Shireen Abdullah: 00:01 

Food policy isn’t abstract. It’s the rules behind affordability, access, and marketing. We unpack the biggest drivers of our nation’s diet, where policy reduces or worsens chronic disease, and how sustainability fits in. Don’t miss the closing playbook for influencing change in your community. Podcasting from Dallas, Texas, I am Shireen, and this is the Yumlish Podcast.

Shireen Abdullah: 00:29 

Yumlish is working to empower you to take charge of your health through diet and exercise and reduce the risk of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease. We hope to share a unique perspective and a culturally relevant approach to managing these chronic conditions with you each week.

Shireen Abdullah: 00:52

Christina Badaracco works as a healthcare consultant, author, and thought leader, seeking to advance the role of nutrition in healthcare. She also regularly writes, teaches, and develops programs about nutrition, culinary medicine, and sustainable agriculture at both local and national levels. Welcome, Christina.

Christina Badaracco: 01:12 

Thank you so much. Excited to be here. 

Shireen Abdullah: 01:14

Well, I will say welcome again, Christina, because we’ve done an episode before back in 2023, in fact, called Elevating the Role of Nutrition Services in Healthcare. So it’s been a little bit since that episode, but so glad to have you on again here with us today. Today, though, our topic is more centered around food policy. But before we dive into that, Christina…

Shireen Abdullah: 01:35 

remind our audience a little bit more about your background and what drew you to this intersection of nutrition and now what we’re talking about with food policy. 

Christina Badaracco: 01:45

Absolutely. So I think maybe starting in college, while I was an undergrad, I became very interested in environmental policy. And actually, my first job after college was at the EPA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. And I think for a variety of reasons, I started

Christina Badaracco: 02:05

decided to shift gears a little bit. I was actually thinking about going to law school initially, and became a little bit more interested in the human health implications of environmental issues in the country, and started volunteering with local organizations focused on food, local farmers markets, children’s gardens, things like that, and decided to go to grad school in public health

Christina Badaracco: 02:28

And through, I think, various opportunities, as I mentioned, volunteering and kind of doing research. And during grad school, I spent one summer working in the local school district and learned more about the school lunch program and barriers that public schools face to getting healthier, more scratch-made foods, more local foods onto their menus.

Christina Badaracco: 02:51

And then I also really got to develop much more expertise as I had a wonderful opportunity to embark on a book project. So we’ll probably talk a little bit later today about the Farm Bill. So I was connected while I was in grad school to eventually who became my co-author to work on a book about the Farm Bill, which is our country’s really largest piece of ag legislation. So I think it’s been kind of a winding journey.

Christina Badaracco: 03:17

path spanning from undergrad to grad school and then various professional opportunities ever since that have developed passions and areas of expertise across different areas of food policy that have shaped a lot of the work that I do today, both in practice and in education.

Shireen Adbullah: 03:36

How fascinating. And like I said, today’s episode is really focused on talking about food policy. I do want to take a step back and just sort of define that a little bit. When we say food policy, what all does that actually encompass? Because there’s a lot within it.

Christina Badaracco: 03:55

There is. And I think that’s also helpful for us to lay the groundwork a little bit today, because I would imagine you probably have a wide variety of listeners coming into your podcasts who might define food policy differently. So maybe just to lay a little bit of groundwork, as I mentioned, I think one important component to keep in mind is when we talk about

Christina Badaracco: 04:17

policy, in government, we have divisions of power. So policymakers refer to individuals in Congress and in state assemblies and city councils, who are the ones who are elected officials who are developing, actually writing policies.

Christina Badaracco: 04:39

And then at the agency level, we have individuals who are implementing policy. I mentioned a minute ago, the Environmental Protection Agency, you know, off another big stakeholder in the food world is USDA, or Department of Agriculture, at the federal level. And then we have state departments of agriculture.

Christina Badaracco: 04:57

So those are the agencies that have budgets allocated, and they are implementing policies. And then we have courts at various levels, local all the way up to the Supreme Court, that are interpreting policy. And so food policy, agriculture, health comes into play at kind of all of those different levels.

