Advertise on podcast: What You're Eating

When most of us imagine a farm, it’s a little red barn with happy cows, a pig and a few chickens pecking in the grass. We are taught this story when we are children, through board books, the song “Old McDonald” and our ABCs. But do you really know what happens on an industrial farm? Have you ever seen a video made by animal rights activists, of animals in pain and being mistreated? Did you scroll by? Did you watch it?  On today’s episode we talk about bearing witness to the way animals are raised for us to eat. And about the laws that have been passed in states around the country to keep us from doing so. Who benefits from us staying in the dark? And what are the larger repercussions of hiding these truths behind factory farm walls? This episode features Will Potter, author of Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable; Leah Garces, CEO of Mercy For Animals; Tyler Lobdell, senior staff attorney for Food & Water Watch; and cattle rancher Mike Callicrate, founder of Ranch Foods Direct. What You’re Eating is hosted by Jerusha Klemperer and produced by Nathan Dalton and FoodPrint.org, which is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation. You can find us at www.FoodPrint.org where we have this podcast as well as articles, reports, a Food Label Guide and more. Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Bluesky Stay Informed. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider leaving us a positive review.

On this episode we are joined by Helena Bottemiller Evich and Theodore Ross, the co-hosts of the podcast “Forked.” Every two weeks, they discuss “the politics and policy that are turning the American food system on its head.” For much of the past ten months, they have spent a huge amount of time discussing the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, its connections to de-facto leader, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the ways in which he and the movement are shaping policy and practice, from federal and state laws to food companies’ promises to change the formulas of their products. Together we talk through who makes up this movement, what their priorities are, what progress MAHA is making towards its goals — and where it is falling short. Can it make America healthy again? What You’re Eating is hosted by Jerusha Klemperer and produced by Nathan Dalton and FoodPrint.org, which is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation. You can find us at www.FoodPrint.org where we have this podcast as well as articles, reports, a Food Label Guide and more. Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Bluesky Stay Informed. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider leaving us a positive review.

If we all ate less meat and more beans, it would be a terrific win for the environment. And that’s not the only thing to love about them! They are very good for you. And satisfying. And versatile. They are also culinary mainstays for a huge number of people from a wide variety of cultures. Beans have all the protein that the protein obsessives want right now. And they are very affordable during a time of true economic hardship. Also, they’re delicious. There’s a small but growing number of people who are passionate about beans’ many amazing qualities, but that number needs to grow. In this episode, we went looking for the bean freaks, to learn from them how we can get everyone as excited about beans as they are. Can they help us persuade the world to fall in love with beans? In this episode we speak with Steve Sando, founder and owner of Rancho Gordo, Joe Yonan, author of the cookbook "Cool Beans," Andrea Aliseda, author of "Make It Plant Based! Mexican," Kristen Loria, founder of Buttermilk Bean, Eve Turow-Paul, founder and executive director of Food for Climate League, and we take a visit to the Heirloom Bean Encuentro in Santa Ana, California. What You’re Eating is hosted by Jerusha Klemperer and produced by Nathan Dalton and FoodPrint.org, which is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation. You can find us at www.FoodPrint.org where we have this podcast as well as articles, reports, a Food Label Guide and more. Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Bluesky Stay Informed. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider leaving us a positive review.

Ever wondered how chicken nuggets are made? There’s the question of what’s actually in them — a continual source of jokes since the dawn of their existence — but the ingredients aren’t the only mystery. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, about half a million people work in meat-processing plants, slaughtering livestock and cutting carcasses into parts. In Arkansas, a kind of unofficial chicken capital, this work might also involve making a slurry of meat and skin and bones, then breading it and frying it, and finally freezing the little pieces and strips to become chicken fingers or nuggets. Most of these workers are immigrants; many are refugees. They are doing largely invisible work, while being underpaid, overworked and mistreated. Recently, the federal government has begun to criminalize immigration, a development unfolding at the same time that the dirty and dangerous work done by immigrants has been deemed essential. After all, meat — the most American of foods — is something we are told we cannot live without. In this episode we speak about these workers with Alice Driver, author of the 2024 book “Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company.” What You’re Eating is hosted by Jerusha Klemperer and produced by Nathan Dalton and FoodPrint.org, which is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation. You can find us at www.FoodPrint.org where we have this podcast as well as articles, reports, a Food Label Guide and more. Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Bluesky Stay Informed. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider leaving us a positive review.

Suddenly, it feels like pistachios are everywhere. From Dubai chocolate to pistachio lattes, croissants, nut butters and more … For two years now, pistachio has appeared on several lists of upcoming food trends. How do these food and flavor trends start? How does a product — once mostly eaten by Middle Eastern Americans but stuck on the sidelines with everyone else — hit the mainstream? Do we plant more pistachios because they’ve become hugely popular? Or have they become hugely popular because we’re suddenly growing so many? On this episode, we hunt for the origins of a trend and try to tease out the implications of a food going viral. This episode features Lena Derisavifard, founder of BiBi Baker in Brooklyn; Tom Philpott, senior research associate at the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University and former food and agriculture correspondent for Mother Jones; and Errol Schweizer publisher and founder of the Checkout Grocery Update. What You’re Eating is produced by Nathan Dalton and FoodPrint.org, which is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation. You can find us at www.FoodPrint.org where we have this podcast as well as articles, reports, a Food Label Guide and more. Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Bluesky Stay Informed. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider leaving us a positive review.

