In this episode, Theodore and Helena discuss why the (non-vaxx) ideas of the MAHA movement are popular, but the movement itself is less so.. That split presents a major problem for Democrats, who can’t resist the Trump administration when it’s pushing for things they want. Also, does Coke taste better with cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup? The answer: they taste about the same, and people prefer Pepsi (as long as they don’t know what they’re drinking – then they like Coke).
TRANSCRIPT
Theodore Ross: Welcome to Forked, food politics in the MAHA age. I’m Theodore Ross, Editor-in-Chief of the Food and Environment Reporting Network, and I’m joined by my cohost, Helena Bottemiller Evich, of Food Fix. In this episode, we’re going to take on what I consider to be a really hard question to answer: why the heck is MAHA so popular? Is making America healthy again something Americans actually care about? We’re also going to figure out if soda with cane sugar is any better for you than soda sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, and if it tastes any better. Finally, the USDA is saying bye bye to DC. Why? All will be revealed.
Theodore: Hello, Helena. How are you?
Helena Bottemiller Evich: I’m doing well. How are you?
Theodore: I am great. Why don’t we jump right in and talk about food and politics, shall we?
Helena: Let’s do it.
Theodore: All right. So, as everybody knows, if they’ve been listening to the podcast, we like to start out with something called the Double Take. And that’s something that’s happening in the news that is so surprising and typically not so great that it just makes you do a double take.This week I think it should be the reorganization of the USDA, where basically they’re closing down a lot of the staff in DC and moving them out into the hinterland to get closer to the farmers. Tell me, Helena, What do you think about this? Is this a good idea?
Helena: The hinterland, first of all, may not be the best description.
Theodore: Yeah. It’s Raleigh. That’s true.
Helena: I’m gonna read you the five hub locations: Fort Collins, Colorado, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, Raleigh, and Kansas City. So it’s not the hinterland, but outside of DC. And what’s interesting is like USDA’s, you know, 90% of their hundred thousand employees are already outside of DC.
But this would move like the bulk of the staff, I think it’s like 2,600 workers from the DC area outside. And this would just be really disruptive and a lot of people think it’s gonna result in a major brain drain. During Trump one, they tried to move just one division, the Economic Research Service, or they actually did move it to Kansas City and they lost the majority of the economists there, they just didn’t wanna move. It’s super disruptive.
Theodore: Trump moved the Bureau of Land Management too, to Grand Junction, Colorado during his first term, right? And then Biden moved it back.
Helena: Yeah so I don’t know how many employees they lost during that, but you just assume that there is a lot of, you know, they’re marketing this as, “we’re not laying anyone off,” “we’re not doing a reduction in force.”
Which is much, I guess, less disruptive than the other agencies who have gotten thousands of workers cut from their programs, their departments. They’re like, “oh, we’re not laying people off.” But you’re gonna lose a lot of people when this happens. Like, there is a brain drain to an extent. It could be half, it could be more than half, could be the majority.
So the lawmakers seem to be kinda worried about this. Even Republicans were really miffed that they didn’t get briefed about it. Like they didn’t.
Theodore: Well, but that was for a different reason, wasn’t it? They wanted to bid on the location of these new hubs.
Helena: Yeah, North Dakota is looking good for Senator John Hoeven. He’s like, “what are we doing?” I think that’s part of it.
Theodore: This is actually not a bad point, right?
Helena: Yeah. So they didn’t have an open process about where to move these, which they did with the move of ERS, which was very disruptive. But they did have a process to pick the location and all of that.
Theodore: So let’s start with sort of accepting the logic here at face value and talk about why this would be a good thing? Why is there a reason to move all of these folks outta DC and get ’em out to Indianapolis and Fort Collins and all the points in between?
