The Challenge of Marketing Healthy Foods, Including Infant Formula and or Buying Bagged Lettuce, While Staying Critical of the Food and Drug Administration and Trump Policies!

So much of what the Trump administration is doing is infuriating, and the chaos and contradictions are endless. For instance, putting Robert F Kennedy in charge of the Health and Human Services Department has caused many people who care about the foods we eat to be supportive of Kennedy, yet at the same time, Trump has cut the FDA programs that would oversee our foods safety, including our inspectors, researchers and scientists. In this NY Times article, the founder of the organic baby formula, Bobbie, was criticized for working with the Trump administration, yet her baby formula is one of the best on the market. It’s a conundrum!  

One recent example of the detrimental impact that the Trump administration’s sweeping terminations of FDA employees can be seen in the recent outbreak of E coli tied to romaine lettuce that you probably didn’t hear about. This outbreak happened in November of 2024 and impacted citizens in 15 different states. There was one death, and a 9-year-old boy was amongst one of the many people who were hospitalized from the outbreak. In this case, the FDA did not initially report the outbreak to the public nor did they share the name of the party responsible once the information was reported. Doesn’t that seem strange? Why wouldn’t our government report such a significant outbreak to the public? It makes sense, however, when you realize that the staff that is responsible for the disseminating this information to the public was recently laid off. Still, it makes you wonder why they would intentionally leave out the name of the company responsible for producing the contaminated lettuce. As of now, it is advised to “swear off” any pre-washed and bagged lettuce due to the high risk of foodborne illness now that we have less government entities looking out for the safety of our food, according to an article written in the Atlantic about this critical situation.