Christina Badaracco: 05:21

Those you and I and listeners today, I think, also play a role in policy. We’re constituents. We’re taxpayers. We’re advocates. We can even be expert witnesses. And we’ll probably come back at the end of our call today about kind of different roles that people can play in policy. And then one other distinction I think I can call out is that.

Christina Badaracco: 05:42

We have policy, food policy at the federal level that very often serves as a baseline, might set basic requirements and give authority to state and local governments to maybe come up with more stringent requirements or provide additional incentives.

Christina Badaracco: 06:02

At the federal level, some of our primary forms of food policy are our dietary guidelines for Americans. We have the Farm Bill, which I mentioned before. The largest component of our Farm Bill is the nutrition title, which includes programs like

Christina Badaracco: 06:19

SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, and GUSNIP. We have child nutrition reauthorization, which reflects our national school lunch program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC. We have our Organic Foods Production Act that affects our national organic program.

Christina Badaracco: 06:38

food labeling and claims, thinking about all that FDA, our Food and Drug Administration does. And then I’ve read articles that suggest we actually have 20 different federal departments and agencies that play some role in shaping our food system. So I mentioned before USDA and EPA, but there are other agencies, Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, Department of Interior. So we have many different federal stakeholders involved in kind of affecting implementation of food policy.

Christina Badaracco: 07:07

And then at the state and local levels, there are so many different ways that policy is affecting our food system. So, for example, we have zoning and land use planning that affect where food can be grown. Think of urban farms, where food can be sold, who has access.

Christina Badaracco: 07:25 

What foods might be taxed, you know, in the last decade or so, we have more and more sugar-sweetened beverage taxes and things like that. And we have bills called cottage food bills that affect who can make and sell food.

Christina Badaracco: 07:41

More and more states are allowing people to make and sell food from their home kitchens. There might be grants that are allocated to incentivize more local food production, incentivize more groceries and farmers markets to open in food insecure areas.

Christina Badaracco: 08:02

And then I guess just my last thought here would be that when we talk about a policy, what I’ve been mentioning so far are policies coming from government. But non-governmental organizations can also set policies. So, for example, a hospital or a healthcare system can set policies.

Christina Badaracco: 08:19

They can decide they’re going to set their own policy for what food might be served. For example, years ago, UCSF, University of California, San Francisco, was it may have been the first hospital or one of the first to decide they’re no longer going to sell or serve sugar-sweetened beverages in their system. So schools can do the same. You can set maybe a wellness policy.

Christina Badaracco: 08:42

that affects what food might be sold or marketed or purchased within an individual institution. So all of these different levels of policy will affect what’s grown, what’s sold, what’s marketed, and then what the prices are and what people have access to.

Shireen Abdullah: 09:03

Across these various sort of key policies, which ones have the biggest influence that you would think on our nation’s diet, on our health? Which ones are they? Can you point us to it? 

Christina Badaracco: 09:16

Wow, that’s hard to say because I would say all of them affect our diet in some respect.

Christina Badaracco: 09:25

Let’s see, which have the biggest influences? Well, from my perspective, and I think if anyone listening to your podcast has ever heard me talk about the farm bill before, I do think that our systems of food subsidies in this country are very influential. You know, I know at the end of the day, there are many factors that affect food decisions that people make. But I think

Christina Badaracco: 09:53

 the fact that almost all, the vast majority of the subsidies that we give in this country

Christina Badaracco: 10:00

coming from the federal level, toward primarily commodity crops, things like corn and soy, and wheat that are used… Well, when they’re used in the food supply, they end up primarily in ultra-processed foods that are highly…

Christina Badaracco: 10:18

prevalent and cheap and unhealthy for consumers. Much of them don’t even end up in the food supply at all. Those are really, I think, leading to an overabundance of unhealthy foods in the market that are relatively cheap and accessible for people and lead to poor health.

