Food Bytes: June 2025 Edition

FOOD BYTES IS A (ALMOST) MONTHLY BLOG POST OF “NIBBLES” ON ALL THINGS CLIMATE, FOOD, NUTRITION SCIENCE, POLICY, AND CULTURE.

I just returned from an unforgettable trip to Lao PDR, with two stopovers in Bangkok, Thailand. Laos is a country of striking contrasts—on one hand, it moves with an unhurried, almost meditative rhythm; on the other, it carries the weight of a complicated past, still navigating the long shadows cast by war, particularly the enduring legacy of unexploded ordnance.

By Jess Fanzo, Luang Prabang

As many of you are aware, I’m currently working on a book that explores how the counterculture movements of the long 1960s have shaped today’s food systems. Inevitably, that journey includes grappling with the legacy of the Vietnam War, and as an American, traveling through this region stirs deep reflection. It's impossible not to think about the imprint left behind by U.S. military action and the resilience of communities who’ve had to rebuild in its aftermath.

Yet what struck me most was how far this part of the world has come. There’s a quiet strength in Laos, a gentle pride in its culture, and a determination to move forward without forgetting the past. It’s a powerful reminder of the world’s ebbs and flows, and how, even in the face of immense hardship, there’s the possibility of healing. “This too shall pass” kept echoing in my mind—not as a dismissal of pain, but as a recognition of time’s capacity to soften and transform.

Onward to this month’s Food Bytes.

IFPRI put out a bible in this year’s Food Policy Report. Where the rubber meets the road is Section 5, on effective change and the factors that determine how policy change occurs. One of our new papers led by Stephanie Walton (who is doing amazing work at Oxford) suggests that addressing asset stranding proactively, rather than trying to prevent it, could be a powerful lever for change.

Some great data exercises are out that provide useful nuance in how our food systems are performing. First up is the Systems Change Lab, which assessed progress for 32 outcome indicators in the food system. To help spur transformational change, we also highlight 58 critical enablers and barriers. Results of their analysis? NOT GOOD. The second is by the Better Planet Laboratory, which identifies food flows through nearly every major port, road, rail, and shipping lane worldwide and traces goods to where they are ultimately consumed. It’s called the Food Twin Map.

There are also some great people producing worthy pieces to read and follow. First, the great Bill McKibben has a Substack. I encourage you to read one of his latest entries, “So many moving pieces.” Nicholas Kristof is fighting the good fight and producing many excellent pieces on how the US government’s actions are harming global health and nutrition. Check out this, this, and this. Other institutions are getting in on the action. Bloomberg News has launched a new food column, titled "The Business of Food." The UNDP appears to be making a play in the food systems sector, including the launch of a new Conscious Food Systems Alliance. Fascinating!

Some highlights from journalists writing about food:

  • An interesting take on RFK Jr’s Make America Great Again policy: Grocery Update Volume 2, #4: MAHA Or Misdirection. Grocery Nerd argues that the “MAHA” framework may serve more as political window dressing than actual change.

  • DeSmog reported that food giants Nestlé, JBS, PepsiCo, Mars, and Danone are overstating their climate commitments—leaning heavily on unproven carbon removal schemes, neglecting methane reductions, and relying on weak, loophole‑filled deforestation pledges—according to a new report from the NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch. Gee, what a shocker…

  • In this article by Grist, the blending of at least 30% vegetables or plant proteins into meat products—known as “balanced proteins”—can deliver taste and price similar to conventional meat, while significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

  • This fascinating article in The New Yorker, entitled “Schmear campaign: How a Hazelnut Spread Became a Sticking Point in Franco-Algerian Relations,” is about how the European Union has banned Nutella competitor El Mordjene, a move some see as politically and racially motivated.

  • In the New York Times, they have a new series, “What is History.” They kicked off the series with two articles on food: One by Jacques Pepin on culinary pursuits and the other by Carey Fowler on the biodiversity of our food supply.