Helena: I mean, the number one reason is cost of living. DC area is really expensive, so you have to pay folks more. And it’s also harder to recruit, like young talent if they can’t, you know, they come to DC they can’t afford to buy a house. Like, it’s just expensive. So you have that barrier. I think their argument is that, you know, you can save the government money because you don’t have to pay as high of salaries and you can recruit young people to lower cost places where it’s easier to live. I think that all makes sense to people. It’s the moving seasoned people who already have ties to DC that is going to be disruptive. Like you’re just going to have folks who won’t move, can’t move, you know, their kids might be in school, you know, in high school or a time where it’s just really disruptive and there’s just a lot of people who won’t do it.
Theodore: Well, all right, so you live in DC. I know you’re out in Washington state right now, but you are a person of the beltway. Do you think that they will be able to get the same level of talent and quality of employee and dedication levels of employee if you move them around the country and put them in different places? That’s just one part of it.
Helena: Yeah.
Theodore: Will it harm the output?
Helena: So I think in the short term, it probably will harm the output just because it’s so disruptive. But I think the overall argument of having government agencies spread around the country is a compelling one. I don’t think anyone is like, “oh, a USDA employee in Fort Collins is like less talented than, you know, an employee who’s at the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Maryland. Um, which by the way, is a huge campus that’s like 6,000 acres out in Maryland. It’s really an interesting place if you ever get a chance to go. I’m not sure what their plans are for that, but that’s like massive real estate.
So it’s been on my to-do list, like, what is gonna happen with that? Like they do a lot of ag research there, but this is now very desirable, you know, real estate in the DMV, the DC Metro, Maryland, Virginia area. Like what does that stand for? So, you know, it’s disruptive, but I think the idea that you have government agencies other places is probably pretty popular.
I don’t know that just on its face, it’s harder to recruit people. I don’t think that’s the issue. It’s how disruptive it is. And the worries from members of Congress is that it will actually disrupt key services that USDA provides. Whether it’s like looking at conservation programs or all of these other ways that farmers are served right now. Grant applications, a lot of that is through DC. And so if you’re having mass attrition, that will affect those programs. I think that’s where the concern is. It’s like how you do it. Are they doing this in a way that is designed to shrink USDA? Or are they doing this in a way that is designed to really thoughtfully and slowly transition certain agencies out of the DC area?
Theodore: But they’re obviously not doing it thoughtfully and slowly.They are dozing themselves. Even with Elon Musk out of DC, I dunno if that’s a concern, but that seems to be the underlying narrative here. How do we, or if you’re sitting where I’m sitting and you’re skeptical of the federal, you know, the White House, and you’re skeptical of Brooke Rollins as a supposed moderate within the government, you get a little bit concerned, quote unquote, that they’re really just looking to decimate the USDA and that’s what’s driving this.
Helena: I think it’s fair to assume that shrinking the workforce is part of the goal here, even though they’re not marketing it that way. I also would take issue — I don’t think Brooke Rollins is a moderate, and I don’t think she would even call herself one. I think people view her that way because she is not in the headlines like some of the other folks in the cabinet. She hasn’t come up through the social media sort of podcasting world. I don’t know.
Theodore: She wasn’t a Fox News commentator.
Helena: She’s had a different path. It’s been a little more think-tanky, a little more MAGA establishment, right? So, anyway, I just wanna take issue with that. I don’t think she or anyone would call her moderate. And I do think the Trump administration is not being coy about trying to shrink the agencies. They are trying to cut the size of the federal government. They’re not pretending.
Theodore: They’re not kidding.
Helena: They’re not, they’re not pretending. If you look at Project 2025, their goal was to eliminate, or cut a lot of parts of the government, and that’s what they’re doing now.
But this will be a longer path. You know, they’re taking comment, and this isn’t something that’s gonna happen with the snap of a finger. It will be a process, but we’ll see how much pushback they get on Capitol Hill. And to your point, is it more like bring this part of USDA to my state? Or is it like, no, we think this is a bad idea and we’re worried that it will disrupt services? We’ll see.
Theodore: All right. I think, yes, we will see. And we’ll also see if there’s a new president in however many years, if we ever have another president, in the United States, or if this will be Trump forever, whether this just gets undone.
