Happy Friday, and welcome to Food Fix. I don’t know about you, but I’m loving the food content from space. Here’s some of the food they’re eating on Artemis II — and here’s a peak at how they rehydrate and heat their space fare. The menu has a lot more variety than you’d think!

Scheduling note: This newsletter is on spring break next week. We’ll be back in your inboxes the week of April 20.

New Forked: For all you podcast listeners: We’ve got a fresh episode of Forked out this week. Theodore Ross and I discuss GRAS reform and a fresh batch of MAHA polls.

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Alright, let’s get to it –

Helena

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Key leaders of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement were invited to the White House for a lengthy meeting with staff and got face time with President Donald Trump on Thursday — high-profile treatment that comes as the MAHA-MAGA alliance has become increasingly frayed.

Stick with me: Many of the details of the meeting were first reported by Sheryl Gay Stolberg at the New York Times who described the confab as “a high-level strategy session devoted to keeping disenchanted MAHA voters in the Republican fold ahead of the midterm elections.”

“That Mr. Trump is having the meeting at all reflects the fragility of his alliance with the so-called MAHA Moms, many of them former Democrats or independents, who took a leap of faith in supporting Mr. Trump in 2024 after Mr. Kennedy endorsed him,” the piece noted.

Powered by Diet Coke: One colorful tidbit from Stolberg’s piece: Trump reportedly invited the group into the Oval Office for 20 minutes or so. At one point, conservative wellness influencer Alex Clark, joked that the ladies in the room aren’t “Team Diet Coke,” and “the president then pressed the red ‘Diet Coke’ button he had installed on the Resolute Desk, and a server appeared with a glass bottle.”

Who was there: A handful of MAHA advocates, including Clark, Courtney Swan and Kelly Ryerson were granted a nearly two-hour roundtable discussion with high-level staff, including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary (it should be noted that it’s NOT easy to get this kind of staff time, especially amid everything going on in the world). Other notable attendees: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., top advisor Calley Means, surgeon general nominee Casey Means, Kyle Diamantas, deputy commissioner for human foods at FDA and Heidi Overton, deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. (Note: This might not be a complete list, this is just what I’ve pieced together.)

I’m told the meeting covered a lot of the touchy topics, including the administration’s steadfast support for Bayer in its quest to boost domestic production of glyphosate and limit the company’s liability in thousands of cancer lawsuits, which has enraged grassroots MAHA leaders.

One of the sharpest critics of the administration over this whole glyphosate row has been Ryerson, co-executive director of American Regeneration and the founder of the platform Glyphosate Facts. As NYT noted, Ryerson has publicly accused the Trump administration of being “entirely owned by Bayer and the chemical companies.”

“It was a good meeting,” Ryerson told me Thursday evening. “I think it was the first of many discussions.”

Food vs. vaccines: The MAHA White House meeting comes at a tough political moment as the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress fear they may get trounced by Democrats in the midterms. Bloomberg’s Rachel Cohrs Zhang and Jessica Nix reported Thursday that the White House has put Kennedy “on a low-risk messaging diet ahead of the midterm election. The Secretary of Health and Human Services has publicly and notably swallowed his trademark vaccine skepticism in recent weeks, even in front of the friendliest audiences.”

“Kennedy has pivoted to touting more popular initiatives with wide bipartisan appeal, like fitness programs and reducing health care costs, including with a tour through swing states,” they write. “On Wednesday, Kennedy announced plans for a new podcast he would host that the department says is designed to bring its message to as broad of an audience as possible, with a focus on chronic disease and improving health. The shift signals a political figure whose power has fallen to a relative nadir a year after being granted carte blanche to upend the nation’s health agencies — while inviting questions about whether his ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement can sustain momentum.”

In a way, this all makes sense — as I’ve previously reported and noted many times, the MAHA food issues poll so much better than the vaccine ones (and far better than fluoride or raw milk or some of MAHA’s other more fringy ideas). But it has definitely angered some of Kennedy’s most die-hard supporters who have long backed him because of his crusade against long-standing vaccine recommendations.

Sidenote: It will be interesting to see who Kennedy features on his new podcast, especially with this pivot toward the more politically palatable parts of the MAHA agenda.

From the admin: I asked HHS about the Bloomberg story on Thursday — they didn’t really push back. I suppose it’s hard to deny that Kennedy has shifted away from talking about vaccines because he most certainly has.

“Secretary Kennedy speaks about a broad range of issues that affect the health and well-being of American families,” said Emily Hilliard, HHS press secretary, in an email. “We remain focused on the priorities Americans consistently say matter most to them, including chronic disease prevention, childhood nutrition, food quality, and affordable health care.”

What’s next: The fact that MAHA leaders scored such a high-profile meeting shows that the White House understands this is a constituency they need to at least try to keep in their tent. Of course, a meeting doesn’t change the fact that this administration is still pursuing so many anti-MAHA policies, including fully siding with Bayer as the company tries to shield itself from billions in cancer lawsuits in a key Supreme Court case.

Grassroots MAHA leaders are not backing down in their opposition to this. They’ve planned a rally — dubbed The People vs. Poison — outside the court as oral arguments kick off April 27. It will be interesting to see who shows up at this rally — and who speaks.

