Eating in America Podcast

Ric Bayly
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Eating in America is about the food on our table and who's in charge of keeping it healthy. www.eatinginamerica.co

  1. Oct 4

    Eating In America: coming next

    From stories of food pantries during SNAP cuts, to coffee and the Ngabe people in Panama who pick the beans, to industry funded research like the 1945 margarine experiment on orphans in Chicago, to the role of sailing ships and the military in shaping our current food environment and the role of food on military ships in shaping morale, to Surgeon General candidates who invest in smoking (still an issue!), to GLP-1s, to a much better way to define and understand ultra-processed food, to the generally recognized as crippled GRAS system of food additive safety, to the dangerous state of cannabis and hemp dysregulation due to greed and politics, and, not at all last or least, to my hero, the father of epidemiology, slayer of cholera, and clean water fanatic, John Snow, the first year of Eating In America has been busy. I was getting my Master of Science in Nutrition Policy and Programs and my Master of Public Health when Covid hit. I rolled up my sleeves and used my epidemiology to make maps of where food assistance would be needed and where hospital beds would run short. I picked up the phone and traced Covid cases and contacts to help contain the epidemic and get assistance to those in need. I thought “good job Ric!,” way to pick a time to be training in public health and epidemiology and nutrition. What no one saw coming, except those who were then planning what has since happened with the American government, was that public health would soon be pilloried, assaulted, defunded, and deprioritized. Stories I have posted in the last year have often pointed out how the science got it wrong or authorities kept their blinders on when presented with the facts. That has always been true. Socrates was executed for teaching youth to think and the Church banned Copernicus’s ideas about the solar system. But as scientific knowledge and capacity have exploded and, coupled with technology, become an overwhelming source of power in our civilization, is the killing of science a more frequent response of the despot? The last 100 years provides all the evidence we need to worry about when extremists take control of science. From the famines in Russia and China stemming from Stalin and Mao’s rejection of agricultural science, to the German brain drain as Hitler rejected Einstein’s physics and Jewish scientists in general, to Pol Pot’s killing fields filled with the hundreds of thousands of corpses of anyone with the executable offense of having an education, men with the certainty of their own infallibility have sent millions to their deaths. My writing in Eating In America has an urgency, for me, because it so often deals with the consequences of the actions and policies of America’s infallible despot, Trump, and his servant, RFK, Jr. As long as Trump and Kennedy are in office, I will have, uh, a lot to report on and analyze coming from our central government. I’ve posted and podcasted 62 pieces since Eating In America launched. Science and facts are the foundation of everything I write, although I try to help our understanding of the facts by, at times, drawing lines to show the connections which are hidden from us and making fair assumptions about what is going on with the motivations of politicians, corporations, researchers, and other organizations. A new phase of Eating In America begins today, as I take a moment to sharpen my quills, and add in a new, I hope important, project for the coming year. Since AI can hear even my faint voice in the public health wilderness, I need to keep to myself just what my new project is at the moment… In the meantime I need to dial back my writing for Eating In America. I’ll keep posting, just not as much. I hope I’ll have your continued support over the next year. Your support has meant so much. It’s absolutely key for Eating In America and related endeavors going forward…Please stick around. Thank you. Ric References Mann DL. When Facts Become Forbidden: The Past and Present History of Scientific Censorship. JACC Basic Transl Sci. Mar 2025;10(3):402–404. https://doi.og/10.1016/j.jacbts.2025.02.003 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.eatinginamerica.co/subscribe

  2. Sep 27

    Breakfast in America: Froot Loops banned by preschoolers!

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.eatinginamerica.co A bright ray of hope shone on the breakfast table while visiting friends this morning. Two weeks ago I reviewed Sugar Coated, Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America’s Favorite Breakfast Food, Marion Nestle and Lisa Sutherland’s new telling of the transformation of a 19th century health food, un-sugared granola, into a keystone of the American ultraprocessed food diet. The Kellogg brothers’ of the 1870s, launched as disciples into the American food environment by the fervently health-preaching Seventh-day Adventist church, started a lineage that one-hundred years later resulted in the bastardized, unholy, unhealthy Kellogg’s Froot Loops of 1963 with its 12 grams of added sugar, bright artificial colors, refined flours, and child-targeting Toucan Sam mascot. Today’s food environment: gone to hell in a shopping cart Since 1963 it’s been sixty years of the American food environment generally going to hell in a shopping cart, but, praise be to Nestle and Sutherland, the first a deity in matters of nutrition policy, the descent into ultraprocessed Hades turns out to be a two-way path! Uncommonly intutive pre-schoolers My friends, let’s call them Pop and Mima just as their three- and five-year-old grandchildren do, made a point of eating healthy breakfasts every day. But Pop and Mima first and foremost, love their grandkids and understand the license that grandparents have in making sure the adoring love of the little ones pours back in return. So Froot Loops were acquired for the first morning of a four-day stay of the preschoolers with Pop and Mima. On the morning of the first day, Pop poured himself a bowl of granola, while Mima got ready to pour two bowls of Froot Loops for the little ones. Lo and behold, at Pop’s first bite, adoring Child 1 said “I want what Pop is having” and adoring Child 2 said “Me, too!” And granola, with yogurt, fruit, and a little drizzle of maple syrup to seal the deal, is all the four of them ate every day for breakfast. Pop and Mima, your medal is in the mail. Pop and Mima deserve a medal In my experience as a parent there is little precedent for Pop and Mima’s granola magic. It was a breakfast miracle. There is hope. The coffee pot Today it’s Breakfast in America on Eating in America, or at least, perhaps, Part One, since, as you will see, I don’t get far on the breakfast menu. We’re going to start where many of us start our day: at the coffee pot. And a lot of Americans drink coffee: ¾ of us. Half of us drink it every day. 1 And mostly in the morning. For some people, breakfast is only coffee. It is not my fault or your fault These days as the writer of Eating In America, I feel like I’m the bearer of bad news far too much. It’s not really my fault: I am not a wellness influencer peddling hope in exchange for clicks, and neither you nor I are responsible for screwing up the food environment. We’re both just figuring out how to do the best for ourselves and our families with the food we are dealt. And, when I write about the politics and the commercial side of our food environment, it’s about who we can blame, boycott, or vote against, all of which feels better and is far more accurate than blaming ourselves. Coffee: the dependable feel good nutrition story But when I write about coffee and tea, it’s a happy, feel good story, with the science continuing to tell us that these beverages that most of us enjoy and that make us feel good, are, in fact, good for us. And the science keeps coming.