Helena: Yeah.
Theodore: And what the outcomes of that are. Because there’s a belief among people who don’t agree with the Trump administration, “Oh, well, if we regain control of the government, we could just undo it.” But I don’t think that’s really all that easy to do and the damage is done anyway.
Helena: I think when you shed employees it’s really hard to undo because it’s not just the federal hiring process that is super slow. It takes a really long time to get people in. But I also think the thing that’s the most damaging for getting talent into the federal government is all of this uncertainty.
The riffing, the reorgs, the dozing, the, all of that creates this. A lot of people who work in the federal government kind of make this trade, right? They might make less money than they could in the private sector, but they have other benefits. Like there’s more job stability, there’s more predictability in terms of your career path and your benefits and like, you’ve made that trade.
Well, if you don’t have predictability, and you don’t have job security and all that, then what’s the trade you’re making to make a lower salary in the federal government? So, I think that’s where you’re gonna have issues. And that’s just not USDA, that’s all across the board. Like it’s just a less desirable place to work.
It’s chaotic, and in some cases they’re being quite adversarial to the employees. So that is the bigger thing I think.
Theodore: I agree with that completely. So with that in hand, and now that we have found alignment between each other, why don’t we move on to our next segment, which is called Forks and Knives.And that’s basically the main meal that’s happening in the United States right now in food politics, the status quo. And I think what we should talk about, because I think this is a very important question for all of our episodes, and it’s one that I can never really answer: Why is MAHA, Make America Healthy Again, so popular?
Helena: Yeah.
Theodore: Let’s start there, Helena.
Helena: I’ve been thinking about this so much. I spent the last couple weeks working on my first guest essay for the New York Times, which people can go read. I think if you just look up Kennedy—
Theodore: Let’s just pause there for a second.
Helena: Yeah. Well, we’ll do it in the notes.*
Theodore: Yeah. But that was a really good article to read. You should all read it and it was great.
Helena: Thank you. Yeah, but go read it. I think we can put it in the show notes as complimentary reading for this. But that’s right. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. What I was looking at is this realignment, right? You hear Republicans — I covered the Let’s Move era. They were all like, “Why is Michelle Obama talking about obesity? This is a nanny state.” “Why are we talking about improving food or nutrition?” or like, “Why are we gonna do school meals?” They hated it. They fought it every turn. And I remember that because I covered it, right? And so now I’m watching all these Republicans going, “Oh my gosh!” There’s been a total realignment. They’re all into wellness. And like, big food is bad and we need to do something. And so I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I’ve been going through all the polling and it’s astonishing how popular a lot of this stuff is. Not just on the right, but on the left. The data is showing there’s kind of this converging happening and it kind of explains what we’re seeing. It feels kind of disorienting when you’ve been in food and ag for a while. There’s all these new actors, there’s all these new angles. I mean, you’re seeing it.
Theodore: Well, let’s pause here for a second. All right. So let’s talk about polls and what we mean by polls. So my question for you is, when you say that these things are popular when they’re polling, do you mean that the potential for increased outcomes for better nutrition in the United States is popular among both Democrats and Republicans? That’s one. Or, do you mean that MAHA itself as a movement as it is currently constituted, and its tone and tenor, do you think that that is popular among Democrats and Republicans?
Helena: Yeah. Okay, so good question and good distinction. Make America Healthy Again – the name is not really that popular. It’s moderately popular. The ideas within it,, and to be clear, we’re talking about the food ideas. The vaccine stuff is unpopular and deeply polarizing in the polling. Like it’s not even all that popular with Republicans.
But if you look at the food stuff, the ag stuff, it’s polling really, really well. So the actual ideas within MAHA and these are some of the findings that I found most astonishing — there was a poll last fall that really dug into some of the ideas. One of the most, or the most popular idea that they found was mandatory nutrition education in federally funded medical schools.
