How glyphosate got a greenlight from Trump
Good Food
KCRW
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2026
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Good Food:
- Journalist Lisa Held digs into the controversy around Donald Trump's executive order encouraging the production of glyphosate, the key ingredient in the herbicide Round Up.
- Benjamin Delwiche aka Benjamin the Baker has tips for bakers entering the fruit and cooked custard categories in this year's PieFest.
- Culinary anthropologist Ozoz Sokoh explores the cuisine of Nigeria.
- Julia Child Foundation Fellow Janek Schaller dives into California's purple urchin explosion.
- Ilhan Mohamed Abdi weaves together flavors and techniques to celebrate the holy month of Ramadan.
- At the farmers market, chef Josiah Citrin cheers for cherimoyas.
Connect with Good Food host Evan Kleiman on Substack.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From KCRW, I'm Evan Klyman, and this is good food. |
| 0:05.4 | Glyphosate. |
| 0:06.7 | It's the key ingredient in the weed killer known as Roundup, and it's the most popular herbicide in the world. |
| 0:14.7 | It's also widely believed to cause cancer. |
| 0:18.7 | Just last week, President Donald Trump issued an executive order not only |
| 0:23.4 | encouraging its production, but declaring a steady supply of glyphosate essential for national |
| 0:30.5 | security. And I don't think it's an understatement to say that many maha moms were furious. |
| 0:38.1 | Campaigning against glyphosate has been a pillar of the Make America Healthy Again movement. |
| 0:43.6 | So what does this betrayal mean for our health, our planet, and our politics? |
| 0:49.1 | We asked journalist Lisa Held, who reports on environmental and food issues for civil eats. |
| 0:55.8 | Hi, Lisa. |
| 0:57.1 | Hi, Evan. |
| 0:58.2 | Let's start with the primer on glyphosate. |
| 1:00.8 | What is it? |
| 1:01.6 | How does it work? |
| 1:02.5 | And what products is it found in? |
| 1:04.9 | Sure. |
| 1:05.6 | Glyphosate is a broad-based herbicide, which basically means it kills a lot of weeds. |
| 1:10.4 | Some herbicides only target |
| 1:11.9 | certain kinds of weeds. Glyphosate just basically kills them all. And as you mentioned, |
| 1:18.3 | it's the active ingredient in Roundup, but other companies also make products that contain it. |
| 1:23.5 | The important thing to know about glyphosate is that it's so widely used because Monsanto, which Bayer bought in 2018, engineered crops that are resistant to it. |
... |
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