Today, Explained - Is anything safe to eat?

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

It’s been a summer of food-safety scares and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new cooking show probably isn’t going to make things better. This episode was produced by Dustin DeSoto and Kelli Wessinger, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore, and hosted by Noel King. Packaged salad mixes are displayed in the refrigerated produce section of a Target store. Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast⁠.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Americans are fed up with the high price of groceries, and President Trump recently tried to do something about it. He said he'll lower tariffs on 300,000 pounds of imported lean beef trimmings. That's the stuff that makes ground beef. Farmers are furious. They're being undercut. Non-farmers are also concerned. It's mystery beef.

We don't know where it's coming from. What kind of meat is it? Is it beef? Is it human, right? I don't want to eat horse or any wild meat. The president says the beef will be good. They're going to be sending it the highest quality meat, and it's something that we need. But he will not say where it's coming from.

And maybe if this were any other summer, we'd just have a hamburger. Unfortunately, it is the summer of explosive diarrhea, salmonella in the dog food, bacteria that causes botulism in the baby formula and ink in the tofu. Coming up on today, Explain from Box, is anything safe to eat? Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.

Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. This is Today Explained. My name is Helena Bottamiller-Evich. I'm the founder and editor-in-chief of Food Fix, which is a newsletter all about food policy. All right, so foods have been having a rough summer. A rough summer. Lettuce in particular.

But it seems as though every day I go on Al Gore's Internet and there is something else that I am not supposed to eat for a week or I'm supposed to check it, triple check it, boil it. Give me a list of what you've seen have problems this summer. There are so many foods in the news for either recalls or outbreak investigations. We have sprouts in the news for Ecolei and Seminola. Another day, another bacteria outbreak connected to food. A 15-state salmonella and E. coli outbreak. The CDC says is linked to alfalfa sprouts. We have jalapinos in the news for salmonella.

The CDC is saying those halapinos came from Mexico and were served at Chipotle, Cudoba, and other restaurants. We have eggs. in the news for Sammonella. Of course, iceberg lettuce was the star of the summer. It is the worst year for cyclospora infections on record. The Food and Drug Administration now says a sample of shredded iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms has tested positive

for psychosporiasis. Frozen blueberries have been recalled free coli. Put down that blueberry smoothie, baby. Step away from the blender. Or because you have yet another healthy food option that might actually kill you now. The FDA just came out and warned that if these frozen blueberries are consumed,

the consequences could be fatal. There has been actually a bunch of recalls for things like foreign materials that you do not want to see in food like metal and glass. A new recall for popular frozen fruit bars over concerns they could contain pieces of glass. The outshine fruit bars, those cute little popsicles, yeah, they have glass in them. I am seeing a lot of jokes on social media that everyone, is afraid to eat and they don't know what to do. I'm getting a lot of questions about it.

Is it safe to eat anything anymore? Here's what you need to toss this week. There are seven major food recalls happening right now. Have you gotten sick from any of the food recalls yet? No, we've got recalled just about everything. Right. So this brings up, I think, a really important question, which is whether there have been more food recalls and more outbreaks of various things in our food this year the past couple of months, or whether we're just better at identifying them, or whether we're just all in a panic. And this basically happens every summer,

but we don't notice it because cyclospora was just like such a big moment. What do the facts tell us about what is going on in the past couple months? So I don't think we're having more recalls right now. We've had some really big recalls. So far, the numbers do not look that out of the norm in terms of the number of, in terms of the number of recalls. That said, the number of recalls are not really a great measure of how well we're doing on food safety.

In some ways, recalls are a measure of things working because we are catching issues and pulling them off the market. And it also doesn't tell you what your own personal risk is. I think we are seeing a lot of warning signs, though. We are seeing more foodborne illness investigations. So there are more clusters of illness that are under investigation now than a typical year. It is not, you know, outlawful.

landishly higher than it has been in the past. I've been covering food safety and food policy for more than 15 years. And every year we see foodborne illness outbreaks and recalls at a pretty steady drumbeat. So it feels like we are seeing warning signs. We are noticing them more. There's reason to be concerned. But it is not like the wheels have all of the sudden fallen off. And everyone I know who works in food safety and public health is not like, they're not panicking. They're saying, you know, there's some warning signs. We stress the food safety system out. We need to reinvest in the food safety system.

