This is in conversation from Apple News. I'm Chenitha Bessu. Today, how to make America's

food system, better. Over the past few months we've been bringing you the voices of experts who are thinking

about how to fix big problems in this country.

We heard Ezra Klein's ideas on how to fix politics, Emily Oster's ideas on how to help working

parents, and Franklin Leonard's suggestions to make Hollywood a better place.

Today we turn to a problem so entrenched, so big, so part of everything we do and are as a country. Our food. Our food system is fundamentally broken.

We produce food that is optimized for profits, not quality. Yes, we make a lot of food, but so little of it is good for us, and a lot of it is actually making us sick.

And it does huge harm to the planet.

For so long we've been told that food and diet are personal choices, but when

you look at the scope of industrial agriculture in America, you'll see that that just

isn't true.

It makes things feel insurmountable.

That's food writer Mark Bidman.

Because you're not, oh, how do we get little kids

to eat fewer candy bars or whatever?

You're like, how do we get food companies

to stop planting only corn and soybeans

so that the only food that's being made is bad for you?

You know, that's like saying saying how do you get fossil fuel

companies to stop digging? Well fossil fuel companies are there to dig so and

food companies are there to make money. Mark has written dozens of cookbooks including one that's been on my shelf for years and maybe yours too, the famous How to Cook Everything.

But he mostly writes about how food intersects with policy and politics.

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