    Breakfast in America: Froot Loops banned by preschoolers!

  3. Sep 20

    Why did Trump and Congress delay the ban on THC snacks that are sold to kids?

    Candy and snacks made with THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, are for sale to both adults and kids in America: not in cannabis dispensaries but places like convenience stores. These treats are not regulated. Seventh graders on their way to school can stop and pick up packages of THC edibles made to look like familiar name brand candies. Except these candies can get them high, dangerously high. As I reported in my April series “Ultraprocessed Cannabis: Potency, Policy, and Public Health in America,” in 2018 Trump and Congress deregulated hemp, meaning cannabis without an intoxicating amount of THC. While the intent was to allow the unregulated sale of wellness products and supplements containing CBD, or cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive chemical in the Cannabis Sativa plant, there was a loophole. While hemp products couldn’t contain more than a tiny amount of Delta-9 THC, which causes the high in cannabis, nothing forbid using ultraprocessing techniques to make products with potent amounts of the Delta-8 THC that is found in hemp. For years, large quantities of Delta-8 THC have been added to canned drinks, gummies, and other snacks that have been sold without restriction, including purchasing age. To receive new posts and support Eating in America, please become a free or paid subscriber! Some states have taken action, but more than half have not Thirteen states ranging from Idaho to New York have banned hemp products with Delta-8 THC. Another seven allow intoxicating products but impose limitations or regulation. It is alarming from a public health viewpoint that intoxicating hemp products are legal and unregulated in about 25 states. Federal action at last Last year, as part of a continuing funding bill, Congress, with Trump’s signature, set this coming November 12th as the date when all hemp-based products with intoxicating levels of THC would be banned federally. Some legislators pushed for an additional one-year delay in the ban, but that effort failed. Trump changes mind, now favors a delay in action. Did the White House Chief of Staff’s daughter marrying a hemp products CEO have anything to do with Trump’s reversal? In June, Trump reversed himself and began asking Congress either to enact a regulatory framework allowing hemp-based products or to delay the ban. MS-NOW has pointed out this is the same month that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ daughter got married to the CEO of MC Nutraceuticals, a large wholesaler of hemp-based products, including Delta-8 THC. Could Trump’s reversal on the ban be a wedding gift? Forgive me for suggesting this possibility, but Trump’s past behavior is consistent with an inability to see himself in a conflict of interest in anything he fancies to do. What was the political game with the delay? At the beginning of August the quest for a delay turned into a proposed 4-week postponement of the ban ostensibly to allow legislators time to work out a hemp regulatory proposal. This ask for a small one-month delay baffled me at the time. It came an entire three months before the ban was meant to go into effect. I could understand if November 12th was drawing close after three months of hard lobbying and work constructing a compromise proposal and then a delay to the ban was asked for, but to ask so far ahead for a small one-month delay? Clearly, some political gamesmanship and heavy hemp industry lobbying was at play. Maybe the hemp lobby thought waiting until after the mid-terms would free up some favorable votes, or maybe they thought just being able to get one positive outcome in favor of hemp, even if just a short delay, would swing momentum in hemp’s favor. Or maybe the fact that Congress was not going to be in session at the start of the ban was a factor. One month delay slid into a funding bill and passed. In any case, the hemp ban delay was added to a must-pass federal short-term funding extension and the hemp industry got their 4-week reprieve. As it stands the ban will now end on December 11. Three types of hemp-based products: not gross, gross, and the big money maker to be. So let’s try to make sense of what is at stake. There are three types of hemp-based products. In the first, the hemp form of the Cannabis Sativa plant is used to make CBD products, such as tinctures, gummies, edibles, teas, and topical creams. The same plant is used for making rope and fabric. Within this first, non-intoxicating CBD category, there are three sub-categories. The first subcategory of hemp products use full spectrum CBD, meaning small amounts of different types of THC are retained. Some users regard full spectrum as providing the most beneficial effect. However, full spectrum consumable products can have enough total THC to cross the federal threshold of 0.4 mg, in which case they would be banned beginning December 11th. In