  • I fully admit to being a fan of Elizabeth Kolbert, and she delivers with her latest article: "Do We Need Another Green Revolution?" Worth your time to read along with all of her work.

  • Michael Grumwald has a new book out, and he wrote a piece, A Food Reckoning Is Coming, as part of his book tour. Another worthwhile and perhaps divisive read.

Some highlights from the science literature

  • This study validates the Healthy Diet Basket—a least-cost dietary model based on food-based dietary guidelines—as a globally consistent benchmark, finding that it delivers adequate macronutrients and micronutrients at about US $3.68/day.

  • Whereas this study argues that dietary species richness (DSR)—a measure of the number of different edible species in a diet—is the most effective global marker for capturing food biodiversity. They also show it correlates strongly with lower mortality in Europe compared to other diversity indices, and tracks micronutrient adequacy in low- and middle-income countries.

  • Speaking of diets, this study uses a linear programming model of over 2,500 U.S. foods to show that individually tailored vegan, vegetarian, and flexitarian diets (with ≤255 g of pork and poultry per week) can meet nutritional needs, align with the Paris Agreement's 1.5 °C climate target, yield up to ~700 healthy-life minutes per week, and reduce climate impacts sevenfold.

  • Fortification remains essential and is considered a cost-effective way to fill nutrient gaps. Check out this modeling paper.

  • On processing…This NEJM perspective argues that mounting evidence linking ultraprocessed food consumption to increased calorie intake, obesity, and chronic disease necessitates regulatory policies—such as front‑of‑package labeling, marketing restrictions, and excise taxes—to curb their public health impact. Not sure there’s anything new here.

  • Numerous modeling papers are being published on the impacts of climate change on food production. This paper models six usual suspect staple crops — maize, soy, rice, wheat, cassava and sorghum — and finds that for every 1 °C increase in temperature, food production will decline from current levels by 120 calories per person per day, but that income growth and adaptation strategies could alleviate 23% of global losses by 2050 and 34% by 2100. Gulp.

  • Should we consider alternatives like insects? According to this article, that may not be the case. The title alone is click-worthy: Beyond the buzz: insect-based foods are unlikely to significantly reduce meat consumption.

  • Maybe it’s time to start building climate-resilient systems - not just food, but across all systems. Check out our new policy paper, which argues in this manner.

For those interested in broader development issues, the Sustainable Development Report 2025 is now available. Another report that feels more like a book on how the world is progressing on those pesky goals that would make the world a better place and leave no one behind. Related to that, we have a new paper on how pastoralists are coping with resource constraints, conflict, and climate extremes. We initiated this work a decade ago in Isiolo County, Kenya, utilizing photo elicitation and semi-structured interviews with Borana and Turkana pastoralists to gain a deeper understanding of the constraints hindering their ability to practice pastoralism and to identify opportunities for better supporting pastoralist communities with climate-resilient strategies. And last but not least, a conversation about The Myth of the Poverty Trap.

And do check out our new Food for Humanity podcast! This limited series is all about alt-proteins.

That’s all, folks. Have a wonderful, safe, and delicious summer!

What We Lost in 90 Days

We keep hearing words like “chaotic,” “unprecedented,” and “unconstitutional.” All accurate. Many of us anticipated that the new U.S. administration would threaten liberties, freedoms, and equity—but few could have predicted just how rapidly and recklessly core institutions would be dismantled.

In less than 90 days, we witnessed the gutting of the scientific enterprise and the destabilization of knowledge-based institutions—universities, NIH, NASA, NOAA—and the agencies responsible for delivering lifesaving food and medicine globally. The scale and speed of this erosion is staggering.

It is cruel. It is shortsighted. And it is a profound national failure. Without science, data, and evidence, we become untethered—adrift in a sea of absurdity.

Amid this darkness, I’ve found some glimmers of hope in the powerful journalism and commentary calling out this injustice. Below, I’ve highlighted a few pieces worth your time. I urge you to read them.