If becoming a vegan ever sounded to you like a joy-less task — like you’d have to give up too much, that you’d miss meat too much, that you’d have to transform into an entirely different person — Matt Halteman has some advice.  As he writes in his book, Hungry Beautiful Animals: The Joyful Case for Going Vegan: "The destination of this journey is an inviting, empowering, and inclusive understanding of everyday vegan living that abandons the demoralizing goal of arriving once and for all at a perfected individual identity in favor of inspired but practical striving toward a global aspiration—to do what one enthusiastically can, within one's limits and always imperfectly—to live toward a truer, more beautiful, better vegan world. Instead of framing our individual efforts to go vegan unrealistically, in terms of the achievement of a one size fits all state of being, a so called cruelty free identity, we'll envision going vegan as a liberating journey of becoming that unfolds uniquely for every person based on what their individual and communal situations inspire and enable them to contribute." What You’re Eating is produced by Nathan Dalton and FoodPrint.org, which is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation. You can find us at www.FoodPrint.org where we have this podcast as well as articles, reports, a Food Label Guide and more. Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Bluesky Stay Informed. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider leaving us a positive review.

The American bumblebee was once the most common bee species in the United States. Its numbers have declined by 90 percent in the last two decades. The problem is bigger than just the loss of an iconic species. Three-fourths of the food crops humans grow depend on pollinators – bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and more. Industrial monocultures sap the soil. Rampant chemical use poisons our water and our bodies. Reckless stewardship of the land wastes our precious resources. Buzzkill asks why we raise food this way – and how we can change things for the better. Americans stepped up to do something about dying bees. But what if all those backyard colonies are making the problem worse?  In Buzzkill’s premiere episode, host Teresa Cotsilos takes an in-depth look at whether raising domesticated bees, especially in cities, is harming the wild species we need to preserve biodiversity. Buzzkill is a six-part series from the Food & Environment Reporting Network, hosted by FERN staff writer and producer Teresa Cotsilos. Listen to more episodes at thefern.org.  

After the death of her grandfather, writer Brea Baker went looking to understand him and, through him, her lineage. In rebuilding and reckoning with her family tree, she pieced together a personal story that reflected the greater history of Black America. In this episode we talk to her about her book, Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership, in which she clearly maps out the United States’ progression from slavery to Emancipation and Black land acquisition — followed almost immediately by a pattern of violent land theft and devastating loss. She makes plain this country’s racist history, ultimately connecting the dots to today’s persisting racial wealth gap. What You’re Eating is produced by Nathan Dalton and FoodPrint.org, which is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation. You can find us at www.FoodPrint.org where we have this podcast as well as articles, reports, a Food Label Guide and more. Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Bluesky Stay Informed. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider leaving us a positive review.

We love our pets — a lot. And there’s a booming business — around $136.8 billion worth of pet food, treats and more reflecting that deep love and connection. Of course, as our pets become more central to our families, we become more and more interested in feeding them well. Gone are the days when kibble and cans were the only foods on offer: Caring and concerned owners can now choose between a dizzying array of options, ranging from the familiar kibble and cans to monthly deliveries of human-grade prepared food and even home-cooked meals made from fresh ingredients. But is there any difference between any of these foods? Are the expensive ones worth it? And if you’re one of those people who thinks about your own food quite a bit, but hasn’t really thought about your pet’s food that much, should you bother trying to change? This episode features Marion Nestle, professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York university, Susan Thixton, a pet food consumer advocate and founder of truthaboutpetfood.com, Daisy Freund, vice president of farm animal welfare at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), Jacqueline Prehogan, Chief Brand Officer and co-founder of Open Farm Pet Food, Matt Halteman, professor of philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan and author of Hungry Beautiful Animals: The Joyful Case for Going Vegan and Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture writer and author of No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating. What You’re Eating is produced by Nathan Dalton and FoodPrint.org, which is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation. You can find us at www.FoodPrint.org where we have this podcast as well as articles, reports, a Food Label Guide and more. Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Bluesky Stay Informed. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider leaving us a positive review.

When refrigerators became commonplace in our kitchens, they changed the way we shopped, cooked and ate. But home refrigerators are just “the tip of the iceberg,” as they say — the last step in a long, cold, technologically impressive supply chain of refrigerated warehouses, trucks, trains, boats and planes that brings our produce, milk, meat and more from fields, factories and slaughterhouses to our supermarkets and homes. In this episode we talk about this cold chain with Nicola Twilley, host of the Gastropod podcast and author of the book Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves. What You’re Eating is produced by Nathan Dalton and FoodPrint.org, which is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation. You can find us at www.FoodPrint.org where we have this podcast as well as articles, reports, a Food Label Guide and more. Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Bluesky Stay Informed. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider leaving us a positive review.