the second sub-category, broad spectrum CBD has Delta-9 THC, the main kind of THC in cannabis, but the total quantity of is not enough to have any psychoactive effect. Thirdly, CBD isolate is, as the name implies, just the cannabidiol with other compounds, including any kind of THC, removed. The worst harm with this whole category of CBD products - it is not a huge harm but it is a harm - is that people are usually spending money on the basis of health claims which are not proven and are not regulated. The actual amount of active ingredient can vary from what is claimed on the package, which is never a good thing. There is, however, strong evidence for the usefulness of CBD in treating epilepsy, although using an unregulated product for this important purpose carries risks. The second type of hemp-based product is of greatest concern and most in need of regulation. Those are the consumables like gummies and edibles that can have very high levels of Delta-8 or other synthetic THC components. Some makers have gone so far as to put these dangerous psychoactive products into forms and packages which look like well-known, colorful, innocent candies. No alcohol but still a buzz in the can THC beverages represent the third type of hemp-based product. I suspect the enormous financial potential of THC drinks sold outside of cannabis dispensaries is the biggest motivator for the hemp lobby to try to kill the hemp ban. Currently these drinks are being put on shelves in stores that sell alcohol. Can hemp leapfrog cannabis to get federal approval and regulation? As alcohol sales decline and cannabis consumption increases, major voices on the retail side of the alcohol industry are in favor of regulating THC drinks made from hemp so that liquor stores and restaurants can sell them. Some major brewers like Constellation (Corona, Modelo), Heineken (Lagunitas), and Coors Molson, along with some craft brewers, are already investing in hemp-based beverages. Restaurant associations are also part of the lobby to legalize intoxicating hemp drinks. This whole beverage segment would love to leapfrog the possibility of federal legalization of cannabis and reap big gains in this quickly developing market. The big dog in the fight: THC in a can or martini glass So, to review, in the realm of hemp first we have the fairly innocent CBD products, then the THC gummies and edibles, a segment that has been grossly tarnished by the those who make hemp products targeting a market that doesn’t have an adult understanding of psychoactive drugs and their hazards, including kids who end up hallucinating at school. Third is the big dog in the fight, the hemp-based THC beverage market. The wild, wild west of cannabis at 90% potency vs. a regulated hemp industry? Hmmm… The current state of legal cannabis access is a hodge-podge wild west, not regulated at all by about half of the states, with many products having excessive levels of THC. High potency THC in hemp or cannabis products is associated with increased risk of cannabis use disorder and mental illness. A strong federal structure of cannabis regulation is needed. However, the medical and adult-use cannabis dispensary lobby is influential, bringing in substantial revenues for states where cannabis has been legalized. The cannabis industry is likely to push for a light federal regulatory hand when, and if, it is legalized on the national level. This could mean continued high THC content products in dispensaries. Eating in America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Could hemp products provide a model for federal approval and regulation of cannabis? If hemp-based THC beverages are legalized at the federal level, it would likely be with enough regulation and moderation to serve as a model for when the eventual federal legalization of cannabis occurs, assuming it does. So I am rooting for the hemp-based THC beverage industry to succeed in getting sensible regulations in place and soon. I just wish they didn’t have to play mysterious political games to get there in such a volatile and corrupt political environment. Thanks for reading Eating in America. Please help spread the word and share this post! Thank you for reading. Your support for Eating In America is key for my work. I appreciate it! References Rittiphairoj. High-Concentration Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol Cannabis Products and Mental Health Outcomes. Ann Intern Med. 2025;178(10):1429–1440. https://doi.org/10.7326/annals-24-03819 Senator Ted Budd, Republican, North Carolina on Hemp Ban Delay legislation, (August 5, 2026) (Senate). Rossheim M, Tillett K, Loparco C, Livingston M, Soule E, Berg C. Pediatric Cannabis Poisonings, United States Hospital Emergency Departments, 2018-2023. Health Behavior Research. 06/25 2025;8 https://doi.org/10.4148/2572-1836.1301 Bayly R. Ultraprocessed Cannabis: Potency, Policy, and Public Health in America. April 14, 2026. Eating In America. https://www.eatinginamerica.co/p/ultraprocessed-cannabis-potency-policy-aeb Marijuana Pol

