{"id":830237,"date":"2026-07-28T00:06:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T00:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/830237\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T00:06:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T00:06:14","slug":"epic-diarrhea-outbreak-has-40-of-americans-avoiding-fruits-and-veggies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/830237\/","title":{"rendered":"Epic diarrhea outbreak has 40% of Americans avoiding fruits and veggies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, the FDA also announced that it was delaying a new rule on food traceability<\/a>, which would have made it easier for FDA investigators to identify and remove from the market foods linked to illnesses, such as Taylor Farms\u2019 lettuce.<\/p>\n

\u201cCatastrophic\u201d mismanagement<\/p>\n

Last week, Kennedy claimed that the Cyclospora surge was \u201cunder control<\/a>,\u201d but critics and former FDA officials have scoffed at the statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf history is any judge, when the Trump administration declares a crisis \u2018under control\u2019, it\u2019s time to brace for the worst yet to come,\u201d Brad Woodhouse, president of the public health nonprofit Protect Our Care, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Frank Yiannas, who served as FDA\u2019s deputy commissioner for food policy and response in the first Trump administration and under Biden appeared equally skeptical. Yiannas has publicly called for an independent investigation into the federal government\u2019s handling of the Cyclospora outbreaks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis one deserves a lot of questions, and it is starting to approach a catastrophic level in terms of how mismanaged it\u2019s been on multiple fronts,\u201d Yiannas told Politico<\/a>. As examples of the mismanagement, Yiannas noted the outbreak\u2019s extreme size\u2014already well over double the typical number of cases seen in recent years\u2014as well as mixed messaging and confusion among consumers. He also said there was a \u201clack of strong federal leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Susan Mayne, who served as director of the FDA\u2019s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition from 2015 to 2023, said the explosive outbreak was a \u201cwake-up call\u201d on the interconnectedness of food safety and nutrition. In an op-ed published in Stat<\/a>, she noted seeing people online turning to processed foods that they now considered safer than salads and produce\u2014such as pizza, bagged chips, and store-bought cookies\u2014foods Kennedy has tried to steer Americans away from.<\/p>\n

But \u201cOreos never gave me explosive diarrhea!\u201d one person said, according to Mayne.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsumers should not be faced with a trade-off between nutrition and food safety\u2014health is made possible when food safety supports consumer confidence in fruits and vegetables,\u201d Mayne wrote. \u201c\u2018Real foods\u2019 are vulnerable to real pathogens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, the FDA also announced that it was delaying a new rule on food traceability, which would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-830237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}