From stories of food pantries during SNAP cuts, to coffee and the Ngabe people in Panama who pick the beans, to industry funded research like the 1945 margarine experiment on orphans in Chicago, to the role of sailing ships and the military in shaping our current food environment and the role of food on military ships in shaping morale, to Surgeon General candidates who invest in smoking (still an issue!),
to GLP-1s, to a much better way to define and understand ultra-processed food, to the generally recognized as crippled GRAS system of food additive safety, to the dangerous state of cannabis and hemp dysregulation due to greed and politics, and, not at all last or least, to my hero, the father of epidemiology, slayer of cholera, and clean water fanatic, John Snow, the first year of Eating In America has been busy.
I was getting my Master of Science in Nutrition Policy and Programs and my Master of Public Health when Covid hit. I rolled up my sleeves and used my epidemiology to make maps of where food assistance would be needed and where hospital beds would run short. I picked up the phone and traced Covid cases and contacts to help contain the epidemic and get assistance to those in need. I thought “good job Ric!,” way to pick a time to be training in public health and epidemiology and nutrition. What no one saw coming, except those who were then planning what has since happened with the American government, was that public health would soon be pilloried, assaulted, defunded, and deprioritized.
Stories I have posted in the last year have often pointed out how the science got it wrong or authorities kept their blinders on when presented with the facts. That has always been true.
Socrates was executed for teaching youth to think and the Church banned Copernicus’s ideas about the solar system.
But as scientific knowledge and capacity have exploded and, coupled with technology, become an overwhelming source of power in our civilization, is the killing of science a more frequent response of the despot? The last 100 years provides all the evidence we need to worry about when extremists take control of science. From the famines in Russia and China stemming from Stalin and Mao’s rejection of agricultural science, to the German brain drain as Hitler rejected Einstein’s physics and Jewish scientists in general, to Pol Pot’s killing fields filled with the hundreds of thousands of corpses of anyone with the executable offense of having an education, men with the certainty of their own infallibility have sent millions to their deaths.
My writing in Eating In America has an urgency, for me, because it so often deals with the consequences of the actions and policies of America’s infallible despot, Trump, and his servant, RFK, Jr. As long as Trump and Kennedy are in office, I will have, uh, a lot to report on and analyze coming from our central government.
I’ve posted and podcasted 62 pieces since Eating In America launched.
Science and facts are the foundation of everything I write, although I try to help our understanding of the facts by, at times, drawing lines to show the connections which are hidden from us and making fair assumptions about what is going on with the motivations of politicians, corporations, researchers, and other organizations.
A new phase of Eating In America begins today, as I take a moment to sharpen my quills, and add in a new, I hope important, project for the coming year. Since AI can hear even my faint voice in the public health wilderness, I need to keep to myself just what my new project is at the moment…
In the meantime I need to dial back my writing for Eating In America. I’ll keep posting, just not as much.
I hope I’ll have your continued support over the next year. Your support has meant so much. It’s absolutely key for Eating In America and related endeavors going forward…Please stick around.
Thank you.
Ric
References
Mann DL. When Facts Become Forbidden: The Past and Present History of Scientific Censorship. JACC Basic Transl Sci. Mar 2025;10(3):402–404. https://doi.og/10.1016/j.jacbts.2025.02.003