  4. Sep 15

    “Survivor, Surgeon General,” Episode 3, Donald J. Trump, your host

    Surgeon General nominee Dr. Nicole Saphier will testify at her Senate confirmation hearing tomorrow. If she is approved as Surgeon General it will represent another major corruption of America’s public health authority. Eating In America previously reported that Saphier owns a supplement company. Her pricey tinctures have unquantified, ultraprocessed ingredients, and the health claims she makes for them are unsupported by science. One of them contains kava root, a supplement that is banned in the U.S. military because of its association with liver damage. Her involvement in supplements should have immediately dismissed her from consideration as Surgeon General. Newly disclosed is that she has profited by $270,000 from these products. Eating in America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Equally disqualifying are new revelations in the financial disclosure and ethics agreement she submitted last week that she owns stock in the three major tobacco companies, Altria Group, British American Tobacco, and Philip Morris. Equally disqualifying are the new revelations Saphier owns shares of Nestlé, a giant ultraprocessed food company, who’s ethics include vigorously marketing infant formula to women who could have breast fed but were convinced by Nestlé to use formula, even though they did not have clean water to mix the formula, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of babies and children. Equally disqualifying are the new revelations that she is an owner of Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Mondelēz, Taco Bell, McDonald’s, KFC, makers of food linked to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and many other ailments. Saphier owns stock in 239 major corporations apart from these nine who peddle toxic products. She did not have to sacrifice profit to make choices that were less abhorrent for a health leader. With these new revelations of tobacco and sugar-based food investments, Saphier draws even closer to matching the profiles and disqualifications of the two Surgeons General nominees who were “voted off” before her. As I point out in my May podcast/post “Survivor, Surgeon General,” Saphier shares with the first nominee, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, graduation from a medical school in the Caribbean and broadcasting at Fox News. With failed nominee #2 Casey Means, Saphier shares profiting from the supplement industry and stated ambiguity about vaccines. Newly disclosed and also thoroughly damning are the tobacco investments Saphier has made, like Means, in Altria Group and Philip Morris. Trump’s need to insist repeatedly that his choices are right until they are accepted, despite the consequences Americans are suffering, is again reflected in his third Surgeon General nominee, stamped in the very same mold as the first two. Unfortunately, back in her hearing in February, the Senate paid little attention to Casey Means’ involvement with tobacco, so that black stain on Saphier’s public health resume may not be a factor in her hearing tomorrow. Thank you for reading. Your support for Eating In America is appreciated. References Saphier, Nicole. Surgeon General nomination, financial disclosure details. September 7, 2026. Provided by U.S. Office of Government Ethics, September 15, 2026. Saphier, Nicole. Letter of financial disclosure and ethics agreement. September 7, 2026. https://extapps2.oge.gov/201/Presiden.nsf/PAS+Index/54788BB045EFAE6E85258E6E002DFF11/$FILE/Saphier Bayly R. Survivor, Surgeon General, podcast/post on Eating In America. May 26, 2026. https://www.eatinginamerica.co/p/survivor-surgeon-general-who-will This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.eatinginamerica.co/subscribe