In the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Lindsey Locks and colleagues describe the abrupt withdrawal of the U.S. from the World Health Organization and the dismantling of USAID as colossal, unforced policy failures with immediate humanitarian consequences. These decisions not only threaten the world’s poorest populations but also undermine global health, nutrition science, and the United States' diplomatic standing. The fallout spans four critical domains:

  1. Lives Lost: Humanitarian, health, and nutrition programs are being disrupted, with fatal consequences.

  2. Livelihoods Destroyed: Both in the U.S. and globally, aid-related jobs and economies are collapsing.

  3. Expertise and Infrastructure Undone: Vital institutions, data systems, and research efforts tackling food insecurity and malnutrition are being eroded.

  4. Global Presence Withdrawn: U.S. programs promoting health, education, peace, and solidarity in hundreds of countries are vanishing—leaving a dangerous diplomatic and humanitarian void.

Osendarp et al 2025 Nature

Osendarp and colleagues expand on this in Nature, warning that the dismantling of USAID and announced cuts by other major donors over the next 3–5 years risk reversing decades of progress in malnutrition reduction. The numbers are devastating: a $290 million cut to programs for severe acute malnutrition would mean 2.3 million children lose access to treatment—resulting in an estimated 369,000 preventable child deaths annually.

The domestic scientific community is also suffering. In Science, John Travis reports on the unclear but growing toll among U.S. scientists. A leaked NIH memo revealed that the Department of Health and Human Services—which houses the NIH, CDC, and FDA—had planned to cut approximately 5,200 employees, though some were spared at the last minute.

In a sobering Science editorial titled “The New Reality for American Academia,” H. Holden Thorp urges U.S. universities to reckon with public trust and relevance. It's a worthy call, but difficult to embrace calmly when core institutions are crumbling. I was one of the 1,900 members of the National Academy of Sciences who signed a letter arguing:

“We hold diverse political beliefs, but we are united as researchers in wanting to protect independent scientific inquiry. We are sending this SOS to sound a clear warning: the nation’s scientific enterprise is being decimated.”

In it, we are concerned (this article about who we are) with the blows to funding, collaboration, and building a pipeline. Many of us trained here in the U.S in some of the great research institutions are prepared to jump ship. A recent Nature poll found that 75% of 1,600 scientists surveyed would consider leaving the U.S. for jobs abroad.

In The New England Journal of Medicine, Chris Duggan and Zulfi Bhutta write under the pointed title: “‘Putting America First’—Undermining Health for Populations at Home and Abroad.” They offer a call to action for scientists:

  1. Acknowledge the limitations of U.S. foreign assistance programs.

  2. Advocate for continued U.S. engagement with global institutions like WHO.

  3. Recognize how attacks on global health research mirror broader assaults on higher education and science.

Finally, Jocalyn Clark, international editor at The BMJ, turns our attention to equity in her powerful essay “The War on Equality.” She writes:

“Equality feels like oppression to those accustomed to privilege, the adage goes. To certain petty political leaders and their supporters, it must. There is no other explanation for the current erasure of support for diversity and inclusion efforts... None apply in the authoritarian playbook. The present war on equality demands action from us all.”

This all deeply saddens me. It’s hard to fathom—let alone fully absorb—the scale of what has been lost, all in just a matter of months. The enormity of rebuilding, in whatever new forms may emerge, is likely to take decades—if it happens at all. What could be lost forever is the extraordinary scientific legacy: the knowledge, the networks, the momentum, and the spaces that once nurtured curiosity, collaboration, and discovery. We can’t keep our heads down, hoping for a miracle. We have to stand up and fight for what truly matters. For me, science is one of those things—worth defending, worth rebuilding, worth mourning.

Food Bytes: February 2025 Edition

FOOD BYTES IS A (ALMOST) MONTHLY BLOG POST OF “NIBBLES” ON ALL THINGS CLIMATE, FOOD, NUTRITION SCIENCE, POLICY, AND CULTURE.