Christina Badaracco: 10:36

And, you know, we don’t have time to get into all of the sort of negative implications of our subsidy systems today. But relatively speaking, it’s also then harder for producers of more of the healthy foods to be able to reach the market and sell their foods at… 

Christina Badaracco: 10:57

a rate that actually allows them to stay in business and provide living reasonable wages to their workers. So I think, again, sort of subsidy systems, the way they’re currently set up in our country, are really influential on what people have access to and the foods that we see on shelves, whether in corner stores, grocery stores, whatever that might be. So maybe I’ll pause there. I think that I’m not saying that’s

Christina Badaracco: 11:25

You know, subsidy systems are the only influential policy, but one of the big ones, definitely. And also, I guess the reason why I call that out is as compared to maybe nutrition assistance programs, which are geared toward a subset of our population.

Christina Badaracco: 11:40

Like SNAP, for example, also very influential on food access and what people are eating, but only reaching a subset of the population. Maybe in the case of SNAP, I think around one out of seven Americans, whereas our subsidy systems are affecting food and access and health across the entire swath of our country, and even more broadly because it’s affecting what we export as well.

Shireen Abdullah: 12:03

How fascinating. And I see how you’re looking at it from the lens of like reach itself. You mentioned something in passing that I just want to clarify real quick, or get your clarity on real quick, which was around the subsidy of corn, soy, wheat, for instance. And you said it’s not quite making it to our food supply or something to that effect. Would you clarify that?

Christina Badaracco: 12:25

Yes, absolutely. And don’t want to take us too far off topic today, but I do think it’s important to keep in mind that a lot of these top commodities, like corn and soy, being our really two top commodities grown and subsidized in the U.S., a lot of them don’t even end up in the food supply. So in the case of corn, for example, about a third of the corn that we grow in this country is used to produce ethanol, much of which is used in the transportation sector.

Christina Badaracco: 12:55

Um, so it’s, we’re growing it on farmland. Um, and you know, farmers are producing it. We’re heavily subsidizing it, and it’s ending up, uh, in the transportation sector. Um, uh, we export a lot of our corn. We do a lot of other, uh, use it as a cheap form of feed, um, uh, which sort of indirectly ends up in the food supply.

Christina Badaracco: 13:19

Yeah, I think ethanol and sort of other outputs used in other industries are one, another primary way that our corn and soy are used.

Shireen Abdullah: 13:30

Interesting. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. How do food policies contribute to or help reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases? In particular, I’m referring to diabetes, type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, for instance.

Christina Badaracco: 13:48

Yeah. So I guess there can be both a positive and a negative direction. So food policies can contribute to the prevalence of chronic disease. And I think what I just kind of give a brief overview of when we have subsidy systems or other types of programs that make unhealthy foods

Christina Badaracco: 14:07

abundant and cheap and accessible, that can lead to an increased risk for or prevalence of some of these diet-related diseases that you mentioned. When people are consuming more unhealthy foods and less nutrient-dense foods that are good for people and good for the planet, that leads to more of these diseases.

Christina Badaracco: 14:26

On the other hand, there are policies that can help to reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases. So maybe to throw out a few different types of examples, you know, one, I guess, type of policy that’s been shown to improve prevention.

Christina Badaracco: 14:46

at least, I think, purchases of food, which down the line would be expected to lead to improved health outcomes, would be taxation on sugar-sweetened beverages, which I mentioned before briefly. I was in grad school and lived in Berkeley when Berkeley was the first city in the country to pass a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. And I know multiple evaluations since then of different cities that have passed these taxation measures.

Christina Badaracco: 15:11

Policies have shown that purchases have drastically decreased, meaning people are purchasing less sugar-sweetened beverages, which would be expected in the long run to lead to less, I think, contribution of sugar.

Christina Badaracco: 15:29

diseases like type 2 diabetes and obesity when people are consuming less refined sugar, which is leading to less spikes in blood sugar, maybe less contribution to diabetes or better management of some of these conditions. I think there have been some studies suggesting that policies around food labeling, so what is both on the food packaging itself, and then what might be

Christina Badaracco: 15:57

labeled in the store can lead to better purchases and better food behaviors. And then I think maybe one other example I’ll give, not necessarily a policy per se, but a program, a federal program. I mentioned earlier one of our largest federal nutrition assistance programs in this country is WIC, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance for Women, Infants, and Children.