There are a lot of ways to raise animals for consumption — and while some would argue we shouldn’t be eating animals at all, others advocate rooting out the cruelest practices, the ones that cause the most suffering. But how do you measure cruelty? Do some animals deserve to suffer less than others because they’re especially cute or smart? And does your right to enjoy a fancy or delicious meal trump the right of an animal to not experience extreme cruelty? In this episode, we look at three controversial foods — veal, foie gras and octopus — and the campaigns launched by animal rights activists to stop their production and consumption. These foods and the animals they come from have a lot to teach us about the ethics of animal agriculture — and possibly about ourselves. This episode features Daisy Freund, Vice President of Farm Animal Welfare at ASPCA; Cheryl Leahy, Executive Director of Animal Outlook; and Dr. Elena Lara, Senior Research and Public Affairs Advisor at Compassion in World Farming. What You’re Eating is produced by Nathan Dalton and FoodPrint.org, which is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation. You can find us at www.FoodPrint.org where we have this podcast as well as articles, reports, a Food Label Guide and more. Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook,  X and Threads.  Stay Informed. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider leaving us a positive review.

Vanilla and Chocolate — the two most beloved flavors in the world — have been linked since the beginning. Both products, the vanilla bean and the cacao pod, originated in Mexico, thousands of years ago, where Aztecs used vanilla to make the bitter cocoa powder in their sacred chocolate drink more palatable. Today these two flavors, in both natural and artificial form, dominate our dessert options, from ice cream scoops to the sweet snacks in grocery aisles. But both have complicated stories: long and hidden supply chains, an extraction of wealth from communities in the Global South, and all of the environmental and social problems that come from a system that leaves smallholder farmers in poverty. How can we reconcile our love of these essential flavors with their often problematic production? Can we hold large companies accountable?  And is it possible to produce vanilla and chocolate in a different and better way? This episode features Jennifer Boggiss of Heilala Vanilla, Tim McCollum of Beyond Good, and Allie Brudney from Corporate Accountability Lab.  What You’re Eating is produced by Nathan Dalton and FoodPrint.org, which is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation. You can find us at www.FoodPrint.org where we have this podcast as well as articles, reports, a Food Label Guide and more. Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook, and X.  Stay Informed. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider leaving us a positive review.

For well over a century, the hot dog has been the quintessential dirt cheap, flavorful, all-American meal — a kind of meaty blank slate on which to slather your regional preferences, like slaw, chili, relish or onions. But can a person who cares about what they're eating and the impact their food has on the environment — and animals, and meatpacking workers — eat a hot dog in good conscience? How about four or five hot dogs…every day? In this episode, we speak to writer Jamie Loftus who did just that, all to tell us the story — good, bad and ugly — of this handheld feast.  Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook, and X.  Stay Informed. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider leaving us a positive review.

Why does the oyster — amorphous, slimy, hidden in a shell that’s craggier and stranger than that of a scallop or a clam — capture so many food-lovers’ hearts? What exactly is an oyster? Why are most of the oysters we eat farmed? And why, unlike other farmed seafood, are they considered such a benefit to their environment? In this episode, we head to the farm — the oyster farm — and talk to various experts to understand more about this beloved and very sustainable bivalve. This episode features Rowan Jacobsen, author of A Geography of Oysters: The Connoisseur's Guide to Oyster Eating in North America and The Essential Oyster: A Salty Appreciation of Taste and Temptation, Dr. Christopher Gobler, professor at Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, plus a visit to Hog Island Oyster Co. in Marshall, California.  Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook, and X.  Stay Informed. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider leaving us a positive review.

We can see the causes and effects of biodiversity loss all around us: only one variety of banana or pineapple for sale in every grocery store. Or the miles and miles or corn and soy you pass as you drive the roads of Iowa, Minnesota and  Illinois. Or the windshield effect: that there are far fewer dead insects on our windshields as we drive those country roads. Biodiversity refers to the awesome array of life on earth: everything from microbes to insects to plants to animals to entire ecosystems. We are right now in what’s being called “a biodiversity crisis”, in terms of the number of species we are losing and the increasing pace at which that loss is happening. The primary driver of species loss is our global agriculture system: in other words, the way we grow our food. And as we lose those varieties and breeds of animals and plants, we don’t just lose their genetics, we lose their unique tastes and flavors, too. This episode features Preeti Simran Sethi, author of Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love; Ricardo Salvador, Director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists; Rowen White, a seed keeper, farmer, and founding member of the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network, a project of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance; Ryan Nebeker, Research and Policy Analyst with FoodPrint; and Urvashi Rangan, Chief Scientist for FoodPrint. Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.  Stay Informed. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider leaving us a positive review.