Someone recently asked me, “How do you have so much time to read?” I don’t, but these days, I find myself reading more as a deliberate form of escapism. Amid the current state of affairs, I need to remind myself that a collective continues to believe in science, evidence, and data, and the art of generating and sharing knowledge is not lost. So thank you—scientists, educators, and data generators—for all that you do to keep our world informed. Shine on you crazy diamonds! Let’s round up what The Food Archive is reading and listening to in the here and now.

The cost of food, is at the forefront of everyone's mind, including coyotes hanging out in grocery stores in Chicago. Much speculation exists about how the U.S. administration’s tariffs will impact food. For now, let’s put that debate on pause and, again, focus on the generators of evidence. The fantastic Eat This Podcast by Jeremy Cherfas has a recent episode that discusses Bennett’s Law with economist Marc Bellemare — this notion that people eat more nutritious foods (including animal source foods) when they have more disposable income. It is a great conversation, and Marc argues that his latest paper somewhat proves the “law.”

Speaking of cheap food, did you think that McDonalds restaurants could be “pretty”? The lore of design is bringing people to McDonalds. And for those who don’t like the corporate notion of McDonalds flooding fast food to the masses, it seems you lost. Is the New York Times being paid by McDonalds for these article placements? For some deeper dives into fast food, there is always the classic Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, but I recommend two more nuanced reads — Franchise: The Golden Arches of Black America by Marcia Chatelain, who won the Pulitzer Prize and White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation by Naa Oyo A Kwate. Both are worth the time.

Analysis by Politico on the hidden costs of food systems to diets in Italy.

Fast food has changed diets, and for some cultures, diets are disappearing (I snatched up the URL in case this trend continues). An interesting article in Politico argues that the Mediterranean diet is a lie, at least in Italy. Having lived there five years, I was always pleasantly surprised that traditional regional cuisines were preserved and revered, however in the confines of how a Mediterranean diet is defined, I didn’t see many diets from the north to south classically fall within that dietary pattern. Italians consume a lot of meat and cheese. The Politico article argues that the hidden costs of the Italian food system and diet do not fare well for health outcomes. Check it out. Speaking of Italian diets, I guess pasta is not a refined or ultra-processed food. Whew. I guess I can continue to eat my spaghetti ala vongole every Friday and not die at 55… The Japanese diet, a fish-dominant diet, is changing too. According to Grist, veganism is increasing.

Some lovely and alarming science is being generated about how our agricultural system will feed the world. According to colleagues at Tufts University (hey Will!), while food supplies are, in aggregate, fulfilling calorie needs, they are not fulfilling healthy calorie needs. Food availability of fruits, veggies, legumes, nuts, and seeds (the core makeup of a healthy diet) falls short worldwide. Regionally, there are considerable disparities in the supply of animal foods. We also have issues with water. This article in Nature Comms by scientists across the world (hi Kyle!) examined blue water, which is surface and groundwater often used for growing crops. They looked over time from 1980 to 2015 in China, India, and the US. They found that demand has risen significantly for blue water by 60%, 71%, and 27%, respectively, for a handful of crops, largely alfalfa, maize, rice, and wheat, and this rise in demand has created issues of scarcity and stress. Good times! According to Carbon Brief, we shouldn’t just be worried about water either. Extreme weather is destroying crops around the world. Check out their map and analysis (see below). According to colleagues at Purdue University (hi Tom!), all hope should not be lost. They examined the impacts of improved crop varieties since the early 1960s and argued that these crop improvements resulted in lower land use change, greenhouse gas emissions, and cropland expansion. Let the debates begin! And what is a summary of feeding the world and improving crop varieties without AI. A new outfit, Heritable Agriculture (sounds so down homey!…), wants to use AI to predict genetic changes to improve crop yield, taste, nutritional value etc, etc. No need for future Borlaugs of the world!