Christina Badaracco: 16:24

which is funded through Child Nutrition Reauthorization, has a vast, I think the vast majority of studies done on outcomes from participating in our WIC program really does show benefits to health. So just very, very briefly, the really beneficiaries in this program include women who are pregnant or postpartum, and then their infants or children up to age five.

Christina Badaracco: 16:54

So we’re talking about a subset of the population here who are eligible to participate. And there are studies showing benefits to all of these groups. So women who participate while they’re pregnant or postpartum, their infants, when they have support, maybe better support for breastfeeding, more nutrient-dense foods at those very early stages of life.

Christina Badaracco: 17:14

We’re seeing better dietary quality, better health outcomes, even looking at better outcomes for children in school, better cognitive outcomes and better development. So I think WIC is one example of a nutrition assistance program that is often looked to by stakeholders across the aisle from various different areas of academia that is really looked to as a program that has been well worth the investment.

Shireen Abdullah: 17:43

That was actually going to be my next question to you. And maybe the answer is, WIC, where I was going to ask you to share an example of a policy or program that you think has successfully improved those health outcomes. And it seems like WIC might be just that.

Christina Badaracco: 17:55

Yeah. And I think, you know, there are other a wide variety of other nutrition assistance programs and other sort of more recent approach that I’m especially excited about. I mentioned earlier on a program called GUSNIP, which is an incentive program funded through the Farm Bill that basically helps to stretch food.

Christina Badaracco: 18:18

benefits that are given to SNAP participants so that their dollars go farther when purchasing healthier foods, which is maybe sometimes limited to produce, fruits and vegetables, but sometimes interpreted more broadly. And I think these sorts of programs are not new in the grand scheme of things, but when funded using federal dollars, such as through the Farm Bill, these programs are fairly new.

Christina Badaracco: 18:44

And so the evidence base for how these sort of incentive programs like the produce prescriptions and others, the evidence base is still a little bit new. But I do think for the most part, we are also seeing beneficial outcomes kind of in the short run to what people are purchasing, what they’re cooking at home, what their decisions are. And I know that there are studies in the works, kind of longer term studies to be able to show beneficial outcomes like we’ve seen for many years through WIC.

Shireen Abdullah: 19:13

How does sustainability, whether economic, social, environmental, really factor into nutrition policy? And how can we design food systems that are, at the end of the day, healthy for people and the planet?

Christina Badaracco: 19:28

Well, that’s a very important question. I’d also say an enormous question, one that we can’t necessarily solve today, but I think an important question to keep in mind for any of these stakeholder groups I was talking about thus far, whether the policymakers, the implementers, the interpreters, or the constituents, you know, all of us here on the call. So one thought I’ll just share, I guess,

Christina Badaracco: 19:50

to start my answer is that sustainability, as you pointed out, incorporates different factors. So I think a lot of us, when we hear the word sustainability and

Christina Badaracco: 20:00

think of environmental sustainability, which is so important. We need to make sure that the resources that we’re using are available in perpetuity and we’re not detracting from the environment and, you know, leading to more pollution that is hurting wildlife and sort of all of these other factors. But sustainability also implies, as you mentioned, economic factors, social factors. And there are different groups of people

Christina Badaracco: 20:28

May define sustainability in different ways. So in terms of designing food systems, we need to remember that there are different stakeholder groups involved who may have kind of different priorities. And that might be groups from different industries, different states, different regions, etc.

Christina Badaracco: 20:44

Um, so I think one, maybe I’ll, I’ll bring up kind of a different, uh, I’m sorry, a few different examples to answer this question. Um, so at the, well, at the end of the day, I guess I would love to see programs put in place and policies put in place at all of the different levels that I mentioned before, federal, all the way down to local that are designed, um, to make sure that, uh,

Christina Badaracco: 21:11

all people have access to and understanding of foods that are good for them and good for the planet. That, unfortunately, is not reflecting our current food system in this country.

