The Leading Voices in Food

By: Duke World Food Policy Center
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  • Summary

  • The Leading Voices in Food podcast series features real people, scientists, farmers, policy experts and world leaders all working to improve our food system and food policy. You'll learn about issues across the food system spectrum such as food insecurity, obesity, agriculture, access and equity, food safety, food defense, and food policy. Produced by the Duke World Food Policy Center at wfpc.sanford.duke.edu.
    Duke World Food Policy Center
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Hygiene & Healthy Living Science Social Sciences
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Episodes
  • E262: Impact of skimming and shimming fraud on SNAP recipients

    E262: Impact of skimming and shimming fraud on SNAP recipients
    Jan 30 2025
    On our podcast, we have often talked about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. In many of those conversations, we've talked about the benefits and eligibility, and ways to improve the work that SNAP does to help low-income families meet their food needs. In today's podcast, we're going to turn our attention to a particular challenge, and it's the SNAP skimming fraud. To help us understand this and the larger context of SNAP, we have the great pleasure of talking with Salaam Bhatti, who is the director of SNAP at the Food Research and Action Center, or FRAC. Interview Summary So, let's provide a little bit of level setting for our listeners. Can you tell us what role SNAP plays in the lives of individuals who are facing low income or food insecurity? Yeah, Norbert, the problem with being in the richest, most powerful nation in world history is that we are facing a food and hunger crisis. We have the means, we have the resources to solve for it, but we haven't. For the record, the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture, did a study last year. They do this study every year where they report food security in the country. In 2023, 86.5 percent of U. S. households were food secure. The remaining 13.5 percent, which is 18 million households, were food insecure. And this was an increase from 2022. So, 86.5 percent of food security is barely a B+. To be in the most powerful wealthiest nation in the world and we're barely getting a B+ in this space is unacceptable. And so, we saw some really interesting policies happen during the pandemic. We saw emergency allotments come in for the SNAP program, where all households received the maximum benefit amount for their households. And that, unfortunately, sunset. When that emergency allotment was in place, food insecurity-surprise, surprise-decreased. But not just that, we also saw Medicaid healthcare spending costs decrease as well. Because who would have thought that when people had food security, they didn't need to go to the emergency room because their blood sugar was low. So, we're experiencing a lot of challenges where we've seen the government show its hand that it can end poverty. It can end hunger. It just chooses not to. We know that SNAP is an entitlement program. It's available to anyone who meets the eligibility requirements. But we know that everyone who's eligible doesn't participate in the SNAP program. Can you help us think about how more people can be enrolled who are eligible. And maybe we even need to think more broadly about what is eligibility? What are your thoughts about this? In a given month these days, about 42 million people participate in SNAP. That's a lot of people. I would say that 42 million people are participating in it every day, but unfortunately, SNAP benefits do not last the whole month. By the third week of the month, people's SNAP benefits have been exhausted. Now, taking a step back, in case the listeners don't know how SNAP benefits work, it's a, as you said, a government program. And it comes in the form of an electronic benefits transfer card, an EBT card. It looks like a credit card, looks like a debit card. But really, it's more like a hotel card key, because it doesn't have the security measures, which we can talk about later in the show. It doesn't have the security measures that a credit and a debit card have. It is essentially a glorified hotel key. It's got the magnetic stripe on the back, circa 20 years ago. Maybe 15. I'm dating myself. I don't know how long ago it was we were swiping the cards. But all you gotta do is you swipe the card and you type in your PIN. And then you can use it at the EBT retailer. That is in a nutshell how 40 million people are utilizing SNAP benefits every single month. The program itself is also vital to retailers as well. We've seen that every dollar of SNAP benefits generates about $1.54 in economic activity during an economic downturn. So that means that when somebody is using their SNAP benefits at the grocery store, it's helping that grocery store keep the lights on. You know, employ the cashiers. And we need to employ cashiers, enough of this self-checkout stuff. It helps to pay the truck driver who's transporting the produce to the store. And it ultimately even helps pay the farmer for growing the crop. So, it's a great investment from the federal government into not just our households to help them put food on the table, but really into the whole local economy. And it is immediately used directly by the people and helps so many people. Now so, to your question about how do we enroll more people? Well, luckily we are at a time where the USDA reports that in the fiscal year 2022, 88 percent of eligible individuals were participating in SNAP. And that is the highest participation rate we've seen since they started tracking this in the past 50 years. That's great. But again, it's just a B+ so we can do better. There is room to improve. In the study, it ...
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    23 mins
  • E261: Here’s what you don’t know about food safety

