Happy Friday, and welcome to Food Fix. I came back from taking a much-needed break to plenty of news — and a lot of fresh questions about American food safety. (I’m still eating vegetables, for the record, eat without fear!) There is a lot going on. Still, I couldn’t let August pass by without reflecting on the fourth anniversary of Food Fix.
Food Fix is on sale: To celebrate our anniversary, we’re offering 20 percent off to all new paid subscribers through Sept. 4. Use code HBD20 at checkout for a one-time discount. We don’t run sales very often, so if you’ve been considering an upgrade, this is a great time to do it! Check out our subscription options.
New pod alert: While the newsletter was on break, we released a new episode of American Dish: What’s on the tray in America’s prisons with Daniel Rosen and Leslie Soble, two leading experts on reforming prison food. We covered a lot of ground in this episode: What’s on the tray, and who’s profiting from it? What would it take to improve food served in prisons? Why does it matter?
Also new this summer: Food Fix is recommending Semafor, and Semafor is recommending Food Fix — a sign of mutual newsletter admiration!
Read what The White House is reading. Semafor Washington, DC is your essential daily briefing on the forces driving American power and policy. With transparent reporting and sharp analysis, stay informed on the decisions made within the halls of Congress to the corridors of the West Wing and beyond. Subscribe for free.
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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Reflecting on four years of Food Fix
This month marks the fourth anniversary of Food Fix. Back in August 2022, I held my breath as I hit send on the very first edition of this newsletter, terrified but also hopeful.
For anyone new around here: Before launching Food Fix, I’d left a good job at Politico, where I led food policy coverage for nearly a decade. I’d just published a series of investigations into the FDA’s failings on food and the government’s mishandling of the infant formula crisis. My reporting there ultimately helped fuel one of the biggest reorganizations in FDA history.
As I’ve said many times since: I’m still surprised that I quit a coveted staff job in a newsroom to start something from scratch. Before doing this, I never considered myself entrepreneurial. But I loved my beat, and I saw a need that wasn’t being met. Food policy is often seen as a niche beat that’s not worthy of much coverage or investment in newsrooms. But I firmly believe that these issues aren’t actually niche at all. Whether it’s a debate about food additive regulation or political fights over dietary guidelines and school lunch, these issues affect every single one of us — as well as one the largest sectors of the American economy.
The past four years have flown by. There has been an absolute deluge of news. The Make America Healthy Again movement catapulted food (and other) issues to the center of American politics. I had baby #2! I figured out how to run this thing with a now 2-year-old and 6-year-old. There have been countless media appearances, from Newshour to CNN, NPR and Fox. In just the past year, I’ve shared stages with food policy queen Marion Nestle, delivered keynotes, interviewed former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, scooped all the details of the dietary guidelines revamp (for paid subscribers), launched a new podcast (American Dish) and so much more.
I still don’t have a grand plan for where Food Fix is headed (who has time for a five year plan?), but I thought I’d share a couple quick reflections about what I’ve learned four years into this:
The media really is on fire. It’s now well known that the news media is under tremendous pressure. Business models are imploding. Layoffs are common. It’s all pretty bleak. I didn’t launch Food Fix because of these economic trends — I frankly didn’t see them as clearly four years ago — but I’ve come to believe that independent media is a crucial part of a more sustainable landscape. It will not replace and cannot replace institutional media, which is still so important, but it’s a piece of the puzzle. Solid, fact-based reporting can be done by individuals or small scrappy teams that are supported directly by their audiences. (By the way: I wrote back in 2024 about how concerned I am about the media implosion.)
The reasons that news media is on fire are many — social media is eating an increasing share of attention, generative AI is flooding the zone with cheap content, there’s been a major erosion in trust and so on. One of the reasons Food Fix works is that I have a direct connection to my readers. You give your email and get on this list, which means algorithms don’t get between you and the content (though even that is starting to change).
The hybrid paid/free model still works. Before going out on my own, I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about media business models, but now I spend a lot of time thinking about all of this. I still love the hybrid paid/free model.
From the very beginning, Food Fix aimed to serve two audiences: the policy insiders that operate in this space (think congressional and agency staff, advocacy and industry groups, lawyers, etc.) and the legions of consumers who are increasingly interested in news about what they eat.
Friday editions are free, but what makes all this work is the paid version (which comes out on Tuesdays). Most people are expensing their paid subscription through their work, and it works out well. Paid subscribers get more coverage — they get the newsletter twice per week, plus bonus editions when really big news happens — and the paid subscriptions help pay for my time, a stable of part-time editors, editorial assistants, tech support and so on.
(Speaking of subscriptions, if you’ve been thinking about upgrading, we’re running a rare sale: All new paid subscribers get 20 percent off a subscription through Sept. 4, just use code HBD20 at checkout. See our subscription options.)
Longform isn’t dead. You may have noticed everything on the internet is now short-form videos, regardless of what platform you’re on. This is indeed the way everything is going, but I believe that people are still hungry for long-form content, whether it’s text or audio. This newsletter hasn’t gotten any shorter over time, and American Dish, our new podcast, features hour or so long episodes. Short-form videos have their place, but they often lack context or nuance, and some of this is by design. Simplistic or alarmist takes are rewarded by algorithms designed to keep you hooked (and often outraged). All that said, we recently started sharing short clips of the podcast on social media (including YouTube), as a way to help more people discover Food Fix, but the overall goal is still to bring people to the full email or the full conversation. Long live longform!
Expertise still matters. In the same way everything feels like short-form videos, we’re also deluged with hot takes from people who often don’t know what they’re talking about. We are all trying to make sense of an extremely chaotic information environment. What is true? What is actually going on? I think all of this craziness will eventually send many people back toward expert sources they can trust. My goal every week is to help you better understand what’s going on, with the best facts (and context) I can nail down, all while drawing from more than 15 years of covering these issues. Expertise still matters, and you all prove it every week when you take the time to read these newsletters.