  5. Sep 13

    Sugar Coated, Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America’s Favorite Breakfast Food

    Are you one of the 300 million Americans who together spend $23 billion to eat breakfast cereal each year? Is there nostalgia in that bowl or just a pleasant-enough dose of food to push you out the door in the morning? Marion Nestle and Lisa Sutherland’s new book, Sugar Coated, Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America’s Favorite Breakfast Food, is a not-sugar-coated history of the invention and evolution of cereal in America, inspired by and told through an extraordinary collection of Kellogg cereal box reproductions dating back to 1919 and given to Nestle by Kellogg in 2010. Nestle and Sutherland, who was Vice President for Nutrition at Kellogg at the time, understood immediately that these artifacts embodied - and displayed in bright colors - a macro case study of the way processed food has been marketed in the United States in the last hundred years. Granula, the sanctified but inedible beginning As Nestle and Sutherland recount the history, the first granola was created in 1863 in a sanatorium in western New York. “Granula,” as it was called, was inedible unless it was soaked overnight. Nonetheless, the idea for the whole grain breakfast food was quickly appropriated by two brothers, the Kelloggs, who added a moralistic wrapper as they served it along with the beliefs of the health and nutrition conscious Seventh-Day Adventist Church. C.W. Post, of the soon to be Postum Cereals, helped in the kitchen of the Kelloggs’ sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan where Post also, let’s not sugar coat it again, appropriated stole the idea of a healthy whole grain cereal. Snake oil and whole grains By the turn of the century, the shift from pulpit to profit was complete in the cereal market and soon 100 cereal makers populated Battle Creek. In 1906, health-promising snake oil sales were at their peak in America, but purchases of genuinely healthy cereal were taking off, albeit with the help of snake-oil-like health claims such as Postum Grape-Nuts’ “rebuilds the soft gray matter in your brain.” Cereal had already been industrialized with extrusion and crushing processes that break the whole grains down into a more digestible form. Some cereal makers in Battle Creek were adding barley malt to sweeten their products, but the elder Kellogg, Dr. John Harvey, was adamantly opposed to sugar in the diet. The younger W.K. Kellogg saw great wealth in the future, however, and in 1906 added cane sugar to the new Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. The road to the prominence of breakfast cereal as a highly- and ultra-processed food in our culture was paved. The cereal industry’s manipulation of … everybody In Sugar Coated, Nestle and Sutherland carefully lead us through formulation of cereals over time with the addition of artificial colors, vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein, artificial sweeteners, and, of course, sugar, and lots of it. The book thoroughly and frighteningly tracks the industry’s manipulation of the Food and Drug Administration for food and labeling standards, the Federal Trade Commission for commercial advertising, academia and the nutrition research community for production of the supporting science, along with the USDA and Congress for laws and policies, all to help avoid or reduce regulation and gain license to market in ways that would best promote cereal sales. Health claims, laughable and cringeworthy The authors by turn amused and enraged me in sorting out the confusing and contentious history of health claims on cereal boxes, from the reasonable “avoids constipation” of the Kellogg 1919 All-Bran to the icky-sticky endorsement of the America Diabetes Association on boxes of Post’s sugary cereals. Sugar Coated is bound to be frequently cited for detailing the way the industry has doggedly pursued its marketing goals, through managing to get government regulations changed, creating self-imposed regulation to deflect government efforts to regulate, or just ignoring the rules, often paying the penalty in court while reaping the bigger benefit in sales. Other writers will undoubtedly extend the lessons of Sugar Coated to help examine and link the tactics of highly- and ultra-processed food segments and other industries which market addictive or regulated substances. (I include sugar as an addictive substance, a conclusion W.K. Kellogg himself might have intuited.) Sugar as the essence of cereal’s rise to be a keystone of the diet of many Americans As the name Sugar Coated implies and Nestle and Sutherland convincingly detail, sugar has long been the essential ingredient for the success of breakfast cereal, as well as one of the key battlegrounds in regulatory and court struggles. The unhealthiness of added sugar is also the reason that the behavior of the Big Four cereal makers in targeting children is unethical. Of the four giants, General Mills, Kellogg, Post, and Quaker Oats, it is no coincidence that Kellogg, now split into W.C. Kellogg for North America and Kellanova for the rest of the world, is owned by Ferraro, the Italian candy maker, and Mars, the American candy maker. Quaker Oats is also owned by a sugar-centric food maker, PepsiCo. Candy for the breakfast of kids as a new norm With marshmallows, chocolate, and candy-names in and on our cereal, we live in a food environment where candy is promoted for breakfast and breakfast is marketed as a sugary snack for eating throughout the day. The authors’ incense at the TV ads, cartoon characters, in-box prizes, colored cereals in unusual shapes, and other marketing tricks that drive the buying of sugar-laden cereal for children is restrained but palpable. The idea of stop signals to warn us Change is coming in other parts of the world and Nestle and Sutherland provide examples. The most important and potentially achievable change the authors describe would be the addition of an instantly understandable and nutritionally-sound front-of-box indication of the healthiness of the cereal or other processed food product being examined. This consumer-friendly heads up has been enacted in the form of octagonal stop-sign shaped warnings in the majority of countries in South America and has greatly reduced sugary cereal sales there. Our Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Make America Healthy Again leader, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has advocated for perhaps the strongest choice for such a warning system, red-yellow-green light icons. Of course, after reading Sugar Coated, we shouldn’t be left with any delusions about the forces the Big Four and the rest of the highly- and ultra-processed food industry are bringing to bear to fight back against RFK, Jr.’s idea. Happy birthday, Marion Nestle! Look at the photo and guess how old Marion Nestle is. This week she celebrated a birthday that ends with a zero. You probably guessed 70th and would be in disbelief that it was her 80th, but it was actually Nestle’s 90th. Where does the impressive nutrition advocacy, book-producing, interview-giving, lecture-delivering, FoodPolitics.com post-writing energy come from? Good luck, but also good nutrition, Nestle says. Happy birthday and thank you and Lisa Sutherland, for this perfect insight into the way Big Food markets, lobbies, and formulates its way onto our tables with the only consideration of healthiness being the ultimate effect on the bottom line. In two weeks, we’ll set Nestle and Sutherland’s Sugar Coated cereal story in the context of the other choices made in the morning by Americans. It will be Breakfast in America on Eating in America. Please join me then and every week at EatingInAmerica.co. Thank you for reading and your support of Eating in America through your subscriptions, comments, and likes. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.eatinginamerica.co/subscribe