    E261: Here’s what you don’t know about food safety
    Jan 23 2025
    For many years in talks that I gave, I showed a slide with an ingredient list from a food most people know. Just to see if the audience could guess what the food was. based on what it was made of. It was very hard for people to guess. A few people might come close, but very few people would guess. And it was pretty hard because the food contained 56 ingredients. This is in one food. And the ingredient list had chemical names, flavorings, stabilizers, and heaven knows what else. But 56 things in one, just one food in the food supply. Pretty amazing to think what kind of things we're bombarded with in foods we eat in our everyday lives. So, one key question is do we know what all this stuff does to us, either individually or in combination? So, how does ingredient 42 interact with ingredient 17? Even if we happen to know what they do individually, which we may not. And, who's looking out for the health of the population, and who has regulatory control over these things? Today we're joined by the author of a new article on this topic published in the American Journal of Public Health. Jennifer Pomeranz is an attorney and is Associate Professor of Public Health Policy and Management in the School of Global Public Health at New York University. The food, by the way, was a chocolate fudge Pop Tart. Interview Summary So, who has regulatory oversight with these things that are added to foods? The FDA has the authority over all of those packaged foods. So, Pop Tarts, all of that type of packaged foods and the ingredients in there. Can you explain the nature of their authority and the concept of GRAS and what that stands for? Yes. So, there are two main ingredients in our food, but there is also color additives and other things that we didn't get to in our study. But the two main ingredients are called 'food additives' and then 'generally recognized as safe' or GRAS substances. And these are the two ingredients that are in all the processed foods. They're both complex substances, but they're regulated differently. GRAS is assumed to be safe. And food with GRAS substances is presumed to be safe as long as there's a generally agreement among scientists that it's safe, or if it's been in use in food since 1958. Food additives, on the other hand, are presumed to be unsafe. And so, foods that have food additives must have the food additive be approved for the condition of use. So actually, the FDA issues regulations on the food additives. Is it true that the FDA authority covers lots of these chemical type things that get put in foods that we discussed? But also, things that occur naturally in some things like caffeine? Yes. And so, caffeine is considered GRAS or generally recognized as safe. The FDA has a tolerance level for cola-type beverages for caffeine. It actually doesn't enforce that as you see, because we have energy drinks that far exceed that type of level. So, there's different types of GRAS substances. But they can be very complex substances that are actually not so different than food additives. Who decides at the end of the day whether something's safe or not? You imagine this battalion of scientific experts that the FDA has on hand, or consults with, to decide whether something's safe or not. But how does it work? Unfortunately, that's not exactly the case. When it comes to food additives, the industry must petition the FDA and provide evidence showing that it's safe. And the FDA promulgates a regulation saying that it agrees it's safe and it can be used for the things that it set forth in the regulation. For GRAS, there are two mechanisms. One is the industry can notify the FDA that it thinks something's safe. And then it actually goes through a similar transparent process where the FDA will evaluate the evidence submitted. Or, shockingly, the industry can actually decide that it's safe for themselves. And they don't have to notify the FDA. And they can add it to their food without the FDA or the public actually knowing. Now they might disclose this on a website or something, but it's actually not even required to be based on peer reviewed literature, which is actually one of the concerning aspects about this. Concerning is polite language for what one might call shocking. So, in the case of some of these things that go into the food, the industry itself decides whether these things are safe. And in some cases, they have to at least tell the FDA that something they declare as safe is going into the food. But in some cases, they don't even have to do this. Right. So, they only have to if they've determined that it's a food additive. But actually, the industry itself is deciding that it's a food additive versus GRAS. Once it made the decision, it's GRAS, it doesn't even have to notify the FDA that it considers it safe. If they do, they are supposed to rely on their own research saying that it's safe. But actually, there's some alarming parts about that as well. The other outside research that's not my ...
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    14 mins
  • E260: Food Recovery Network Urges Food Date Labeling Reform