Christina Badaracco: 21:28

And there have been some efforts, I’d say, at all of these different levels to impart more sustainable food systems. So one example at the federal level, some of your listeners may remember, in the most recent iteration, I believe it was the most recent iteration of our Dietary Guidelines for Americans, there was discussion about inclusion of principles around sustainability. So should we be writing…

Christina Badaracco: 21:55

Disseminating dietary guidelines, like making recommendations for people and then also incorporating these guidelines into school lunch program and other nutritional assistance programs that account for sustainability. There was a lot of debate about this and ultimately the guidelines that were published.

Christina Badaracco: 22:12

Did not account for sustainability. And I think a lot of constituents, a lot of stakeholder groups think that was really a missed opportunity. I think, you know, I mentioned before our systems of subsidies in this country that unfortunately are primarily.

Christina Badaracco: 22:31

funding the types of producers that are not necessarily leading to the best environmental outcomes, you know, not necessarily being held or not being held to any requirements around environmental stewardship. So I think one…

Christina Badaracco: 22:50

Just last week, I’ll share an update. So we are currently it is December 18th. I’m not sure when what exact date this podcast will be shared. But just last week, we had the U.S. Department of Agriculture made an announcement that a certain amount of our conservation dollars from USDA was

Christina Badaracco: 23:11

are going to be allocated toward regenerative agriculture moving forward. And these two largest programs covered through our Farm Bill in the past have not always in the past. Very often, I think a criticism that they receive is they are often propping up our largest polluters. So we’re really just paying polluters. And when I say polluters, I mean producers that are emitting, agricultural producers that are emitting pollutants

Christina Badaracco: 23:39

We’re really just subsidizing them to clean up rather than incentivizing them to change their practices and move toward more sustainable, organic, regenerative practices that don’t lead to pollution in the first place. But I do think that it is exciting that we have an announcement that a larger amount of these funds will be earmarked in a sense for regenerative agriculture moving forward.

Christina Badaracco: 24:02

So that’s, I think, one step in the right direction. I think there are many other factors that we need to account for. On the one hand, where our subsidy dollars are going. I think also our education to consumers from government at all levels really matters. I think we don’t have a lot of time today to talk about procurement, but goodness, thinking about all of the assistance programs we have at the federal level and then think of

Christina Badaracco: 24:31

all the different ways in which our government procures food, like for public schools, for government buildings. I live here in Washington, D.C. They all have food courts. I mean, there are just so many ways in which our federal government is buying and disseminating food. Think about the policies we could put in place around procurement to purchase more of that food from

Christina Badaracco: 24:54

local, regenerative, sustainable agriculture that would put more dollars back into the farms that are being good environmental stewards. So we’re seeing some action in that level, I think, in that area across all levels of government. And I think there’s more room for improvement on that procurement side as well.

Shireen Abdullah: 25:15

To our listeners here today, Christina, who are thinking about all of this and going, well, this all seems more at the national level, at the federal level. Can I do something? What role can I play in all of this? So I’d love for you to maybe talk about how listeners who want to make a difference are

Shireen Abdullah: 25:35

Where do they start? What role can they play in their own lives in their local communities in helping to shape a lot of the future, healthier food policies?

Christina Badaracco: 25:46

Yeah, I appreciate that question. And I always love when I give a presentation on a topic like this to end with sort of calls to action. So I guess the most immediate thought is keep in mind, we are all consumers at a bare minimum as individuals. You know, we need to buy groceries and we eat at restaurants and we might go to a farmer’s market. So remember that the way we spend our dollars is

Christina Badaracco: 26:11

Even in the absence of policy, the way that we spend our dollars does have an influence on what food companies are making and what types of food businesses are actually able to operate. So when we have opportunities to shop at farmers markets and make sure more of our dollars get right to the farmer.

Christina Badaracco: 26:31

Or when we have the opportunity to buy from a producer, you know, a company even in the grocery store that might be raising their products regeneratively or organically. That’s a signal to that business. So we, I think, at the individual level…

Christina Badaracco: 26:47

play a role. Some people on this call may also have influence at the institutional level. So back to that concept of procurement that I mentioned. So maybe folks listening to this podcast work in food service, or maybe they don’t, but they work for an institution. Maybe you’re a physician working at a hospital, and you do have influence. If you talk to your administrators and say, it’s important that we get more sustainable food in our institution, people will listen.

