Will RFK Jr. ‘go wild on Big Food? Why that could be a good thing

Could RFK Jr. “make America healthy again”? Plus, the Mountain fire’s toll on avocado growers, the closing of a beloved Silver Lake diner, mincemeat cookies … and is apple crisp more American these days than apple pie? I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.

Is there a silver lining?

A counterintuitive idea has emerged around President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert Kennedy Jr. as our next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Although much of the focus has rightly been on his anti-vaccine and anti-fluoride positions, some have taken note of his strong language against food additives in the processed foods so many of us consume and that are making so many Americans sick.

Among the recent headlines is the Houston Chronicle’s “Could RFK Jr. be the one to take on Big Food once and for all?” in which columnist Regina Lankenau talks with Harvard nutrition professor Jerold Mande about how Democratic and Republican administrations have neglected to meaningfully address the ways food additives have contributed to increasing obesity, diabetes and other diseases.

CBS News’ Alexander Tin, in explaining the ideas being floated by advisors to Kennedy — including a “‘Make America Healthy Again’ pledge to get toxic chemicals out of the food supply” — says “advocacy groups and experts have long denounced the FDA’s ‘loophole’ in its regulation of … food additives, which allows companies to quietly decide which chemicals they deem safe enough to add to their products without going through the agency’s oversight.”

This loophole centers, Tin says, on a “provision in the FDA’s regulations on which food additives are considered by the agency to be ‘generally recognized as safe,’ or GRAS.”

Even author and filmmaker Michael Pollan has some positive words about Kennedy. In an ABC News story headlined “Some of RFK Jr.’s views are finding support in some unexpected quarters,” journalist Olivia Rubin writes that Pollan made it clear to ABC News “that he thinks Kennedy is a ‘horrible’ choice for the job.” Nevertheless, he said of Kennedy, “He’s injected these issues into the national conversation, and I think that’s a big deal. … He’s voicing a critique of the food system that is important.”

Last year, Pollan and author Eric Schlosser, with Robert Kenner and Melissa Robledo, released “Food, Inc. 2,” a documentary that, like their first “Food, Inc.” film, addresses the ways our broken food system has only gotten worse since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many in the food community would love to see someone break the status quo.

“Kennedy has … said he is asking Trump to ‘declare a national emergency, but not for infectious disease, but for chronic disease’ as [a] way to supercharge his authorities amid blowback they expect from the food industry,” writes CBS’ Tin.

Of course, it’s widely acknowledged that these elements of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” proposals are likely to be blocked by others in the Trump administration who favor deregulation above all else.

“Kennedy’s proposals would put more shackles on corporations, which run counter to Trump’s goal to deregulate the economy, and is a sharp turn from Trump’s food policies in his first term, such as rolling back pesticide restrictions and loosening nutrition rules for school lunches,” writes Barron’s Evie Liu in a story about why Kennedy’s “ambitions may never bear fruit.”

While we wait to find out which forces will win out, may I suggest that you watch “Food, Inc. 2,” which is streaming on Hulu, plus two other excellent documentaries: Laura Gabbert’s “Food and Country,” which is streaming on Apple, Amazon and YouTube, and Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s “The Grab,” featuring the reporting of Nate Halverson and streaming on Hulu and Disney+. All three have different ways of examining what’s going wrong with this country’s food system and could provide a road map for Kennedy if he really gains the power to fix what’s broken.

Easier than apple pie

Choose your own Thanksgiving apple adventure: apple crisp, apple crumble and apple cobbler.

(Catherine Dzilenski / For The Times)

When Carolynn Carreño, an accomplished pie baker and cookbook author, decided to stop making Thanksgiving pies in favor of crisps, crumbles and cobblers, it was, as she writes in her cooking feature for Sunday’s Weekend section, “no light matter.” She’s a passionate pie lover, yet, she insists, “rustic, no-fail crisps, crumbles and cobblers are not just easier than apple pie, they’re better. They are the apple dessert of America’s future.”

“Much more aligned with who we are … they’re comforting and communal … they don’t ask to be sliced just so … [they] beg you to relax in true American spirit and dig in any way you please.”

The recipe she developed for us is a “choose your own adventure” proposition with a simple apple base topped with any of four toppings: “a classic oat-studded crisp topping; a spiced, earthy whole-wheat crumble; a snickerdoodle cookie cobbler; and a gluten-free topping fortified with finely chopped walnuts or pecans, so good you can serve it with pride even to a gluten-consuming crowd.”