So this idea that doctors don’t learn about nutrition, we should mandate that they do if they get federal funding. And this is wildly popular, 84% of Democrats and 83% of Republicans. There aren’t that many issues where, you know…
Theodore: Well, let’s pause right there for a second. Put the Republicans aside. I mean, you talked about their reaction to Michelle Obama’s work during the Obama era, and Republicans opposed it reflexively. But the question for me is, why is this so popular right now among Democrats and Republicans? It’s an obviously good idea. It reflects where people are. The real question is why were Democrats unable to do anything about this? What prevented them from acting on common sense advances for nutrition?
Helena: I have theories about this. Well, to be fair, Biden did hold a White House conference on food and nutrition, and they did lay out the first ever national strategy on all these issues. So it’s not like they didn’t do things, but it was not a top political priority. It was not something they were willing to extend political capital on. And I mean, I’ll speak to, particularly during the Obama era, Democrats have always been so afraid of being anti-business or being, you know, that nanny state argument that was made against, or really accusation that was thrown at first Lady Michelle Obama really hurt them.
Like it was, it was scary and politically hurtful. It was biting, cutting, and it stung, right? It was really hard and I think that Democrats are very anxious about not going too far, you know? Or not being anti-growth, right?
They wanna be pro-growth and they also wanna do these things. And so I think part of that is being afraid. And then also, I frankly don’t think they have the political support and they definitely didn’t have the political support on the right. Now they do. Like, this is super bipartisan when you look at all this, and so I don’t know what they’re gonna do with it.
Theodore: Well, that’s a separate question. We’ll get to that, but let’s talk about that quote unquote bipartisanship. When you start digging into some of these surveys, again, moving away from the actual support for better nutrition in this country, and coming back to the MAHA part of it, right? When you look at the MAHA polling, the reactions that you see there is that largely this is a partisan ideological movement. The people who support it on the right support it because they’re on the right and because it is a movement of the right.
Helena: Yeah.
Theodore: And it seems to me that there’s far more people like that than there are even flip-floppers, like RFK Jr. who was a Democrat and is now a Republican. Or, and I know you mentioned this in your New York Times article, Food Babe, whose actual name escapes me. What’s her name?
Helena: Vani Hari. Yep.
Theodore: Vani Hari. How she used to be an Obama supporter and she jumped over to the Trump side of the street, right? Now, what are Democrats gonna do about that? They are not willing to be as ruthless about these issues as their counterparts on the right seem to be, so they end up joining the right where there is no joining of the left or the center, right? It only flows to the right. What are they going to do about this? How are they going to be able to benefit from what could be happening?
Helena: Well, I think that, you know, the Democrats have been watching all this unfold and they’re like, “Well, do we wanna work with RFK?” “Do we really not like him? We don’t like the vaccine stances.” And you’re seeing some of them start to get back in the game. Rosa DeLaurois working on food additive legislation. You saw Cory Booker who’s really trying to push back against — there’s a big fight right now over pesticide liability in Congress and MAHA’s very upset with Republicans right now over it.
And Cory Booker, a Dem in the Senate, is the one representing the MAHA side. So there is some of that happening. I think the MAHA-identified folks, if you look at the issues and not the name, I think it’s a lot more bipartisan and nonpartisan. I think you have a lot of low-information parents in there who are just like, “Yeah, I mean, I don’t really like politics, but I don’t like food dyes.” I think there’s actually a lot of those people who are not even super political, but they’re persuadable into either camp. And I think right now you’re seeing some of the more progressive food activists saying, we should be leaning in, we should take these people back. These are “gettable” voters. These are basically like a swing. This is like a swing block. And if Democrats were to lean in, you know, could they get these folks on their side? So I think that’s a really interesting political question. It’s a little bit early.
Theodore: But I also think you can’t really get away from the name, right? There was a survey that you sent me that was published by FarmDoc Daily, and in its conclusion they say, most interesting in an area for further analysis is that both awareness, so you have to have heard of it.
Helena: Yeah.
Theodore: And perceptions of MAHA we’re related to political ideology. I just think that yet again, the Trump administration has managed to put their rivals and foes in a bind.
