The way a food tastes and smells is important when it comes to choosing what we eat. Food companies engineer foods to ensure they taste and smell appealing by adding flavors and spices. These can be natural substances or chemicals synthesized in a laboratory. They can be a single ingredient—like vanilla extract, dried basil, or a specific chemical—or blends of many ingredients formulated and developed by professional flavorists.
The Trump administration announced on Sept. 20, 2025, that it plans to stop releasing food insecurity data. The federal government has tracked and analyzed this data for the past three decades, but it plans to stop after publishing statistics pertaining to 2024 data.
President Trump’s Farmers First Policy Agenda and proposed FY26 budget show hypocrisy in the administration’s approach to nutrition security and agriculture.
Commentary from CSPI Director of Regulatory Affairs Sarah Sorscher on the public health effects of funding cuts for CDC, FDA, and USDA food safety tracking systems like FoodNet, PulseNet, and CORE.
