The FDA is nearly a year into its MAHA era. The rhetoric has been bold — food dyes, ultra-processed foods, infant formula, GRAS reform. But what's actually happened? And what might still be coming? Helena got down to brass tacks with FDA Commissioner Marty Makary during a fireside chat on stage at the National Food Policy Conference in Washington, D.C.

Commissioner Makary came into this role as a surgical oncologist and researcher who spent decades at Johns Hopkins — and who had already written extensively about food and nutrition before taking the job (unusual for an FDA commissioner).

In this conversation, they cover a lot of ground: the plan to phase out synthetic food dyes, the coming definition for ultra-processed foods, the overhaul of infant formula standards, GRAS reform, and what front-of-pack labeling might actually look like under this administration.

Highlights:

– Makary sees the food side of FDA as one of the biggest opportunities of his tenure; he thinks it's been under-appreciated for years

– The plan to phase out petroleum-based synthetic food dyes

– FDA's coming definition for ultra-processed foods, expected by April or May, and how it might factor into labeling

– Rethinking front-of-pack labeling: why this administration isn't planning to just move forward with the Biden-era proposal

– Overhauling the infant formula monograph for the first time in decades

– GRAS reform: where the proposed rule stands and what Makary says about FDA's authority to close the loophole

– How AI is being used to speed up scientific reviews and help target inspections

Where to find Commissioner Makary:

Dr. Makary’s website

@DrMakaryFDA on X

Mentioned in this episode:

Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health by Marty Makary

Stay in touch:

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

Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.

Send ideas and feedback to info@foodfix.co

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

Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.

Sam Kass calls RFK Jr. "the greatest threat to public health this country has ever faced."

He’s not joking. Sam led Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign, served as senior policy advisor in the Obama White House, and fought some of the most brutal food policy battles in recent memory. He knows what it takes to enact regulation and how hard industry will fight to protect its interests.

Hearing MAHA panic about seed oils and food dyes while the administration weakens the FDA and CDC all while championing beef tallow french fries is downright alarming, he says. And that’s before we even get to the fact that the Trump administration is moving backward on responding to the climate crisis, which is the focus of his latest book, The Last Supper.

Sam doesn’t hold back in this interview.

Heads up for those with kids: There are some expletives in this conversation.

Highlights:

– How Big Potato fought the White House over what counts as a vegetable in school lunch and WIC

– The reason why Sam's first cookbook didn't include white potatoes

– The trans fat ban fight

– How climate change has moved from future threat to present crisis

– Why seed oils and food dyes are a distraction from what actually matters for public health

– Fact-checking the narrative that Michelle Obama "caved to industry"

– Democrats lost the food issue to Republicans — can they get it back?

Where to find Sam Kass:

Follow Sam Kass on Instagram

Check out his book, The Last Supper

Mentioned in this episode:

Bold Fork Books

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010

Marion Nestle's Food Politics blog

Fed Up documentary

COP 21 Paris Climate Agreement

How I Built This: Spindrift — Bill Creelman

Stay in touch:

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

Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.

Send ideas and feedback to info@foodfix.co

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

Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.

She says she hates politics. She's also been on the White House lawn with the FDA commissioner, helped pressure food companies to drop artificial dyes, and is now one of the most influential voices within the Make America Healthy Again movement.

Vani Hari, better known as the Food Babe, built a massive following pressuring food companies to ditch controversial ingredients long before MAHA was a thing. How did she go from an activist food blogger to one of the most dominant forces in food policy?

Note: This interview originally aired on Forked, the food politics podcast Helena co-hosts with Theodore Ross with the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Helena and Ted spoke with Vani in late January — before the glyphosate executive order dropped and before Vani announced a rally at the Supreme Court.

Highlights:

– The glyphosate fault line - why the Trump administration’s alignment with Bayer in a Supreme Court case has infuriated MAHA advocates, and what Vani thinks should actually happen

– The farm lobby is a much harder target than Big Food, and what that means for MAHA's agenda

– MAHA's political future may hinge on what happens at the EPA before the midterms

– Comparing American food ingredients to their European counterparts has become a potent political argument

Where to find Vani Hari:

Food Babe website

Vani Hari on Instagram

Mentioned in this episode:

Forked podcast

Trump executive order on glyphosate/Defense Production Act

New Dietary Guidelines

Stay in touch:

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

Follow American Dish on Instagram and YouTube.

Send ideas and feedback to info@foodfix.co

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

Credits: This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz. Original music by David Bottemiller.