Christina Badaracco: 27:16

And so I think that sort of procurement matters. I mentioned before, we are all constituents. So it really matters who we vote for. And even if the person who might be the best champion for healthy and sustainable food does not win, that does not mean all is lost. That means we, the constituents, have more work to do. Right. We need to.

Christina Badaracco: 27:40

contact our representatives, whoever is in office, and this is at the local and the federal level, to let them know what matters to us. And that can be to thank them for what they’re doing, to reinforce your constituents, your voters are happy with what you’re doing. Please keep prioritizing healthy and sustainable foods. Or maybe it could be

Christina Badaracco: 28:02

The need to indicate I don’t support this. I think, you know, as an example, this bill you just signed on to, Mr. Congressman or Mrs. Congresswoman, is going to hurt Americans. It’s going to put small farmers out of business. It’s going to make Americans sicker.

Christina Badaracco: 28:18

So we need to speak up. And I think we all have our own areas of expertise. And it’s important when we are engaging as advocates to use our voice and use our expertise. So maybe you are a teacher working in a public school, and you’re seeing poor outcomes to your students because they’re eating unhealthy processed foods in the cafeteria.

Christina Badaracco: 28:40

Or maybe you are a health care provider, again, treating a lot of these chronic diseases like we talked about before. So use your expertise to tell your representatives, I’m treating so much of this chronic disease because driven in large part by our food system in this country.

Christina Badaracco: 28:58 

using our expertise to tell stories to influence policy. And then I think just, you know, also staying up to date. Today, in a podcast, you know, we can’t cover the entire landscape of food policy, but having a little bit better sense of what all of the policies are and then figuring out maybe what is kind of currently happening and

Christina Badaracco: 29:20

Maybe what are one or two pieces that you especially care about? And then stay up to date and, you know, happy to share some recommended resources and closing maybe and follow up if you can post some links. But stay up to date and then make sure when you are engaging as an advocate or even just talking with your friends and your colleagues and your neighbors that you’re sharing really evidence based, fact based information so that you can be, again, a compelling, convincing advocate and constituent.

Shireen Abdullah: 29:51

Well, let’s maybe take it there and then we’ll wrap up the episode, but help us sort of look ahead. What are the things in the pipeline? What can we look forward to when it comes to food?

Shireen Abdullah: 30:00

policy like help us sort of see what 2026 could potentially look like 

Christina Badaracco: 30:05

yeah well gosh it’s it’s a little hard to say our listeners certainly know there have been so many factors that have been really unpredictable this year with you know for example grants that had been allocated not coming through or you know new programs being announced

Christina Badaracco: 30:23

I think, you know, I mentioned a few minutes ago this exciting news from USDA last week around some of our conservation dollars really going toward regenerative producers and helping more producers to adopt regenerative practices in this country, which is exciting, I think, and fairly new for USDA and not just new for the current administration, but new across the board. So that’s exciting.

Christina Badaracco: 30:47

I think what remains kind of a bit of a question mark and hopefully this USDA announcement is is an indication of hope is the sort of broader Make America Healthy Again movement. I think thus far we’ve seen most action and impetus.

Christina Badaracco: 31:06

happening, coming from the Department of Health and Human Services, and then even sort of trickle down to the state level. But we haven’t yet seen much change on the agricultural side. So how do we make America healthier again by creating a healthier agriculture system and making sure that people have access to healthier food?

Christina Badaracco: 31:25

So I am hopeful that we’ll see a little bit more sort of trickle down and more coordination across the different departments at the federal level and the state level. I think we are seeing, you know, I mentioned a few different concepts today around like procurement and food purchasing. So I think we are seeing kind of more.

Christina Badaracco: 31:49

positive change at the institutional level, schools, health care institutions and others purchasing healthier foods. And sometimes that’s even voluntary in the absence of policy. But sometimes there are incentive structures in place to drive that. And maybe one last example I’ll mention.