We need to focus on it. We can do better. But people are not panicking, if that makes sense. It does. And you will know that, of course, some of this has become political and politicized. And you'll see online, like, the reason this is happening is that the Trump administration has done X, Y, and Z. So let me ask you broadly first. Did something in the way we handle food in the United States of America change?

in the last year or during the second Trump administration? I think multiple things are true at once here. Okay. The first is that everyone who works in food safety thinks that the cuts we've made to FDA and CDC and, you know, some forms of foodborne illness surveillance and in some cases, inspections, they think all of those cuts are a really bad idea and stress out the system we have even more than it already has been. Because there have been significant cuts to CDC and FDA, we don't have as good of a really a lens on what is happening. We had a national advisory committee, a committee that advised FDA and USDA on how to prevent microbial contamination and food.

That advisory committee was disbanded. I think it's also true that what we're seeing right now isn't that far removed from a lot of the food safety problems we've seen for many, many years. Not enough inspections, not enough government oversight compared to what consumers expect, not enough resources to state and local public health agencies. A lot of these agencies have had to cut staff. It's making it harder to track outbreaks. But the good news is we are still able to track outbreaks. I mean, I think the fact that we still saw reports of the cyclospora illnesses from many, many states,

and the way that the states and feds were working together is still a sign that pieces of the system are still working as intended. So as bad as those headlines were, we are still seeing really important parts of the food safety system still working. But that doesn't mean that anyone who works in this thinks that those cuts are a good idea. Let's drill into some of the cuts, and you can tell me what the understanding is about what they mean. So the FDA has lost about 20% of its staff. What does that mean for food safety? What is the FDA doing? Well, Even before those staff cuts, the FDA was not keeping up with food safety inspections that are mandated under what's called the Food Safety Modernization Act. And this is a big reform that Congress put through about 15 years ago.

Food Safety Modernization Act, as it is called, is very simply to bring our nations antiquated and increasingly inadequate food inspection service into the 21st century. It would increase the frequency of plan inspections. It would strengthen record-keeping. requirements in food traceability systems so you know where the food came from before it gets to the grocery store. FDA has never met the foreign inspection mandate under that law. Wow, a lot of inspections weren't done during the pandemic and now there's a backlog. And so that just sort of gives you a sense of how the inspection system we have has not really kept up with the job or the scale of the American food system and really the global food system. We have

hundreds of thousands of food facilities that can send food to the U.S. And so just the scale of what is required is really great. So when we look at the cyclospora situation in particular, that plant in Mexico that is at the center of that outbreak investigation had not been inspected in seven years, and that's not unusual. And so this is an issue that has gone on for a long time. GAO, members of Congress have all tried to sort of highlight the gaps in our food safety system. And so I think we're seeing just again further strain and further weakening of that system. Do you think it's possible that something good comes out of hot diarrhea summer, which is that we're in this moment where people are actually paying attention. And sometimes when people pay attention,

things do change. You've been covering this stuff for a long time. Is people paying attention enough to fix broken systems? You know, it's such a good question, and I think it's really good that consumers are paying attention. I think, you know, the awareness of food safety challenges is just, it's a positive thing, even though it is definitely harming consumer confidence. I'm really sadden to see the data that, you know, Americans are buying less produce. I think that's a terrible outcome. Like, so it's terrible that consumer confidence is taking a hit, but yes, the awareness is good. I don't, however, think that there is going to be any real change that comes of this. when I first started covering food safety many years ago, when there would be a food safety disaster like cyclospora, or like, you know, I remember the big, there was a big spinach outbreak in 2006, and there was a big peanut butter outbreak in 2009, and there was a big outbreak in 2011.

And Congress would actually hold hearings on these situations. And, yeah, and I mean, I am not convinced, unfortunately, that there will be some sort of policy response here that sort of looks at things holistically. I think it would be great to see that. You know, this should be bipartisan. No one thinks that, you know, ensuring food is safe to eat is a partisan issue or should be.