  6. Sep 6

    Dental health today, the role of teeth in winning wars, and the role of war in bringing dental health to America

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.eatinginamerica.co Height equals genetics plus nutrition plus health. George Washington was about 6’-2” tall. Trump claims to be 6’-3”, but his draft card and driver’s license said he was 6’-2”. Average Americans were a little shorter in Washington’s time than they are now, making Washington’s height more impressive. However, average American men were a whopping 5’8”, three inches taller than the average European! Colonial Americans were largely farmers, growing and eating their own food. Apparently, they got more food and better food on the New World farm, and they got taller. Remembering Wendell Berry Let me pause here to remember the great American agrarian writer Wendell Berry, who died this week. He wrote a lot about society that is divorced from the farm, that is, most of us today: “The industrial eater is, in fact, one who does not know that eating is an agricultural act, who no longer knows or imagines the connections between eating and the land, and who is therefore necessarily passive and uncritical—in short, a victim.” That’s from the book Bringing it to the Table. Thank you, Wendell Berry. The equation for good teeth Back to teeth. Good teeth equals genetics plus nutrition plus health plus good dental care. The dental situation is where Washington came up short There was no or little added sugar in Washington’s growing up years, but also no added fluoride, no toothbrushes, and nothing similar to the professional dental care we have today. Washington lost his last tooth while he was President. None of his various dentures ever fit well, causing him problems like being reluctant to speak in public. I wrote recently about how Washington’s mandatory smallpox inoculation measures were possibly critical in the eventual success of the Continental Army. An incident involving the General’s teeth helped deceive the British about Washington’s ultimately successful attack on Yorktown, Virginia. A stolen letter and a lost battle Washington had written to his dentist in Philadelphia asking him to send tooth cleaning tools, saying that he, Washington, wouldn’t be in Philadelphia soon. The letter was intercepted by the British and unintentionally helped convince them that Washington’s plan was to stay north and attack New York City. Because of this Cornwallis received no reinforcements at Yorktown and lost the battle to Washington, leading to the end of the Revolutionary War. The very unpleasant, unethical makeup of Washington’s dentures Those dentures the General was trying to take care of? Not wood, but the ivory bases were so brown-stained that an observer might think so. The teeth in various of Washington’s dentures consisted of a few of his own teeth that had been removed, along with “purchased” teeth extracted from people enslaved by Washington at Mount Vernon. Cow, donkey, and horse teeth were also used, along with ivory from a hippopotamus, a walrus, and maybe an elephant. The mandibles were spring loaded to open, and the teeth were embedded in lead, tin, copper, and silver alloys. American oral health has improved a lot since Washington’s day The huge increase in dental health began in the 1940s as the era of the ultra-processed was getting started with the technical innovations devised for military food. Two changes in dental care happened just in time to save our teeth, somewhat, from the flood of carbonated, sugared sodas and ultra-processed foods with refined starches and added sugars which was just about to come. Give me 100 pushups and brush for two minutes It was the military that changed American dental habits. Badly hampered in readiness by dental issues like Trench Mouth in World War One, the military made it a firm policy that troops in World War Two would brush daily. They were provided with toothbrushes and powder or paste, supplies that many, perhaps most, could not afford before joining up. Brushing was a habit brought back home in the 1940s by many millions of troops. The other big change was fluoridated water. Fluoridation of the water supply was first tested in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1945. In ten years, tooth decay in the city’s 30,000 school children had dropped 60%. Today over 209 million Americans receive caries protection from 17,400 fluoridated community water systems. Community water supplied populations which receive fluoridation range from an extreme low of 8.5% in Hawaii, mostly on military bases, to a low of 16% in New Jersey, to around 90% to 100% in many southern and rural states. Globally, 25 countries have fluoridated systems. Tooth decay remains a public health issue Despite these changes and big improvements, tooth decay, or caries, remains a public health issue because of all the pain, infections, time lost from work and school, loss of teeth, and costs. It’s the most common chronic disease in children, with half of nine-year olds having already developed caries. And for people over 65, one-quarter have severe tooth loss, meaning they have only eight or less teeth remaining. All the teeth are gone in fifteen percent of older Americans. Socioeconomic disparities and inequities continue to exist in oral health, particularly impacting poor children, but those disparities have tended to lessen as dental health has gotten better in America. Tooth decay down 26% with fluoride in the water Fluoridated water can reduce caries 26% in permanent teeth. This varies depending on factors like the use of fluoride toothpaste in a population or whether the water supply contains natural fluoride. Fluoride is the 13th most common element in nature and some community water systems and many private wells contain higher levels of natural fluoride than the low level added to fluoridated systems. Fluorosis Too much fluoride can cause fluorosis. In its mildest form, fluorosis can cause almost invisible white flecks on the teeth. Acute fluorosis comes with gastrointestinal problems. In a combination of data from 40 other studies, researchers found fluorosis to the degree of showing as spots or streaks on teeth, an esthetic concern, in 12% of people. Another study found that fluorosis is mainly diagnosed in children age five and under who might have swallowed too much fluoridated toothpaste. Fluoride applied directly to the teeth through toothpaste or treatment at a dentist’s visit is by far the most effective method of delivering protection. $120 billion on tooth care per year In 2015, Americans spent $120 billion on their teeth and gums. That spending reduced productivity losses, which were still $46 billion. But fluoridation is the hero for dental return on investment. Every dollar spent on fluoridation decreased dental costs and productivity losses by $20. From a public health standpoint, fluoridation is especially beneficial to those who can’t or don’t access regular dental preventive health services or don’t use fluoride toothpaste. Despite the unquestionable and highly important benefits of fluoridation, community fluoridation is still an issue for many. The concern is not just fluorosis but also the potential risk to IQ. IQ and fluoride A recent analysis combining the results of other studies found a relationship between loss of IQ and increased level of fluoride from all sources. A big caveat of this analysis is that it did not include any direct data of the effect on IQ at the low level of fluoride added to community water systems. More research is needed around the possible effects of low levels of fluoride before the public health benefits of fluoridation are sacrificed. In addition to fluoride in drinking water, toothpaste, or dental treatments to prevent cavities, dental sealants should be applied to the back teeth of children and young adults. Sealants can prevent 80% of cavities, and 9 out of 10 cavities are in the back teeth. You are putting what in my mouth? Throughout history the dental profession has promoted the use of various substances in our mouths which have been great for dental results but can be cringey when other health concerns are considered. Just drawing from the past 100 years, I am thinking of mercury amalgam fillings; BPA or Bisphenol A and a host of other toxic chemicals used in composite fillings, retainers, and sealant; Teflon for brace wires; arsenic to kill tooth roots; formaldehyde to remove the pulp in an infected baby tooth; and chloroform to dissolve the roots of teeth in a root canal operation. About the mercury and BPA-containing fillings: better than the molten lead fillings French dentists would pour as hot liquid into their patients mouths in the 1700s, right?! And then there are the liberal x-rays, the radiation dose of which has been cut dramatically in the digital age. Today, these toxic substances have been eliminated or greatly reduced in dental treatments. Of course, there are other materials and chemicals used in dental care outside the office. Almost all toothbrushes have nylon bristles that can shed microplastics. Dental floss is made of nylon or, much worse, Teflon, as in Glide floss. Even natural products maker Tom’s of Maine uses nylon in its floss. Mouthwash and the possible negative effect on heart health And then there’s mouthwash. The concern most worth considering is that anti-bacterial mouthwash wipes out beneficial bacteria in the oral microbiome. A 2023 set of papers reviewed the evidence and could not conclude if the effect of anti-bacterial mouthwashes, which can improve dental health, are harmful to overall health, mainly through killing bacteria in the saliva which help convert good nitrates from vegetables into nitric oxide in your blood. Nitric oxide is a vasodilator that relaxes your blood vessels, lowers your blood pressure, and is protective against heart disease. More research on mouthwashes is required. Doctors and dentists: is having such separation good? By the way, did your pr

