Food choices, traced back to their systems.
Food Sleuth Radio treats food as a public health system, not just a set of personal choices. Its conversations move from celiac disease, kidney stones, and collagen to pesticide exposure, SNAP funding, farmers markets, and agribusiness influence.
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Food Sleuth Radio is built around a simple premise: food choices cannot be separated from health care, farming, regulation, money, and public trust. The show’s center is the extended interview. Melinda Hemmelgarn introduces guests with care, then lets them explain the work behind their expertise. The result is steady rather than flashy. Episodes often begin with a practical question: how collagen supplements are being studied, how gluten-related disorders affect daily life, or what people can do to reduce kidney-stone risk through diet. From there, the conversation widens. Clinical topics are treated as public issues when access to hospitals, insurance, dietitians, or reliable information is uncertain. Agriculture gets the same treatment. Discussions with Lee Evslin examine glyphosate, Roundup, chlorpyrifos, children’s vulnerability to pesticide exposure, and the policy fights that follow scientific concern. Conversations with Stacy Malkan focus on agribusiness influence, lobbying, public relations, pesticide companies, and the documents used to show how science and opinion can be shaped. The farmers market episodes add another layer. Kelly Verel describes public markets as community infrastructure, where vendors, managers, SNAP benefits, health services, kitchens, families, and local farmers all meet. The show respects detail. It spends time on credentials, lived experience, and the practical labor behind public health work. It is not a quick-tips nutrition program. It is better understood as food reporting by interview: careful, advocacy-minded, and interested in what happens when personal health depends on larger systems.
Made for: For listeners who want nutrition conversations grounded in public health, agriculture, policy, and community access. It especially suits people who prefer expert interviews over lifestyle chatter.
What sets it apart: The show links practical diet questions to the policy and production systems behind them. It moves comfortably between clinical nutrition, pesticide scrutiny, farmers markets, and civic accountability.
Dietitian Melinda Hemmelgarn helps listeners “think beyond their plates,” connect the dots between food, health and agriculture, and find food truth.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Food Sleuth Radio connects practical food decisions to the policies, markets and institutions that quietly shape them.
Melinda Hemmelgarn follows food questions from everyday choices into the institutions and policies that shape them. Food Sleuth Radio uses focused guest interviews to connect practical concerns with their wider consequences, moving between gluten-free labeling, food marketing to…
Melinda Hemmelgarn turns your farmers' market trip into a question about farmers' health insurance.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A broad case for public markets as essential infrastructure, centered on the labor of market managers and SNAP redemption.
Food Sleuth Radio returns to Kelly Verrill for a grounded look at public markets and the work behind them. The conversation keeps its focus on the many moving parts that make a seasonal farmers market function: vendor recruitment, vendor engagement, promotion, marketing, and the…
Public markets are presented as community anchors, not just places to buy food.
Food Sleuth Radio treats public markets as community infrastructure, and Kelly Verrill of Project for Public Spaces ties that idea to planning and design.
A clear look at local food policy, practical buying, and the institutions behind food access.
Food systems stay at the center here, and the conversation keeps pulling that idea back to ordinary decisions: who can buy local food, who can sell it, and what institutions need to do to make both work.
A practical tour of the labels and ingredients that matter for celiac safety.
Food Sleuth Radio gives the celiac and gluten-related-disorders conversation a practical, grounded shape. Jessica Lebovitz walks through gluten-free labels, ingredient lists, nutritional yeast, and the gray zone of yeast extract, and her authority comes through clearly from her…
A clear, grounded review of the policy fights behind food marketing to children.
Food marketing to children is treated here as a matter of policy, disclosure, and accountability, with Katie Marks of the Center for Science and the Public Interest tracing how influencers, industry pressure, and regulators shape what young audiences see.
The body, read as a message.
Practical wellness, slowed down and made usable.
Physique coaching with sharper practical detail.
Wellness served with kitchen-table warmth.
Dietitian Melinda Hemmelgarn interviews Jessica Lebovits, a registered dietitian specializing in celiac disease at Columbia University's Celiac Disease Center.
Dietitian Melinda Hemmelgarn interviews Katie Marks, a policy associate at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, about food marketing to children.
Food Sleuth Radio host Melinda Hamilgarn interviews toxicologist Robin Ménage about glyphosate, Roundup formulations, plastics, gut microbiome effects, and therapeutic fasting.
Food Sleuth Radio host Melinda Hemmelgarn interviews Jessie Silverman of the Center for Science in the Public Interest about the report “Private Food, Public Harm,” which examines privatized food service in prisons and jails.
Dr.
Registered dietitian Jessica Lebovits discusses her expertise in celiac disease and gluten-related disorders, including her personal diagnosis and career path in nutrition.
This episode features an interview with Stacy Malkan, co-founder of U.S.
Pediatrician Dr.
This episode features an interview with pediatrician Dr.
Melinda Hemmelgarn welcomes back Kelly Verrill to Food Sleuth Radio.
Public markets take center stage here.
Melanie Betz, a registered dietitian specializing in kidney health, discusses how dietary strategies can prevent and treat kidney stones, emphasizing the importance of accessible nutritional advice for public health.
Amanda Maria Edmonds joins Melinda Hamilgarn to talk about food systems.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
This episode features an interview with registered dietitian Hillary Wright about her co-authored book 'The Menopause Diet Plan' and her expertise in nutrition for women's health, diabetes prevention, and lifestyle counseling.
Coco Newton, a registered dietitian, discusses her expertise in applying functional medical nutrition therapy to help patients with ALS slow disease progression and improve their quality of life.
This episode features an interview with investigative journalist Tim Schwab about his book critiquing the Gates Foundation's philanthropy and its influence on global issues like agriculture and public health.