Forked, presented by REAP/SOW

The grassroots activist and MAHA leader Kelly Ryerson, known as Glyphosate Girl, has been an influential voice on agricultural issues for years. But with the Trump administration siding with Big Ag at the Supreme Court, it’s an open question where Ryerson and MAHA’s political home will be in the future. Helena and Theodore talk to Ryerson about these and other issues. Bonus: Why does the U.S. send so much ice cream to Saudi Arabia?

A signature goal of the MAHA-backed USDA was to stop SNAP recipients from using their benefits to purchase sugary foods. They were on their way to achieving that – granting waivers in nearly half the country – until a federal judge struck it down in five states. It’s a potentially precedent-setting move that may ultimately end up at the Supreme Court. Theodore and Helena get into the consequences of the federal ruling for SNAP beneficiaries, government regulators, politicians, and the MAHA movement. Also: RFK Jr. said the Trump Administration is solving the American obesity problem – but it’s probably the GLP-1s. Bonus: European soccer fans love American junk food!

It’s been 20 years since Michael Pollan published The Omnivore's Dilemma, a book that drove a huge shift in how Americans thought about food and agriculture. He joins us to discuss how his ideas have been adopted across the spectrum of American food politics. Plus: psychedelics, consciousness, and Theodore’s favorite dim sum spot in Brooklyn.

The senior senator from the Garden State has taken a leading role on the food and ag issues that we care about at Forked. We were so excited that Cory Booker was our guest on this episode. Helena and Theodore get his take on what Democrats should be doing about food policy, whatever happened to the farm bill – and whether his party can grab food issues back from Republicans before the midterms.

What happens when you get a James-Beard-Award-winning chef together with one of the best food and ag daily reporters out there for a live, in-depth conversation on what’s happening now in food in this country? You get a Forked special episode! Taped live in Washington, D.C. with Theodore Ross, this episode gets into glyphosate battles, the GLP-1 future, and how restaurants are recovering in the Twin Cities.

In this episode, Helena and Theodore look at how efforts to allow states to ban soda and candy purchases for SNAP recipients may fizzle out — for now. We also unpack what the war with Iran is doing to fertilizer and food prices, and in Colorado, workers at one of largest meatpacking plants in the country go on strike.

Helena and Theodore talk about Iron Mike Tyson’s mama-said-knock-you-out vibes on ultraprocessed foods, RFK Jr. tag-teaming with David Kessler on 60 Minutes, and why Kennedy’s remarks about doing cocaine off a toilet seat actually kinda sorta make sense maybe a little.

Helena and Theodore are joined by Vani Hari, “the Food Babe,” a New York Times Best Selling Author, wellness entrepreneur, and social media influencer. This is a wide-ranging conversation, on Roundup, the new dietary guidelines, and why Hari wishes she’d been nicer to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

In this episode, Helena and Theodore take the show on the road, talking many things MAHA and more with Jerusha Klemperer, host of the What You’re Eating podcast, from FoodPrint, a nonprofit dedicated to research and education on food production practices. This is a big-picture discussion, trying to figure out if MAHA is a political movement, whether it will last, and most importantly, is it doing any good? Helena focuses on the legislative outcomes at both the federal and state levels, while Theodore suggests that MAHA’s political leaders win even if their policies don’t become law, because their real goal is to tear down institutions.

In this episode, Helena and Theodore look at the federal government shutdown and what it means for SNAP. Also, the Truth Social post from President Trump to America’s ranchers, calling on them to lower their prices, has spurred an America First maelstrom. And finally — peanuts are back! (Or, research shows that introducing children to peanuts and other potential food allergens at a young age actually helps prevent serious food allergies.)

Veteran food policy journalist Tom Philpott, one of the hosts of the Unconfined podcast from the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University, joins Helena and Theodore in a unique collaboration. Unconfined is a monthly interview show focused on the public-health implications of industrial meat production. They talk about why RFK Jr. rejected the UN Declaration on Noncommunicable Diseases, how the MAHA movement has – and hasn’t – transformed our food system, and, finally, what they’re all reading.

The impact of the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown is starting to show up in new preliminary census data, and that poses major problems for all parts of U.S. society, but particularly in our food system: Nearly half the country’s food system workers are immigrants. In this episode, Helena and Theodore go through the numbers, and explain why the chances of immigration reform are going down. Also: FoodNet gets a haircut at CDC, and Kansas fights USDA over SNAP data.

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).