Christina Badaracco: 32:09

We probably would have talked about this a little bit more in my last recording, but thinking a little bit more on the health care side, when we think about insurance coverage, we’re seeing continued growth of what’s often called the food is medicine movement or the current federal administration calling it more kind of food is health.

Christina Badaracco: 32:25

We are seeing more and more insurance companies cover food-related benefits for, in particular, Medicare Advantage and Medicaid patients, but some often even in the commercial sector. And I’m actually currently working on a really exciting project with a food hub in the D.C. metro area that is kind of building out their healthcare partnerships as part of a national collaborative right now to better integrate

Christina Badaracco: 32:53

This food is medicine movement with local, sustainable and regenerative agriculture. So this food hub that sources from regenerative farms around the D.C. area, we’re better connecting with insurance companies around the D.C. area so that when they are providing produce prescriptions and medically tailored meals and these types of benefits to more often these high risk patients.

Christina Badaracco: 33:16

We’re prioritizing making sure that this food is coming from these D.C. area farms who are growing their food responsibly. So I think we’re seeing better infrastructure and more momentum and demand and sometimes even incentives and other types of policies for this merging of sustainable and regenerative agriculture with food is medicine and food.

Shireen Abdullah: 33:40

Clearly a lot to cover there, right? It’s such a rich topic. I mean, it’s just so evolving at the same time. We are toward the end of the episode here though, Christina. How can our listeners connect with you, stay up to date, just learn more about this amazing work you’re doing? 

Christina Badaracco: 33:54

Appreciate that. Yeah. So I think, you know, I am probably not quite as up to date with maintaining my website as I should be, but I’d say I have an events page on my website. So

Christina Badaracco: 34:06

For folks who may live across the country, I go to a fair number of conferences each year and give presentations. So, whether that might be Tennessee, Utah, Pennsylvania, wherever it might be, I would suggest look at my events page. And if you’re coming to any of these conferences or live in those states, I would love to meet folks. Some of my presentations are also virtual. And I try to also post recordings when I give podcasts like this or presentations.

Christina Badaracco: 34:35

I enjoy writing articles throughout each year as well, and outlets like Health Affairs, Today’s Dietitian, various other peer-reviewed journals. I’d say I’m fairly active on LinkedIn if your listeners want to connect with me there.

Christina Badaracco: 34:53

Let’s see. I think if folks also are interested in getting in touch, they can send me a message through my website. And I think you’ll probably be able to share my personal website in the show notes or also through LinkedIn. If folks are interested in ways to connect, looking for a particular resource, want to just kind of better learn about a topic we mentioned briefly today, would be happy to be in touch with any listeners as well. So they’re welcome to contact me.

Shireen Abdullah: 35:18

Sounds great. With that, Christina, thank you so very much for your time here today. Again, such a rich episode. I feel like this episode, it can be like broken up into two parts. Like there’s a lot of content and we barely scratched the surface. There’s a lot more to cover. But with that, thank you so much. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning into another episode of the Yumlish Podcast. Head over to our social media and answer this good question, which is how do you see food policy affecting your own health and your own community?

Shireen Abdullah: 35:46

Again, head over to at Yumlish on Facebook, on Instagram. Find this podcast post. Comment below to tell us again, how do you see food policy affecting your own health and that of your communities? We will continue the conversation over there. And thank you again, Christina. Until next time. 

Christina Badaracco: 36:01

Thank you.

Shireen Abdullah: 36:02

Thank you for listening to the Yumlish podcast. Make sure to follow us on social media at Yumlish underscore on Instagram and Twitter and at Yumlish on Facebook and LinkedIn for tips about managing your diabetes and other chronic conditions and to chat and connect with us about your journey and perspective.

Shireen Abdullah: 36:23

You can also visit our website, yumlish.com, for more recipes, advice, and to get involved with all of the exciting opportunities Yumlish has to offer. If you like this week’s show, make sure to subscribe so you can hear more from us every time we post. Thank you again, and we’ll see you next time. Remember, your health always comes first. Stay well.

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