What’s Hot: New York Food Banks Struggle to Stock Shelves
As covered in our March Food Flash, the United States Department of Agriculture under Secretary Brooke Rollins has effectively ended two major purchasing programs that support food pantries and food relief programs across the country. Under the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement and the Emergency Food Assistance Programs, the USDA had previously purchased produce directly from farmers to supply food pantries, thus both supporting farmers and providing much-needed food relief.
This past month, pantries nationwide were left without the promised food deliveries needed to support their communities. Pantries and food relief organizations in New York City and throughout the Hudson River Valley are now contending with the consequences of these cuts.
Large-scale organizations like Food Bank for New York City and New York Common Pantry, which run pantry and hot meal distribution events in addition to supplying other community pantries, are reporting more and more shortages, while demand for relief continues to increase. Other food relief organizations across the nation are reporting the same.
Secretary Rollins has described the programs that usually fund these pantries as “nonessential” and stated that reports of shortages are “fake news,” while a spokesperson for the USDA characterized the cuts as “a return to long-term, fiscally responsible initiatives.”
Fact Check: Links Between Neurodivergence and Diet Remain Tenuous
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, raised eyebrows this past week when he announced his intention to find the cause of autism by September 2025. Characterizing the condition as an “epidemic,” with the idea that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) might arise from environmental factors, his plan will marshal troves of health data from the National Institutes of Health.
Ultra-processed foods and high glucose (i.e., sugar) intake have often been held in popular science and media to be potential factors in neurodevelopmental disorders like ASD and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). With this conversation now open once again, it is necessary to take a measured approach to the link between neurodivergence and diet. While ultra-processed, sugary food products are far from advisable for any child (or adult), and are too often over-represented in American diets, their actual impact on neurodevelopment remains to be determined.
The connection between sugary foods and hyperactive kids has long prevailed as a sort of folk wisdom, with virtually every caregiver having a story about a soda-fueled birthday party run amok, but a causal link between glucose and disruptive behavior does not exist in science. While it’s based on this would-be intuitive link that some popular health advocates have presumed that sugar intake could be to blame for ADHD, the truth is more complicated than that. While there is a link between high glucose consumption and ADHD, it is more correlative than causal in that children with ADHD tend to consume more sugar because of the condition, rather than the consumption causing the disorder.
Similarly, while a connection between glucose and ASD is observed in medical literature, it’s far more complex than a one-to-one cause-and-effect. A 2021 meta-analysis of 35 different studies observed a weak correlation between children diagnosed with ASD or ADHD and mothers with diabetes and concluded that while a connection may exist, more research is needed. Further, the study observes socioeconomic status as “an effect modifier of the association between GDM [gestational diabetes] and neurodevelopmental disorders” and worthy of consideration, beyond diet.
Another study from the same year found that children with ASD tend to metabolize glucose less effectively on a neurological level, exhibiting, on average, a higher brain resistance to insulin. While this and other studies have opened the door to a metabolic approach for ASD therapy, holding glucose as a primary cause of ASD and other neurodevelopmental disorders is simply not supported in the existing literature. Indeed, children with ASD may well process glucose differently as a result of their condition, rather than their condition resulting from ineffective glucose metabolism.
More recently, the results of a study from March 2025 suggesting that for pregnant women following a “western diet” there is an increased likelihood of their babies being born with neurodevelopmental disorders, have been making the rounds in popular science outlets as if a one-to-one link between diet and neurodivergence in children has been confirmed. The study itself, however, emphasizes that the data is only observational and that no causal link can be determined between diet and neurodivergence.
In short, while eating more fresh produce and less sugar is always advisable, there is simply no medical literature to suggest with certainty that diet can prevent or treat neurodivergent conditions. More to the point, with neurodivergence so again centered in our public health discourse as a condition to be reversed, treated, or cured, it is all the more important to hold in mind neurodiversity as something to be accepted, rather than cured.
Quote of the Month
“The amount of support that comes through USDA across the country, not just in New York City — if it were to go away, we couldn’t fill the hole by ourselves. It’s just too big.”
– Leslie Gordon, Food Bank president and CEO, via The City
