature review on the eight phthalates currently approved for food contact uses to determine whether they should be considered chemically and/or pharmacologically related (CRA) for the purpose of cumulative risk assessment. The eight approved phthalates for food contact use in the U.S. are: diisononyl phthalate (DINP), diisodecyl phthalate (DIDP), di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), dicyclohexyl phthalate (DCHP), butylphthalyl butyl glycolate (BPBG), diethyl phthalate (DEP), ethylphthalyl ethyl glycolate (EPEG), and diisooctyl phthalate (DIOP). Overall, FDA’s findings support grouping DEHP, DCHP, DIOP, and DINP as CPR substances for the purposes of a future cumulative risk assessment. FDA will consider stakeholder input on the use of this grouping for a future cumulative risk assessment.”
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