A subscriber-only post from Nina Teicholtz, but she provides much information even in the public portion. I have read the entire article, and it is business as usual in the food/pharma industry. Here’s one short quote from the not-free part that surprised me a little, but I guess it makes sense, in a warped kind of way.

…a central truth of Big Food is that the profit comes from processing. Whereas the margin on a plain potato is next-to-nothing, if you peel, slice, fry, salt, reconstitute and package that potato as a chip in a fancy bag, the profit margins rise. A lot.

Huh? In what kind of world is this even possible? This one, I guess. And oh by the way, even that “plain potato” is not quite the same as what we used to call a potato. I would surmise that the overall chain goes something like Chemical producers → Growers → Distribution → Consumption → Disease → Treatment. (I just added a comment to this effect to the original post!)