Helena: Mm-hmm.
Theodore: Right? They have staked out a position that Democrats either are forced to accept or reject at their own peril ’cause they’re rejecting something that’s popular.
Helena: Mm-hmm.
Theodore: It’s a very, very poor spot to be.
Helena: Did you also notice that one of the things they found is one of the top predictors of being a MAHA supporter was, if you’d gone to a farmer’s market? I think I had that right.
Theodore: Yeah, but not if you own a farm.
Helena: Not if you own a farm, to be clear.
Theodore: Yeah. We talked about this on an earlier podcast episode. The people who were most supportive of it tended to be people who had the least to actually do with the farming or food system.’Cause it also talked about people who worked in restaurants.
Helena: Well it’s interesting though, ’cause if you go down the list of the most popular ideas within MAHA, one of them is actually increasing restrictions on the use of pesticides in agriculture. And that’s a 71% support Democrats, 66% Republicans. And what’s interesting is the polling that they’ve looked at. Republicans have swung the most in favor of regulation like 20 points swing in terms of whether or not you think agriculture and food need more regulation, which is just wild because we’re in a deregulatory administration. So like, there’s just so much contradiction.
And we’ve talked about this. There’s so much contradiction in that, like, what did voters hear when they heard these ideas in this platform and what they support? And then what are we gonna actually get? I think that the huge question right now is, what are they gonna do with this support? And also, there’s a lot of people who think that RFK played a major role in Trump winning in November, and so this isn’t like some minor, you know, political alliance here. So it’s gonna be really interesting to see what happens.
Theodore: Yes, eventually the PFAS will have to hit the road. I wanna also just talk about what we talked about — the popularity of some of these things. You sent this my way as well, it was some Ipsos data, and it said that six out of 10 people in this particular survey said that they limit eating processed foods with 44% saying they prioritize organic foods or those that minimize chemicals and pesticides. Now, if you’re sitting in my chair, that word, “say,” is doing a lot of work, right? I mean, what does that actually mean? What are people talking about when they say that they’re looking to reject these products? Are they waiting for the food companies to reject it for them? Do they want the government to come in and force them to stop using it, or is this just, I don’t know, is this just all part of a national imagination that we’re not tapping into?
Helena: Well, you know, first of all, I do think people are dishonest about what they eat. Like we know that.
Theodore: You think?
Helena: We know that. But I think what that reflects is that people are starting to get the message that there is a lot of research that ultra processed food consumption, higher consumption of ultra-processed foods is associated with a lot of poor health outcomes. Like there’s been so many headlines about that particularly in the last two years. Like the book Ultra Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken. Tons of coverage of that. There’s been so much focus and so I think the message is getting out. And actually there was a New York Times piece a couple of days ago really digging into how the big food companies are struggling. Like, the demand is going down, and it’s like, how much of it is MAHA and this wellness train and all this ultra processed food negative vibes, right? And how much of it is GLP-1s, which are also happening at the same time? They’re under a lot of pressure. And so there is some real shift happening, but it’s hard to suss out like what is what, right? Like how much of it is what people are seeing on Instagram about ultra-processed foods, maybe from RFK, maybe from others?
We have an FDA going, “This stuff’s bad for you.” So, yeah, you know, that does, I think, eventually seep into the national consciousness.
Theodore: So I agree. But I also think what’s most difficult there in terms of creating actual change, is when you look at this data about who tries to avoid ultra-processed foods and things like that, it tracks with age. And the groups that are the least likely to avoid ultra-processed food are young people, right? And that suggests to me that, well, I mean that suggests a whole lot of things. But one of the things that it suggests is that it will not be easy to rely on the American consumer to actually do something about these problems. And you’re probably gonna need the government, which leads us right back at square one, because that’s kind of impossible. Unless you have anything else to add, I think we should move on to our final section: The Good Vibes. The Good Vibes, I think, is just a little something in the news that we find that we can take a little bit of hope out of. And for this one, I think this was great, I really enjoyed this one. It is the question of, and the New York Times attempts to answer this — is soda with sugarcane better for you than soda with high fructose corn syrup? And this is the key: Does it taste better? What do you think?
