Is anything safe to eat?

August 31, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

This summer, Americans have been confronted with a relentless drumbeat of food safety scares. The headlines read like a gastrointestinal horror show: salmonella in eggs and jalapeños, E. coli in frozen blueberries, glass in Outshine fruit bars, and a massive cyclospora outbreak linked to shredded iceberg lettuce that has sickened thousands. As one observer put it, this has become the “summer of explosive diarrhea.” The obvious question follows: Is anything safe to eat? And the answer, as with most things involving the American food system, is complicated—and deeply political.

The Reality Behind the Headlines

Helena Bottemiller Evich, founder of the food policy newsletter Food Fix, has been covering this beat for over 15 years. Her first piece of advice is to calm down. Despite the alarming headlines, the raw number of food recalls this summer is not actually out of the ordinary. “In some ways, recalls are a measure of things working,” she explains, because they mean problems are being caught and products pulled from shelves. What has increased is the number of foodborne illness investigations—more clusters of sick people are being tracked. But this is a gradual stress on the system, not a sudden collapse.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:01) **The Summer of Food Scares** - The episode opens with the political and public panic around food safety in summer 2026, from mystery beef imports to a cascade of recalls.
2 (02:06) **Helena Bottemiller Evich Lists the Summer's Recalls** - The founder of Food Fix catalogs the major food safety incidents that have dominated headlines.
3 (04:37) **Are Recalls Actually Increasing, or Are We Just Noticing More?** - The key factual question: is the food safety system in crisis, or is this a seasonal pattern amplified by a big outbreak?
4 (06:32) **Did the Trump Administration Change Food Safety?** - The host asks directly whether policy changes in the last year are to blame for the current situation.
5 (09:57) **Will "Hot Diarrhea Summer" Lead to Real Change?** - The host asks if public attention can force a policy response.
6 (12:31) **Advice for the Freaked-Out Consumer** - A short bridge offering practical guidance before the second segment.
7 (16:46) **The App That Reveals the Supply Chain** - Ashley Stevens, Senior Food Editor at Salon, describes her personal solution to the anxiety: using a barcode-scanning app.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

It’s been a summer of food-safety scares and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new cooking show probably isn’t going to make things better.

This episode was produced by Dustin DeSoto and Kelli Wessinger, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore, and hosted by Noel King.

Packaged salad mixes are displayed in the refrigerated produce section of a Target store. Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images.

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