Map developed by Carbon Brief on extreme weather events impacting crops in 2023-2024

Food systems remain political monoliths, and many newly published papers focus on how to get over political inertia. Two new papers by Costanza Conti unpack top-down and bottom-up approaches to transforming food systems and how to better integrate or consider justice in strategizing, implementing, and monitoring food system transformations. A paper by Patrick Caron argues in a new Nature Food commentary that disagreements stymy action on food system transformation. He and several others have begun the Montpellier Process, which “promotes safe spaces for risk-taking, where citizens, decision-makers, economic players, and academics can compare their perspectives, share knowledge, address controversies, learn from one another, and explore potential solutions.”

Speaking of politics, a timely paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, including Editor-in-Chief Chris Duggan, argues that dismantling USAID and the withdrawal from the WHO by the current U.S. administration is catastrophic for global nutrition and health. In their conclusion, they wrote:

“The events of 2025 have dealt a catastrophic shock to international nutrition research, programs, and cooperation. Nevertheless, there are important questions about the status quo. The present crisis has drawn into sharp relief the global health and nutrition communities’ reliance on US funding. In addition, there have been growing calls for more equitable systems of scientific collaboration and programmatic decision-making.”

Here we are readers, …I believe we need to make some hard pivots based on these new realities and strategize in very different ways. Meanwhile, those of us in research and academia will keep the lights on, diligently documenting what we see in the world, why the world is the way it is, and what we can do about it, at least, scientifically speaking.

See ya’ll in March!

Food Bytes: July 1 - July 7

Food Bytes is a weekly blog post of “nibbles” of information on all things food and nutrition science, policy and culture.

Ever wonder why the nutrition community doesn’t play nice with each other? I do. Phil Baker at Deakin University just published an interesting, but heady, paper trying to understand nutrition action networks and what it would take to make them more effective in garnering political commitment towards ending malnutrition. Just take a look at the figure below looking at the context in which nutrition sits. Talk about complex! They argue for four things to improve political commitment to nutrition:

Complex contexts for the nutrition world

  1. Coordinating bodies that are better at advocating resources can of course, get more money and strengthen the networks in which they work.

  2. Coordinating and governance bodies need to be more inclusive and transparent in their decision making.

  3. Civil society should work to influence decision makers. Helps when transparency is in place.

  4. Finances matter and create powerful incentives for us to play in the sandbox together.

I may have gotten all this wrong, but like I said, the paper is intense, but super important to better understand why nutrition hasn’t seen massive progress like other sectors. I really do think that the grand nutrition architecture has some serious issues around coordination, cooperation, and reality checks it needs to come to grips with. Not Phil’s words, but mine…For another blog post!

Of course, the nutrition community doesn’t just struggle with political commitment. It also struggles with delivering key interventions to those populations most in need. A recent study by Stuart Gillespie and colleagues looked at 24 different nutrition interventions to see if their coverage is measured and tracked in major health surveys done at the national level. These interventions are things like vitamin A and iron supplementation, growth monitoring, and infant feeding counseling. Basically the answer is no. The coverage of these interventions are not collected and not in any standard way across countries. The paper presented a few case studies including India. The figure on the right shows the scatter of data collection of key nutrition actions (counseling, growth monitoring and food supplements) typically not included in the core national health surveys. The bars show the national coverage of data and the dots are the states of India. Another paper published in PLoS medicine looked not only at whether or not a health intervention coverage was captured in surveys, but looked at need, use, and quality of those interventions. It would be great to see these authors do a follow up looking at those three measures to assess effective coverage of nutrition indicators.

And while we are ripping on the functionality of nutritionists and their work, let’s discuss the indecisiveness of the science they dabble in. The Atlantic published a piece on why nutritional sciences is so confusing for consumers. There have been a lot of articles on this recently, and I think it started with Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food a decade ago. The Atlantic argue that doing the science is very hard - figuring out what people eat and the consequences of those eating patterns - is not so straight forward and as the article highlighted “inexact.” But the evidence over decades has accumulated and most nutritionists agree largely on what is considered a healthy diet and the healthful habits that people should take on. But that is sort of boring isn’t it. The article also highlights the emerging role of the microbiome. But more on that later.