Helena: Well, people say that it tastes better. I have not done a side-by-side taste comparison, but I think I would’ve also said that I could taste the difference, but I don’t know if that’s true. I do wanna, before we get to this though, can we point out that we were very correct in predicting that this probably wasn’t happening until Trump suggested that.
Theodore: You mean high fructose corn syrup going the way of the dodo bird?
Helena: Yeah. They are not wholesale switching. They’re adding more options, right? Which is exactly what we thought was gonna happen. I just wanna point out that that’s what is happening now.
Theodore: This fits with my basic belief about journalism, which is that if something is impossible, it’s very unlikely that it will actually come to be. So I don’t know if we need to pat ourselves too much on the back.
Helena: I mean, but it was literally those were the headlines. Like all the press just said this was gonna happen. It’s a good reminder that you should, you know, take a beat and be like, is this really happening? Didn’t they have the wine critic taste it?
Theodore: Let’s talk about what the New York Times did.
Helena: Yes.
Theodore: The New York Times did a comparison tasting and they brought in Eric Asimov, who is the wine critic in the New York Times, and they got four different things that you could try. One was Coca-Cola Classic, which is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. The other is so-called, I guess, Mexican Coke. Because it’s not only made in Mexico and not only for sale in Mexico, it is imported in, and sweetened with corn cane sugar. Pepsi, sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, the regular stuff.
And then Pepsi Cola made with quote unquote real sugar, which could include both beet sugar and cane sugar. And they had ’em, I love this by the way, as part of the taste test, Eric Asimov, they used potato chips as a palate cleanser.
Helena: It sounded fun.
Theodore: Uh, it did sound fun. I mean, so before we talk about the outcomes of this, I want us to walk a little bit through the realities of the difference between high fructose corn syrup and sugar from a nutritional perspective. Do you, in your understanding of it, believe that a soda without high fructose corn syrup is in fact any better for you?
Helena: No, I think the experts are pretty clear on that. It’s not better for you. It’s not metabolically better. It’s the same amount of sugar going into your body. It’s a high sugar product without any fiber, anything else. And so everyone agrees there’s just no nutrition gain here. The label will look different and people might feel better about consuming it.
Theodore: Let’s pause there before we get angry commenters, which would be great. If ever anybody wants to be angry with us, they should tell us. All right. But, we did talk a little bit about this in our last episode, and there is some research that shows that as far as the impact of high fructose corn syrup on your gut biome, it leads to more inflammation. And this is a preoccupation of the MAHA movement as well — the impact of inflammation. It doesn’t seem to be much of a difference, but there is a little unsettled science here, right? That they don’t know exactly how bad high fructose corn syrup can be for you in that respect.
Helena: I think there’s a lot I don’t know about that particular study, but there is still a lot we don’t know about nutrition and it would not surprise me if we hadn’t really studied that question very much because most nutrition experts would not view that as something that’s super important to study because the bigger picture is that they don’t want people consuming as many sugar sweetened beverages, period. And so that’s the focus and it’s like you don’t wanna lose the forest or the trees like it is a sugar-sweetened beverage. I mean, a can of Coke has like 35 grams of sugar in it with nothing else. I mean, that is a lot of sugar for your body to handle all at once, like just full stop. So I just think the nutrition part of it is really not the issue here. It’s the vibes and it’s like whether or not people feel better about consuming it.And I will say I’m in Bellingham, Washington right now, which is a very, hippie kind of, it’s foodie. It’s a foodie place. Okay? And I have seen out and about, I’ve noticed three different people drinking the glass bottle, like Mexican Coke, because it’s like a thing to get with your meal. You know? I think it’s kind of hip now.
Theodore: It also tastes better in the glass bottle. I like it better.
Helena: It does, it’s good.
Theodore: I dunno if I’ll pay for it all the time.