Thank you. It’s been a wild four years — and none of it would be possible without you! Thanks to all of you for reading, for subscribing, for telling your friends and colleagues. Cheers to many more!
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What I’m reading
Trump says he’ll make it easier for ranchers to process their own food after blowback over his beef policies (CNN). “President Donald Trump said Friday that he will make it easier for ranchers to process their own meat, in an effort to weaken the control the nation’s four largest meatpacking firms have over the process,” reports Adam Cancryn. “The move comes shortly after Trump was pressed on the issue by conservative radio host Glenn Beck, who urged him during an interview to ‘break the back of those processing plants’ by easing regulations on ranchers. Trump has faced harsh blowback in recent days from cattle ranchers and rural Republican lawmakers over his decision to temporarily pause tariffs on imported ground beef — a policy aimed at lowering prices for consumers that has nonetheless enraged domestic meat producers.”
Trump scoffs at ‘affordability’ issues. The White House knows it’s a big deal. (Politico). “President Donald Trump often dismisses ‘affordability’ as a political attack line from Democrats. He’s still worried about it,” write Myah Ward and Grace Yarrow. “The president’s latest bid to lower beef prices is a last-ditch effort to ease consumer strain at the grocery store, a key driver of negative sentiment. The move, which angered farm-state Republicans and agriculture industry groups who say they were ‘blindsided’ by the announcement, underscores the growing concern inside the White House that stubborn inflation could doom the GOP’s prospects in November. That fear is fueled by internal polling, reviewed by Trump and his team, which shows grocery prices top the list of Americans’ cost-of-living worries. Trump’s gambit, though, may come too late to meaningfully impact prices at the supermarket before the election.”
Canada’s retaliatory tariffs hit U.S. seafood and dairy producers (Civil Eats). “Canada imposed new tariffs on a long list of U.S. foods this week, including milk, cream, and cheese from American dairies and about 250 fish and seafood products,” reports Lisa Held. “The changes came in response to tariffs President Donald Trump imposed on Canadian goods in July. While the two countries attempted to make a deal before those went into effect this month, negotiations fell apart at the last moment. Canada is the third largest market for U.S. fish and seafood exports, with about $1 billion in products traveling north in 2025. Those products will now face a 25 percent tax, which will likely reduce demand. Some dairy products shipped to Canada will face even higher tariffs, with milk, cream, and whey taxed at 50 percent.”
First US phosphate plant in decades planned amid global conflict (Bloomberg). “Farm cooperative CHS Inc. and fertilizer producer OCP North America are proposing a $450 million phosphate fertilizer plant in Louisiana, bolstering domestic supplies as global conflicts have increasingly thwarted the flow of foreign crop nutrients,” report Ilena Peng and Elizabeth Elkin. “The proposed plant in Waggaman, Louisiana, the first of its kind in the US in over four decades, would produce more than a million tons of phosphate-based fertilizer annually, according to a Wednesday press release. The announcement comes as global fertilizer markets have been roiled by geopolitical conflict, first in Russia and Ukraine and then in the Middle East. Trade disruptions have elevated prices for the key crop nutrients and stoked concerns in the US about food security. The facility could reduce US dependency on imported phosphate fertilizers by more than 48%, according to the release.”
Trix maker General Mills removes synthetic dyes from US cereals (Food Dive). “General Mills’ U.S. cereals are now made without artificial colors, the Trix maker said in a statement,” Christopher Doering reports. “The food giant had set a goal of removing the controversial ingredients from its cereals by this summer. It comes five months after synthetic dyes were removed from all food General Mills sells in K-12 schools. While all of General Mills’ cereals are now free from artificial colors, 10% of General Mills’ U.S. retail portfolio has yet to complete the transition, the company said. The Minnesota-based firm said it remains on track to remove synthetic dyes from its entire U.S. retail portfolio by the end of 2027, including fruit snacks and baking products. The Cheerios maker attempted to remove artificial colors from Trix in 2016 but brought it back after about a year following consumer complaints about the duller appearance. Now, a decade later, General Mills is trying again.”
A rift over a weed killer is dividing a pro-Trump alliance (Washington Post). “President Donald Trump’s decision that expanded domestic production of glyphosate earlier this year was a national security priority and not an endorsement of the use of the weed killer, White House officials have said,” Rachel Roubein and Dan Diamond write. “Some advocates of Kennedy’s MAHA movement, particularly those angry over pesticides, have countered that boosting the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup was unforgivable — and part of a pattern of the administration siding with the industry over public health concerns. Now some influential MAHA activists are channeling their anger at Heidi Overton, a top Trump aide whom the president has selected to lead the FDA, saying they fear she will not fiercely challenge corporate interests and disrupt the status quo. Although the FDA isn’t charged with evaluating the safety of pesticides, Overton’s nomination has become emblematic of the broader frustrations from some MAHA activists — and turned into a proxy war over the kinds of nominees they are seeking to lead the nation’s health agencies.”
Nara Organics infant formula botulism outbreak ends; WGS, supply chain evidence show link to ByHeart (Food Safety Magazine). “The multistate infant botulism outbreak linked to Nara Organics Whole Milk Organic Powdered Infant Formula is now over, with new whole genome sequencing (WGS) evidence and supply chain commonalities indicating a common source of contamination between the Nara outbreak and the 2025 outbreak linked to ByHeart infant formula. The Nara outbreak ended with four confirmed cases of infant botulism across California, Pennsylvania, and Washington. All four infants were hospitalized, and no deaths were reported. Illnesses began between April and May 2026, with the latest onset of illness on May 31. No new cases were added since July 3.”
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