    Dental health today, the role of teeth in winning wars, and the role of war in bringing dental health to America

  7. Aug 31

    Sugar in the first 1,000 days is strongly linked to many diseases later

    In this post: * New evidence on the worrisome, lifelong health effects of sugar in the first 1,000 days * American infant formula promotes obesity and many other diseases * American formula is primarily added sugar: corn syrup is prominent and even most of the lactose is refined * Do formula makers like corn syrup because it gets infants to drink more? * RFK, Jr. needs to make Big Formula back down to fulfill his goal of reforming formula in any meaningful way * The added sugar Mom eats is “secondhand sugar” for the fetus * 2025 Dietary Guidelines: no added sugar up to age 10. Radical? Take a folic acid supplement if you are trying to get pregnant; don’t drink, smoke, or take drugs during pregnancy; hold and love your baby and use breast milk if available. Talk to your infant a lot. These we know. New evidence about the health effects of sugar in the first 1,000 days With the appearance of a new study, the evidence is now very strong for another recommendation that should be on the list already but is not always expressed by an obstetrician, pediatrician, or other relied on sources of pre- or neonatal information. It should be a must-add: don’t feed your fetus, baby, infant, or toddler added sugar. Withholding added sugar from a fetus or child still seems like a bit of a radical idea today, even as we have established the role of refined sugar as a cause of obesity, but there was a time it wasn’t a choice. George Washington did okay without sugar Three hundred years ago sugar was an expensive luxury for the tea cups of the rich. Few kids or adults had much opportunity to enjoy it. The neural pathways of fetuses and babies were not re-shaped by exposure to sugar, because there were very few houses with a sugar bowl on the table and none with highly-processed food in the pantry. That changed during the course of George Washington’s lifetime. Born in 1732, our first President likely ate little sugar as a child. That deprivation didn’t stop him from growing exceptionally tall, very athletic, and into a great leader. But by the 1800s and its industrial innovations in processing, sugar had transformed into a commodity, produced cheaply in massive quantities by enslaved labor on plantations in Haiti, Cuba, Mississippi, Louisiana, Brazil, and Java. Sugar had become part of most people’s diets. Today the pleasure, acceptance, and assumption of refined sugar in the diet is engrained in parents, great-grandparents, obstetricians, pediatricians, politicians, and, unfortunately, nutritionists and public health scientists, including me, around the globe. What’s a baby to do? The evidence brought forward by several papers in the last few years provides compelling reasons for us grownups to do more. Here’s the clever way this evidence has come together. War time rationing in the UK: babies who had sugar and babies who didn’t From the wartime rationing of 1942 all the way until 1953 each person in the United Kingdom, rich or poor, received about 1 cup of sugar a week and 3 ounces of sweets. Children two and under received no ration. Sugar rationing ended throughout the UK on one day in September 1953, and families could suddenly buy as much sugar as they wanted, and they immediately bought a lot. The UK Biobank has medical and biological data for a half-million people. A large number of these spent their first 1,000 days of development just before, just after, or right through the abrupt end of sugar rationing. Those 1,000 days from conception through the second birthday are a critical period for child development. What happens in those first 1,000 days has been tied to obesity, cardiovascular disease, asthma, mental health, diabetes, and cancer. A “natural experiment” The way the Biobank data overlapped with the end of sugar rationing allowed our sugar researchers what is called a natural experiment, a comparison of two groups, one of which was exposed to a real life condition, in this case sugar rationing, and other not exposed. Using the Biobank in this way was such a good idea that several groups did it, each analyzing a group of 60,000 to 65,000 people, the ones that bracketed the end of sugar rationing. Evidence of disease from the data of people born as sugar rationing ended First, Gracner and team found that those who spent their first 1,000 days with restricted sugar had better outcomes later in life for type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Two more teams followed with a look at the data for cardiovascular outcomes, finding that heart failure, cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction, atrial fibrillation, and stroke were all a greater risk for those whose sugar consumption had not been restricted in their first 1,000 days. Cancer and sugar in the first 1,000 days Next, researchers Chen Zhu and Weilong Zhang went back to the same Biobank data and asked if restricting sugar in the first 1,000 days could reduce the risk of cancer? They found that, yes indeed, restricting sugar from womb to 2 years old is very protective. The adults who started life before sugar rationing ended had a reduced chance of cancer for each cancer they looked at: 69% for liver, 40% for rectum, 41% for lung, 52% for prostate, and 36% less chance of breast cancer. What can explain these good results? The authors found that five decades after birth, sugar-restricted people ate less sugar and less food, and their diets were healthier and more diverse. They also had reduced levels of chronic inflammation. They also found that the telomeres of these folks had aged 2.2 years less than the telomeres of the people who came on board life after sugar rationing stopped. Longer chromosome “shoelaces” with less sugar What are telomeres you might ask? Telomeres are the bits at the ends of chromosomes that protect the genetic data when a cell divides. They’re like the plastic tips of a shoelace. The telomeres get shorter every time a cell divides. Eventually the telomere gets too short and the cell dies. Getting an extra 2.2 years of telomere life is a good thing, sort of like when you buy a tire that’s rated for an extra 10,000 miles. Except that tires can be replaced, and some cells, like brain cells, once they’re gone, they’re gone. So, to recap, Zhu and Zhang found that restricting sugar during pregnancy up to the second birthday caused, and they use the word “cause”, a reduction in cancer, chronic inflammation, and cellular aging as those children turn into adults. This, combined with reductions in diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke, makes a convincing case for adding a recommendation to restrict, if not eliminate, sugar exposure in the first 1,000 days. Lots of recommendations not to feed added sugar before age two But wait, the American Heart Association recommended no added sugar for children under two in 2016, ten years ago! And the American Academy of Pediatrics followed suit in 2019! And the Dietary Guidelines for Americans said this in 2020! Whew! I guess new moms and dads already know what to do when it comes to sugar. Unfortunately, the FDA does not regulate the carbohydrate content of baby formula or require amounts or types of added sugars to be stated on the label. This is not the case in other parts of civilization or for adult food in America. If knowing added sugar content is helpful for adult nutritional health, surely it’s helpful to make sure infants are getting the best nutrition? Why the FDA needs to act The FDA’s lack of ingredient control and labeling matters a great deal. According to a study published last year, of the 73 infant formula products available in the U.S. across three major brands (Similac, Enfamil, and Gerber/Nestlé), one smaller brand, and some store brands, only a few have naturally occurring lactose as their primary carbohydrate. Lactose is a sugar designed by evolution for mammals at an early stage of life. Almost all of the carbohydrate in human milk is lactose. Natural lactose is bound to fats and proteins in the mother’s milk and is digested somewhat slowly. Added refined lactose is an added sugar and acts like it A little more than half the formula products in the U.S. use added lactose which is refined. Refined lactose is like other refined sugars and isn’t bound to the fat and protein in the formula. It absorbs into the baby’s blood fast, spiking blood sugar and then insulin in response. And lots of formula products use other refined sugars apart from lactose, like glucose, maltose, or sucrose, all with refined lactose’s fast absorption and insulin response. American formula is primarily added sugar With no FDA requirements to use primarily natural lactose and to provide details of the carbohydrate ingredients, American parents and caregivers have no way to know that they are usually giving their babies primarily refined sugar and not natural lactose. I could not tell the proportion of natural to refined lactose from reading any of the formula containers I checked. The Wirecutter doesn’t get it Parents are not getting the info. In June, the Wirecutter section in the New York Times rated the six best infant formulas on the market in the U.S., in their opinion. They claim to have read 20 scientific articles in their research, but five of the six papers they cited were published nine or more years ago. Their seven expert interviews were mostly from 2022 or before, and more than half were with formula makers, none of whose formula sales websites said anything about natural lactose versus refined. In essence, The Wirecutter reported that the FDA had baby needs covered, and all U.S. sold formulas were good. Wirecutter completely missed both that there is an important difference between natural lactose and refined and that FDA-approved formulas contribute to later obesity, and are not adequate for normal growth as The Wirecutter claims, unless obesogenic is the new normal. U.S. baby formula is obesogenic: it promotes obesity A