Helena: It’s significantly more expensive.
Theodore: Yeah.
Helena: Yeah. It’s kind of a thing. And so, people have brought this up — I think there is some concern that there will be kind of a health halo around it, right? That like, “Oh, it’s got sugar, it’s better for me.” And folks are also worried about that with the food dyes and stuff
Theodore: Let’s take that back to the New York Times article and let’s talk about the results of their taste test. And before we say what people preferred or they didn’t prefer, one of the things that really amused me, mostly ’cause it’s just so darn true, was no matter how you drank it, it was better with ice.
Helena: Mm-hmm.
Theodore: Right?
Helena: Oh yeah.
Theodore: All the test tasting was better with ice, way better. And having just come from a family vacation in Europe where they never put any ice in my soda, I should just say, God bless America. We got the ice for our soda. At least we got that here in this country. Uh, so it seemed to me, if I were reading this study correctly, and I’m curious what you think about this, is that we’ve already said the nutrition impact is very limited, if any. And in fact, from a flavor perspective, there was at least among the other people at the Times, there was no distinction.
Helena: Mm-hmm.
Theodore: I dunno if you noticed this, what was really the only distinction was that in a blind taste test, people still preferred Pepsi over Coke.
Helena: Yeah. That was wild to me that it’s like so much of it’s the nostalgia and the branding and the the attachment we have to Coca-Cola that must drive people at Pepsi crazy. That Pepsi does better in blind taste tests, but people still prefer Coke. That’s what my takeaway was, and I was like, this is fascinating. Right? And it makes you remember that food is about so much more than just what it is. Right?
Theodore: I also think if there’s a, and I’m forcing this a little bit here, but I mean, if there is a bigger takeaway is that it is not easy to change people’s minds about the things that they buy and eat.
Helena: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They’ve got Pepsi, what was it? Pepsi, right? With corn syrup was the best, the winner.
Theodore: I think it was, uh, lemme look at my notes here. I’m pretty sure it was, I think you may be right.
Helena: And, and so you’re like, well, who would’ve thought?
Theodore: Who would’ve thunk it, right? Uh, I like Pepsi.
I like Coke, Dr. Pepper.
Helena: And that is according to the expert wine taster. I don’t know. Wine critic. Is he the wine critic?
Theodore: He is. I think he is. His title is Senior Wine Critic or Chief Wine Critic.
Helena: Oh. They have more than one wine critic?
Theodore: I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I thought the Times stopped doing wine criticism. I used to remember, this was one of my peeves as a, you know, many years ago reading the Times was they would review wines in the Times and I would say, “Oh, that sounds really good.” And then you could never find it anywhere.
Helena: Or you’d look at it and it’d be too expensive or something.
Theodore: Yeah, well that, that’s for sure. So I think we should leave it on that, that the New York Times has a wine critic, and that Pepsi is better, except if you are reading the label, in which case people still prefer Coke.
Helena: Mm-hmm.
Theodore: And whatever that means. I’m not so sure. Uh, Helena, before we go, I think we should do what we always do, which is you should tell everyone how they can find Food Fix, which is your amazing newsletter.
Helena: Yeah. If you’re interested in these issues, you can go to foodfix.co. Drop your email there. It’s a Friday newsletter. It’s free. Get on the list, make sure you pay for it.
Theodore: Don’t just do the free version.
Helena: There’s another version that’s paid, but you know, start with the free versions. I think you’ll love it.
Theodore: Yeah. All right. Well, Helena, as always, it’s been a pleasure and I will see you in a couple of weeks.
Helena: All right, sounds good.
Theodore: Forked is a production of the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Our executive producers are me, Theodore Ross, and Tom Laskawy. Our sound engineer is Lauryn Newson, Katie Gardner is the producer and video producer for Forked. Our hosts are Helena Bottemiller Evich and again, me, Theodore Ross. To find out more about FERN or to donate to support our independent nonprofit reporting, go to www.thefern.org.
* https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/opinion/ultra-processed-food-rfk-health.html