If we're not going to have congressional hearings about a cyclosporus situation that, by some estimates, has sickened 30,000 Americans, and by the way, that's multiple outbreaks, not just the lettuce outbreak. The lettuce situation is probably tied to about a third of that. If we're not, if 30,000 illnesses over a summer does not spark a congressional hearing, like, I don't know what would. And so, yeah, I'm not hopeful. I think that just the general dysfunction in Washington is kind of stacking against the deck there.

That was Helena Bottamiller-Evich of Food Fix. Now, if you're freaking out, Helena has a piece of advice for you. Don't stop eating produce. Pay attention to the recall notices. I'm still a little. eating fresh fruits and vegetables. You know, you can be mindful about where they're sourced from. Pay attention. But it's not something that we all need. We don't need to eat with fear. I think consumers still enjoy among the safest food supplies here in the U.S. But, you know, it's fine to demand better as well. Like, it's not okay that we're having this many outbreaks and recalls every year. Coming up, Helena called it the general dysfunction in what it means for your food.

Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at PMCF1. Walk.ca. Support for Jake Swing comes from Upwork.

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Slash Explained. This is today explained. I'm Noelle King with Ashley Stevens, senior food editor at salon.com. This summer, Ashley has found a partial solution to the problem of what can you safely eat. In the grocery store, she's been using an app that tells you if food has anything to do with Taylor Farms, where the cyclospora outbreak originated. And she discovered it is a lot. As I was scanning item after item, one, you realize how many items are actually connected.

to Taylor Farms. They're a huge macro brand with a ton of subsidiaries under them. But I remember turning a corner and scanning a pack of earthbound farms, broccoli florets. And I was like, oh, these are connected to Taylor Farms, but I don't know what to do with that information. They're not connected to any current outbreak, but do I necessarily feel good about eating them right now? Not really. Now, at one point in American history, we might have trusted our government to give us answers or to investigate, but trust in government is low, right? now. Ashley, in 2026, it is no surprise that this began over the summer to get very political very quickly. We had the outbreak, the explosive diarrhea, and then immediately you start hearing it's the

fault of the Trump administration. A source tells CNN that funding cuts by the administrations created a perfect storm. Our food is less safe because of Trump's cuts. Be careful out there. Then you have people saying, no, actually, there are food recalls every year. incidents of foodborne illness has not really changed since 2011. It's remained flat. So yes, there's a real cluster of food safety warnings right now. But no, we can't say that this is an official or record spike in food recalls. So help us untangle some of that. There are politics at play here because there are politics in our food. There's no way around it. How exactly does politics play into how safe our food is? I think that the big key

word here is transparency. In July, there was FDA traceback data that linked the shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms to the cyclospora outbreak. The FDA on Monday doubled down on its identification of Taylor Farms as the source of the cyclosporiasis outbreak. FDA's traceback investigation and the outbreak data continues to converge on shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms locations in central Mexico. And then simultaneously, you know, as people do, they start kind of digging into, oh, who owns Taylor Farms, right? And quickly, it was revealed that the CEO, Bruce Taylor, has donated millions of dollars

to conservative and Republican-aligned political groups, including about a million-dollar contribution to the pro-Trump super PACMAGN, Inc. in 2025. So you've got sort of these two narratives right now, and they end up coalescing at the White House in the middle of the cyclospora outbreak. So as there was increased news coverage of, oh, this lettuce is making people sick, you had leaders at Taylor Farms going for kind of a late night visit at the White House.

And within a couple days of that, the FDA came out and said, sample of lettuce from Taylor Farms thought to have tested positive for the intestinal parasite cyclospora was actually a false positive. The suspected culprit was lettuce from a grower called Taylor Farms.

But last night, the FDA announced its test of Taylor Farms products produced a false positive. You know, the thing is that could absolutely be true. However, federal officials still maintained, though, that broader traceback evidence still pointed to Taylor Farms. So I think that what we're seeing right now in that not of an example is just the lack of transparency that people are feeling where it's like, well, where did the sickness actually come from?

And who is actually putting this lettuce on my plate, right? And then we have HHS SECRFKJR who has told us from the moment he entered into this role that we should be skeptical of the American food system. Something is poisoning the American people. Now he talks a lot about ultra-processed foods. There is no way for any American to know if a product is safe, if it is ultra-processed. He talks a lot about sugars.

