Our guest at Repast this month is Austin Frerick, author, and expert on agricultural and antitrust policy, talking with us about his new book, Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry (March 2024). In Barons, Frerick depicts the structure of the American food system by telling the story of seven food industry tycoons, delving into the monopolization of the food system and the resulting corruption. Here, Austin, Michael, and Diana discuss the problems with industry concentration, when strange bedfellows can make meaningful reforms, and how all roads eventually lead to Arkansas.

You can buy Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry here.

You can read about Austin Frerick and more about Barons here.

Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

This month, Repast welcomes Sarah Lohman, culinary historian, author, and speaker, about her new book, Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods. In this book, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, a Food & Wine Best Book of 2023, and an Eater Best Food Book, Fall 2023, Lohman explores the history and present of certain ingredients from the Ark of Taste, a list put together by Slow Food of important regional foods. She is also the author of Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, which explores the cultural history behind eight particularly American flavors. Over her career, Sarah’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and more.

You can buy Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods here.

You can read about Sarah Lohman and her other work here.

Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

In this episode of Repast, Michael and Diana were delighted to talk with Xaq Frohlich, Professor of History at Auburn University and author of From Label to Table: Regulating Food in the Information Age, recently published by the University of California Press. From Label to Table is a fascinating dive into the historical development of the food label from a multi-faceted perspective. Michael, Diana, and Xaq discuss the historical development of the label, the use of information in regulation, the intersection of power and food, and more.

You can find Xaq Frohlich’s bio here.

https://cla.auburn.edu/directory/xaq-frohlich

You can find From Label to Table here.

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520298811/from-label-to-table

Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

https://law.ucla.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/michael-t-roberts

Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

https://law.ucla.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/diana-r-h-winters

In this episode of Repast, Michael and Diana welcome Dr. Caree Cotwright, the Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity for the Food and Nutrition Service, USDA. In her role at USDA, Dr. Cotwright leads a whole-of-department approach at USDA to advance food and nutrition security, which is one of USDA Secretary Vilsacks five core priorities.

Dr. Cotwright is on leave from her position as an associate professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the College of Family and Consumer Science at the University of Georgia, where she has been since 2013. She received her undergraduate degree in biology from Howard University before moving on to UGA, where she completed her master’s and doctorate degrees in nutrition. At the University of Georgia, she conducted early childhood obesity prevention research efforts focusing on youth ages 0-5 using innovative and multidisciplinary methods.

Here, Dr. Cotwright notes how her personal background influenced her professional direction, and discusses the USDA’s approach to food and nutrition security, scaffolded by the four pillars of (1) providing meaningful nutrition support from pregnancy to birth and beyond; (2) working to connect everyone in this country with healthy, safe, affordable food sources; (3) developing, translating, and enacting nutrition science through partnership including the National MyPlate Strategic Partnerships, and (4) prioritizing equity every step of the way. She focuses on two specific programs—Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, and the new summer EPT program, scheduled for roll-out in 2024—and how the USDA is working to make MyPlate a household symbol.

You can find Dr. Cotwright’s UGA profile here.

Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

You can find more on the USDA’s approach to nutrition security here.

Learn about USDA’s MyPlate initiative here.

Follow the MyPlate Instagram at @myplate_gov.

Or email pictures of MyPlate in the wild or MyPlate feedback to Caree.Cotwright@usda.gov.

You can find the Repast episode with former Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity, Dr. Sara Bleich, here.

Today on Repast, Michael and Diana talk with Wudan Yan, an award-winning narrative journalist covering science and society, about an article she published in July of this year about lead-tainted turmeric. In this article, Wudan looked at the Bangladesh supply chain for turmeric to discuss turmeric adulteration, the battle against this adulteration, and confronting food fraud more broadly. Michael, Diana, and Wudan discuss the article, Wudan’s process, and the complex problem of food fraud here.

Wudan’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, High Country News, The New York Times, New Yorker and beyond and her journalism has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, UC Berkeley's Food and Farming Fellowship, The Institute of Journalism and Natural Resources, among others. Prior to journalism, Wudan was a cancer biologist studying the pharmacology of drugs for the treatment of solid cancers.

You can read The Vice of Spice: Confronting Lead-Tainted Turmeric here.

You can read more about Wudan Yan and explore her work here.

Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

This month, Repast welcomes Adrian Miller. Known as the Soul Food Scholar, Adrian Miller is a culinary historian, James Beard award-winning food writer, former White House staffer, and a certified BBQ judge. He is also a recovering lawyer. Adrian, Diana, and Amber Ward, a 2L at Columbia Law School and the Resnick Center’s summer research assistant, discuss the history of Black cuisine, how the legacy of slavery and segregation has influenced the development of Black cuisine in America, the erasure of Black cuisine from the cultural narrative of American cuisine, and more.

You can read about Adrian Miller and his work here.

Amber Ward did her 1L year at UCLA Law School and is now a 2L at Columbia Law.

Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

You can find Adrian’s book, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, the winner of the 2014 James Beard Foundation Book Award for Reference and Scholarship, here.

You can watch High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America, in which Adrian appears, on Netflix.

This month, Michael and Diana talk with Professor Ernesto Hernández-López from the Chapman University Fowler School of Law about a recent opinion piece he wrote for Al Jazeera titled “Drop it America and Canada: A Corn Clash with Mexico helps no one.” Professor Hernández, Michael, and Diana discuss the background for this piece, what is at stake in trade policy and politics, and implications for food law and policy.

Ernesto Hernández-López is Professor of Law at the Chapman University Fowler School of Law.

Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

You can find Professor Hernández’s article, “Drop it America and Canada: A Corn Clash with Mexico helps no one” here.

Some other work by Professor Hernández is here:

Opinion Pieces

· “Why Seed Companies Fear México,” INTER PRESS SERVICE: NEWS AGENCY, Nov. 18, 2021

· “The Death of Neoliberal Corn,” LATINO REBELS, Oct. 19, 2021

· “Fighting GMO Corn, for Mexico’s Soul,” LATINO REBELS, Sept. 16, 2020

Scholarly Pieces

· “Racializing Trade in Corn: México Fights Maíz Imports and GMOs,” 25 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC LAW (JIEL) (2022)

· “GMO Corn, México, and Coloniality,” 22 VANDERBILT JOURNAL OF ENTERTAINMENT AND TECHNOLOGY LAW 724-783 (2020)

· “Border Brutalism,” 46 Fordham Int'l L.J. 213 (2023).

A link to the book by Michael Fakhri, Sugar and the Making of International Trade Law, mentioned by Professor Hernández is here.

You can find other articles published as part of the Health Justice Initiative here, and a link to the Health Justice Initiative webpage is here.