    E260: Food Recovery Network Urges Food Date Labeling Reform
    Jan 14 2025
    I don't know about you and your household, but in my home, we have a long history of opening the refrigerator and discovering pasta sauce or mayonnaise that we don't remember when it was put in the refrigerator, when we last opened it, and we're confused. We open the container; we smell it; we check out the date label. And if we're confused, we have a mantra: when in doubt, throw it out. But aren't those date labels supposed to help us make good decisions about whether or not a food product is safe? Currently, there is no federal regulation on what those labels should say. Best Buy, Use Buy, Sell Buy, or what have you. However, there is legislation in the Congress called the Food Date Labeling Act to help us address this issue. And today's guest, Regina Harmon, will help us explore this particular issue. She is the executive director of the Food Recovery Network, the largest student led movement fighting food waste and hunger in the United States. Interview Summary First, some of our listeners may not be familiar with the Food Recovery Network. Could you tell us more about the organization and what it hopes to accomplish? Absolutely. Thank you so much. Food Recovery Network was started in 2011 by college students at the University of Maryland who saw a couple of things happening. They saw a lot of food waste on their college campus, and they also saw a lot of people who were experiencing hunger in their communities. And so, they thought, hey, instead of throwing this perfectly good food away, what we could do is package this food up and give it to those in our neighborhood that we know need some help. And that's how Food Recovery Network was started. They started at the University of Maryland, one dining hall, one carload of food. They started calling other friends that went to different colleges and universities across the United States. And over the last decade and some change, we've grown into, as you said, the largest movement of students who are fighting food waste and hunger. We have about 200 college campuses that have food recovery network chapters. We've recovered over 16 million pounds of food through the power of young people. And today we also help other sectors that would like to also do the right thing with their surplus food. We help farms, we help corporate events, large scale events, we help conferences. You name it, wherever there's surplus food, Food Recovery Network can help make sure that food doesn't go into landfill and helps feed those in need. I would love to hear a little bit about who you are able to serve through the Recovered Food. Are you working with food banks? Are you working with the pantries directly? Tell me a little more about that connection. It's a beautiful connection. We have about 400 nonprofits all over the United States. That directly receive the surplus food that we donate. We go to the sites where the food is. So again, in college dining halls, large scale events, you name it, and that food is packaged up safely. And then it's brought to what we call hunger fighting nonprofits. These are nonprofits on the front lines in all of our communities that are in some way feeding our neighbors in need. These are homeless shelters, soup kitchens, food banks. These are domestic violence shelters. These are afterschool programs, churches, anywhere that can also handle the food safely and then distribute it to our neighbors directly. So through that, we've been able to meet so many incredible people, and a lot of times volunteers themselves who work at these incredible locations that again, are just helping those who need support to make their ends meet. Great. This is really important work. Thank you so much for the work that you all are doing. So, how does the Food Recovery Network activate to end food waste and make a positive impact on the environment? There's a lot of things that are happening here. You know, millions of tons of food is wasted every single year. And I know we'll get into the Food Date Limiting Act in just a moment, but every part of our food system, there's food waste. On farm fields, during transportation, at supermarkets, in our own homes. And so, a lot of times, most of the time, the majority of the time, all of the food that is wasted is actually thrown into landfills. You know, we see those images of whole entire tractor trailer trucks of food being dumped into landfill. And that is the problem. The majority of food, much of which is still perfectly good to eat, perfectly good to consume, is being driven into landfill, where it then is covered up, it begins to rot, and this is where the environmental harm starts. The food rots, and it creates additional CO2 into our environment and other greenhouse gases that is really difficult for our environment to reabsorb because it's happening at such an increased rate. And that is directly causing what we now know as global warming. Food all across the United States, all across the globe, is the third ...
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    14 mins

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