It's as addictive as crack. His narrative, you should be skeptical, has obviously caught on in a lot of ways. What has he said about this? And what do he, and as I understand it, his new cooking show, tell us about the American food system? Like, what is the point he's trying to make? Because this sort of seems like a moment for him. He's like, I've told you not to trust it, and you're all getting diarrhea. Yes, absolutely.

That is the way to put it. And I think what's fascinating is his new cooking show is called The Real Food Show. Hi, I'm Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. your HHS secretary. Welcome to The Real Food Show. America, it's time to eat real food. And what I found interesting about the script of the show is that it focuses a lot on knowing your food, where it comes from, and choosing essentially real American purveyors. So, you know, local American farmers, fishers, ranchers, et cetera, to be purchasing your food from.

And that's the way that we as American patriots should be eating, essentially. But obviously, that stands in pretty stark contrast to the Taylor Farms incident that we just talked about, where people feel really disconnected from the reality surrounding what's on their plates. So essentially we have been told by people like Secretary Kennedy that things like ultra-processed food are actually the boogeyman. And this is despite the fact that there's no federally recognized definition of what ultra-processed foods are. So again, like you said, it just seems like a pretty stark contrast between what he's saying in terms of eat real food, know where it comes from, this is the American diet, and the current reality where people are having to use an app to scale. on barcodes on the back of produce to figure out where it originated. One of the ironies of this summer is that Secretary Kennedy and the Maha movement

will tell us to be skeptical of the ultra-processed stuff, be skeptical of the sugars, focus instead on Whole Foods. And your smart and irritated folks online have pointed out that it is, in fact, the Whole Foods that are giving us the diarrhea. Let's get country. The Maha movement in this country is both interesting and in some ways quite powerful. How is that movement responding to this moment? So it's interesting because obviously Maha is not a monolith. And what's fascinating is once you start sort of digging into what does making America healthy again actually look like.

And one of the groups that I feel like is most interesting right now in the conversation are some of the farmers and ranchers who initially supported the Trump administration. But we've seen law. and ordinances pass through the second administration that have really hurt them. So some of the core base, the people who are making and producing the foods and the whole foods that we're being told to eat. But increasingly, they're starting to feel disenfranchised by the Trump administration. And the president makes another sour deal and punches the American farm this on the face under. I am a Republican. I voted for this administration, but my patience is running thin.

So little by little, you're seeing people who thought that making America healthy, again, looked one way. But increasingly, we're starting to see the top leaders in this administration make laws and make decisions that increasingly disenfranchised the people who make the food that were being told to eat. At the end of the day, I wonder something. The past couple of months have revealed some harsh truths. One of them, perhaps, being we all need to watch ourselves and what we're putting in our mouths a little bit more carefully, right? We can, joke about explosive diarrhea. It is not, in fact, that funny. Certainly not if you get it. It does make me wonder, does the government have a role here? See, that's the heart of this

whole thing, right? It is the idea that there's something kind of funny, but there is also something kind of sad about going to your supermarket and seeing people or being one of the people who's flipping over the salad kit and scanning the barcode, right? Like, you're trying to grasp for some sense of agency or power that, as you point, out with just kind of the government as it currently exists and the lack of transparency around food safety, you're just kind of left there trying to do something, right? So what is the government's role? I think that one of the key things that we need to take a look at is how critical nutrition safety nets like SNAP and WIC are currently also being cut, because that's

one of the most heartbreaking collisions, I think, in this whole thing, is that you've got people that are being told, hey, eat real food, make America healthy again by choosing things that aren't ultra-processed. But at the same time, the vouchers that people used to use and used to rely on have been cut just to a tremendous level. So it's becoming harder and harder for people to even be able to afford the whole foods that they're being told to eat. And then once they get there, they're not even sure that those foods are safe. Ashley Stevens is the senior food editor at salon.com. Dustin DeSoto and Kelly Wessinger produced today's show.

Amina El Sadi edited. David Tadishore is our engineer. Gabriel Duntov, check the facts. And I'm Noelle King. It's today explained. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar-raised matters.

On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.