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“The alarm bell”: Arizona’s drop in SNAP participation signals potential nationwide impact of Trump legislation (ProPublica). “More than 400,000 Arizonans have lost their SNAP benefits since July — the largest decline in the nation by a wide margin — as an underfunded state agency administered changes called for in President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” reports Nicole Santa Cruz. “The drop represents nearly 47% of the state’s participants in the program better known as food stamps and includes about 180,000 children, according to the Arizona Department of Economic Security, which administers the program. Arizona officials attribute the plunging caseload to swift implementation of policy changes forced by the bill, including new work requirements. But interviews suggest that Arizona’s efforts to comply, combined with cuts to the agency that runs the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, have contributed to the decline — making it more difficult to apply and causing people who are eligible to be denied. The state’s drop has exceeded previous projections.”

Food companies backslide on promises to reduce pesticides (Civil Eats). “In 2019, food giant General Mills debuted a three-point strategy to reduce synthetic pesticide use within its supply chains,” writes Lisa Held. “More than six years later, the webpage that outlined that plan redirects visitors to a page on regenerative agriculture, where the word ‘pesticide’ does not appear. ‘They are no longer aligning their regenerative agriculture program with pesticide reduction at all, which is obviously concerning, because what the soil science points to is that regenerative without significant pesticide reduction is not regenerating soil health,’ said Cailin Dendas, the senior coordinator of As You Sow’s Environmental Health Program. Dendas is the author of a new report that found General Mills is not alone. … The annual report ranks the country’s biggest food companies on their commitments to disclosing pesticide use and reducing it in their supply chains. This year, report authors awarded lower scores to 10 out of 17 companies, concluding that ‘the food industry is not stagnating on pesticide risk—it is actively reversing progress it had already made.’”

CMS’s hospital nutrition memo: Just smoke and mirrors? (MedPage Today). “Media headlines recently cheered on HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s announcement of a ‘Quality and Safety Special Alert’ from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) directing hospitals to implement the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) across their menus,” writes Kevin C. Klatt. “The memo has been championed by several in public health nutrition as a much-needed overhaul for hospital food environments — but is it that clear-cut? … To the everyday observer, this probably sounds like Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) delivering on its promises of overhauling the food system. But to many clinical dietitians, the memo reads as both legally and clinically challenging.”

This is a tale of two outbreaks. The difference is RFK Jr. (Washington Post). “Food recalls are familiar: an outbreak of E. coli or salmonella tied to a contaminated product, a handful of people sickened, a voluntary recall initiated and a public health system that quietly does its job,” Alexander Sundermann writes. “That system has worked remarkably well for decades. But the current raw cheese E. coli outbreak is exposing something new and more troubling: A company, emboldened perhaps by a political moment, called the Food and Drug Administration’s scientific findings ‘allegations’ and refused to act.”

Health alert over dinosaur chicken nuggets sold at Walmart has been retracted after additional testing (USA Today). “Public health officials have retracted their warning to consumers about a popular variety of dinosaur chicken nuggets, which had said the product may have been contaminated with unsafe levels of lead,” Sarah Jacoby reports. “On April 6, five days after the original warning was issued, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said in a statement that the product no longer posed a public health concern. “‘The public health alert was originally issued based on routine surveillance sampling conducted by the New York State Department of Public Health that indicated elevated trace levels of lead. Because this product is commonly consumed by children, FSIS issued the alert to inform consumers of a potential risk,’ the statement read. ‘All follow‑up testing, including testing of the original lot, found no elevated levels of lead in the product.’”

FDA delays approval of 2 natural food dyes following safety objections (Food Dive). “The FDA has delayed approval for beetroot red as a natural food dye and the expansion of spirulina extract as it responds to criticism over their safety,” reports Sarah Zimmerman. “Advocacy group GMO/Toxin Free USA says the version of beetroot red approved by the FDA is synthetically produced and hasn’t been ruled out as a possible carcinogen. In a separate complaint, Obelisk Tech Systems argues the move to expand uses for spirulina poses heavy metal safety risks. The FDA said the delay in effective date ‘does not change’ its determination that the dyes ‘are safe for their intended uses.’ The agency also emphasized it continues to not enforce rules around using the ‘no artificial colors’ label as long as companies avoid petroleum-based dyes. The Trump administration has raced to expand natural dye options after asking food companies to voluntarily remove artificial colors by the end of this year.”

The Globe’s food critic was baffled by Dunkin’. It took RFK Jr. to change her mind. (Boston Globe). “For 30 years I have lived in Boston, and for 30 years I have remained baffled by one thing. The coffee. Specifically: Dunkin’,” writes Devra First. “After I had lived in Boston for about a decade, I had a eureka moment: Bostonians don’t like coffee. Bostonians like caffeine, a bargain, and a beverage that tastes like dessert. With this thought came acceptance, and after that I mostly ignored Dunkin’ discourse — until last month. Then Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called out Dunkin’ for being unhealthy. … We already know nutrition policy needs reform, and I can’t think of another figure who has gotten so many plaudits for stating the obvious about public health, while taking so many measures that could endanger it.”

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