  8. Aug 23

    Why we still don’t have an ultra-processed food definition

    The RFK, Jr. press conference two weeks ago was billed as a “celebration…of landmark actions…The event will highlight…Trump…accomplishments…and announce two major new food policy actions.” This press event billed as announcing major food policy wins contained nothing impressive. One announcement was for a very partial measure to address the Generally Recognized As Safe loophole, and the other item was a non-announcement saying, in effect, that the much anticipated definition of ultra-processed food is still being kept a secret. Big Food has a big foot in the door of the White House As I have reported, Big Food has been working hard in Washington to minimize the damage that could come from the regulation of highly- and ultra-processed food, or HUPF. HUPF started out as a top issue of RFK, Jr.’s Make America Health Again agenda, with the initial MAHA Assessment report in May of 2025 mentioning ultra-processed more than 40 times. However, the MAHA Strategy Report, released the following September, mentioned ultra-processed only once, saying it needed to be defined in order to be researched. The squashing of discussion of HUPF was a result of pressure from the HUPF manufacturers. Now, almost a year after the MAHA Strategy Report, CEOs and industry associations have been lobbying the administration to delay the release of the definition that has been presented to the White House. The disappearing HUPF definition In fact, it seems as if RFK, Jr. was planning to release the definition two weeks ago, but, presumably, last minute pressure from the food industry caused him to announce only that the proposed definition was still being reviewed. The proposed Generally Recognized As Safe loophole rule: Please don’t call this a win. It looks like another loss for consumers, in favor of industry. However, compared to the non-news with the HUPF definition, slightly more progress was announced by Kennedy on the Generally Recognized As Safe loophole that has allowed an estimated one thousand substances to be introduced into the food supply without notice to the FDA. One thousand is the non-profit NRDC’s rough estimate, but the real number may be much higher. No one knows. Further, the manufacturers are self-certifying these substances as safe for consumption, and the FDA and the public do not know how reliable that self-certification is. If a new FDA rule is activated, manufacturers will still be able to self-certify safety and introduce the substances into the food supply. They will have to notify the FDA of both new and previously introduced substances. It’s not clear when or whether the food or additive will need to be pulled from the market if the FDA takes objection to the manufacturer-funded safety certification. It is clear from decades of FDA underfunding and inaction and Trump’s recent deep cuts in FDA personnel, that, when inundated with hundreds, perhaps thousands of notifications of new and previously added substances, the FDA will have a very difficult, perhaps almost impossible, time working through the backlog of substances to pick the most worrisome to review. No new funding has been promised in conjunction with Kennedy’s announcement. A database of food substances/chemicals/additives will be public At least the newly revealed food substances will be added to a public database where scrutiny from outside scientists could potentially shed light on the riskiest additives that the public is consuming or the most questionable safety self-certifications. The gaping GRAS loophole So, in reality, the GRAS loophole is not closing. As Melanie Banesh of EWG, the Environmental Working Group, has put it, mandatory notification is a “first step” in GRAS reform, which also needs the creation of scientific standards and review by the FDA before chemicals are introduced to our food, along with review of the substances that have already been introduced under GRAS. As Benesh puts it: “Americans deserve a system where food safety decisions are made by independent experts at the FDA – not by the companies that profit from selling these chemicals.” Will Big Food or consumers benefit from the delayed HUPF definition? And as for the further delayed HUPF definition, when it is released, I would not be surprised if it is designed to be more helpful to the HUPF manufacturers than to those who would regulate or study HUPF. Please share this post if you like it. Every food substance created in the last two hundred years is HUPF In reality, every food, food-like substance, or additive created since the mid-1800s – the beginning of the Second Industrial Revolution – is highly-or ultra-processed, or HUPF. It is only with the technology of the last two hundred years that we have been able to create new foods, and they are, by virtue of that technology, at least highly- if not ultra-processed. If it didn’t need technology and it was good to eat, it had already been introduced as a food hundreds of years ago. This HUPF definition even applies to ingredients like refined sugar and flour, which have been around since before the Industrial Revolution but only became a problem when industrial technology made them cheap, plentiful, and consumed in unhealthy quantities! A broad definition of HUPF is not sufficient for policy making. HUPF is too complex. The way HUPF has been defined in the last twenty years, initially by Carlos Monteiro or in my own definition, is too broad as a category to make policy and conduct new, helpful research. HUPF comes in many subcategories based on its ingredients, and these subcategories may be related to very different health outcomes such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, gut biome disruption, respiratory disease, and decreased mental health, for examples. All types of HUPF are not created equal, and I predict the coming industry-influenced definition from the American government will play upon this complexity to delay research and regulation. It may be up to the states, national governments elsewhere, and the academic community to provide meaningful progress on regulation of different types of HUPF. For my own, time- and technology-based definition of HUPF, see Refining a Highly-Refined Food Definition. Thanks for reading and your support of Eating in America, which is essential and greatly appreciated. Eating in America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.eatinginamerica.co/subscribe

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