A jug of nocino for the holidays

Michael Purtill, left, and Corrine Purtill with a batch of nocino created from their great-grandfather’s recipe.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

One of my prized possessions is a bottle of nocino — green walnut liqueur — which I bought at Acetaia Pedroni, the great balsamic vinegar makers (who also run one of the region’s best osterias) in Rubbiara di Nonantola outside of Modena. It’s a wonderful sipping spirit with a long history in Emilia-Romagna and beyond. As Corinne Purtill, our science and medicine reporter, writes for Food this week, many Italian American families, including hers, have made nocino — “an Italian liqueur that looks like tar and tastes like Christmas” — a holiday tradition. She tells the story of trying to re-create her great grandfather’s recipe, which involved 40 days on the roof of his Lincoln Heights home to transform the unripe nuts and spices into something drinkable. “The goal is to capture a flavor in a bottle that’s only possible at a certain time each year,” she writes, “and that can never be precisely re-created again.”

If you don’t have 40 days to make your own nocino but have access to a bottle from your favorite spirits shop, Purtill and her brother came up with a nocino-fueled negroni recipe in which the nocino gives “the cocktail just the right amount of kick without overpowering the other ingredients.”

The great mincemeat holiday cookie

John Cleveland with his holiday family mincemeat cookies at his L.A. restaurant Post & Beam.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Our “Chef That!” video series returned last week with Bridgetown Roti chef Rashida Holmes showing us how she makes her customer-favorite macaroni and cheese pie. In this week’s segment, Post & Beam chef John Cleveland demonstrated his version of a family recipe for tender, delicate, lightly sweet mincemeat cookies. Both chefs and their recipes were featured in assistant Food editor Danielle Dorsey‘s wonderful feature story “At Black Thanksgiving, both body and soul are fed.”

More for the holidays: Cindy Carcamo finds 10 kid-friendly cooking classes and activities to book this celebration season.

The Mountain fire’s toll on avocado farmers

Avocado farmer Sergio Acevedo, 75, had about 100 of his 300 avocado trees damaged or destroyed by the Mountain fire at his two-acre farm in Somis.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Sergio Acevedo, 75, achieved what many would describe as the American dream. He came to the U.S. from Mexico City as an immigrant farmer with just “$100 in his pocket” as Cindy Carcamo writes. “From that, he bought a home, put his two children through college and put a down payment on his daughter’s home. In 2003, he poured most of his retirement money into buying the avocado orchard where he also grows … other fruit such as mandarins, cherimoya and pomegranates. After years of him spending every free minute on the farm, his orchard became productive and profitable enough to sustain itself.”

But after this month’s Mountain fire, some 100 of his 300 avocado trees were destroyed or damaged. “So far, 4,102 acres of avocados were in the burn area, representing a quarter of the 16,497 acres of avocados harvested last year in Ventura County,” which is now California’s largest producer of the fruit.

In her story, Carcamo found Acevedo ready to rebuild: “Nothing is impossible,” he told her. “You just have to work hard. I just need to start over.”

Also …

• Stephanie Breijo’s Quick Bites column features the new Cipriani Jazz Café “that hides above the restaurant’s main dining room, where trios, solo vocalists and other musicians fill the stylish space with music Thursday to Saturday.” She also gets a personal tour, captured on video, from Curtis Stone of the Pie Room, the pop-up that is now a permanent shop in the Beverly Hills space that was home to his tasting menu restaurant Maude. She also writes about the new Eagle Rock pizzeria Wildcrust, the Southern food and natural wine outpost Jim + James in East Hollywood, Palma Ristorante with Roman chef Emidio Tidu in Burbank and a new branch of Goldburger in Chinatown.
• Breijo also reports that All Day Baby, the beloved Silver Lake diner from Here’s Looking at You’s Lien Ta and late chef Jonathan Whitener, will close Dec. 15. “We’re literally almost out of money,” Ta says. “Every week, every day we’re open, we lose money.”
• More from the amazing Breijo: Evil Cooks, the “genre-bending” pop-up from “husband-and-wife team Alex ‘Pobre Diablo’ Garcia and Elvia ‘La Bruja’ Huerta, both of whom used to play in bands [and] make some of the best and most creative tacos in L.A.,” has gone full bricks-and-mortar with a new permanent restaurant space in El Sereno.
• Many of us on the Food team spent much of the week reading page proofs for this year’s guide to the 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles, written and curated by critic Bill Addison and columnist Jenn Harris. The list, which arrives as a beautiful magazine in subscribers’ papers Dec. 7, will be published digitally the night of Dec. 3, just as the restaurants are announced at the reveal party taking place for the first time at the Hollywood Palladium. If you would like to join us as we unveil 2024’s 101 best restaurants — plus new honorees on our restaurant Hall of Fame — tickets are available here.