There have been a few recent papers looking at the impact of interventions to improve food environments. One was a systematic review and meta-analysis on sugar‐sweetened beverage - SSB - taxes and their impact on beverage purchases and dietary intake. A suite of different taxes were examined mainly in Europe and US cities. What the researchers found was that a 10% SSB tax was associated with an average decline in beverage purchases and dietary intake of 10% in 6 jurisdictions. This tax was associated with a 2% increase in total untaxed beverage consumption (e.g. water) but this was not significant. Another study looked at the anticipated impacts of implementing a 2016 Chilean Law of Food Labeling and Advertising mandating front‐of‐package (FOP) warning label for products high in sodium, total sugars, saturated fats, and/or total energy. Researchers photographed packaged food and beverage products from six different supermarkets in Santiago, Chile before the law went into effect. They found that basically very little reformulation by industry occurred before the law went into action and <2% of products would have avoided at least one warning label with reformulation. A similar study looked at the food supply ahead of the law implementation and found similar issues.

While we are on the topic of FOPs, a really interesting study looked at how realistic would it be to mandate these types of labels in the U.S. The study found that: “Certain interpretive FOP labels which provide factual information with colors or designs to assist consumers interpret the information could similarly withstand First Amendment scrutiny, but questions remain regarding whether certain colors or shapes would qualify as controversial and not constitutional. Labels that provide no nutrient information and only an image or icon to characterize the entire product would not likely withstand First Amendment scrutiny.” Wow. Interesting. Gotta love the ol’ US of A’s constitution.

The U.S. is not always the asshole in the room. Well, maybe we are. Let’s talk USAID. For those of you who are not familiar with them, they are the United States Agency for International Development and self describe as “the world's premier international development agency and a catalytic actor driving development results.” Okay…they are also the agency driving around in white trucks all over Africa and Asia with the cringe-worthy signage “From the American People.” Awkward. USAID has done some not so good things in international development but it has done some good things too, dammit. They have been committed to nutrition. The Official Development Assistance (ODA) numbers that are reported in the Global Nutrition Report each year demonstrate their financial commitment. They have supported many programs at a significant scale in low- and middle-income countries. Some impactful, some, not so much. I am really screwing myself over here to ensure I never get USAID money aren’t I. Anyways, they just published the history of USAID in nutrition. It is a nice story. Check it out.

Speaking of food environments and obesity, with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, I did a one-minute video on why is obesity such an issue globally and the importance of food systems in solving, not just contributing to the issue. If your attention span lasts the whole one minute, you can find out my favorite food. It involves a food rich in zinc!

It’s not just food systems that need to improve if we want to make a dent in the obesity pandemic, it is what is inside our bodies as well. The microbiome is the next frontier for science and its role and relationship with obesity is a complex Game of Thrones TV series - it is going to take some time to dig into the history, to understand the future and who really rules us. Some researchers argue that our microbiota is associated with the propensity of being overweight. Others argue that diet is a big driver of the biome composition and species richness, maybe more so than the biological state of nutritional status - i.e. overweight and underweight. But unraveling this game requires us to be brave, yonder north of the wall, and live in peace with the Wildlings. And John Snow. Rrrrrrr.

And as always, I throw in something just to scare the hell out of any of you who are still living in la la land thinking the world is just bliss. Check out this paper. The title reads: "Global warming has increased global economic inequality.” Boom. Do I need to say more? Now you can go back to your mind-numbing regular programming.

Just so you don’t think I am a vindictive person, I leave you with Google’s Stories of Yoga. For any of you yogi gurus out there, this is everything you want and need to know about yoga, its history, its practice and its inspiration. See? I can be nice. NAMASTE!