Applying serums or creams with retinol—a vitamin A-derivative known for its anti-aging and acne-fighting properties—may be a mainstay in your skin-care routine. Some social-media influencers claim you can benefit by “eating your retinol” in the form of carrot-dense salads. Is that true? 

“The answer is yes and no,” says Dr. Lawrence Green, a clinical professor of dermatology at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and vice president of the American Academy of Dermatology.

The “eating your retinol” trend centers on the “retinol salad,” which typically includes ribboned carrots, garlic, vinegar, peppers, sesame oil, and lime juice, though recipes vary. The idea is that carrots are packed with beta-carotene (a precursor to vitamin A), which some influencers claim your body converts to retinol, similar to what’s found in skin-care products. 

“This is a great skin-saving salad, but I think the name is misleading,” says Dr. Rajani Katta, a dermatologist and author of Glow: The Dermatologist’s Guide to a Whole Foods, Younger Skin Diet. The retinol salad provides vitamin A, which is good for the skin, but it’s not the same as applying an over-the-counter retinol or prescription retinoid topically, she explains. 

Here’s what to know about the role of vitamin A and skin health, and whether the “retinol salad” offers any skin benefits. 

What’s the difference between the vitamin A in carrots vs. retinol? 

Vitamin A helps maintain the health of several vital organs, including the heart, reproductive system, eyes, and skin, says Amy Bragagnini, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.  

Beta-carotene, a natural pigment that gives red and orange fruits and vegetables their color, is a precursor to vitamin A, meaning your body needs to convert it to the vitamin, Bragagnini says. 

It’s true that the body converts beta-carotene into retinol (which is preformed vitamin A, or its active form). But it’s “not an efficient conversion,” Green says. “It happens, but it takes a lot of beta-carotene to get a lesser amount of retinol.” 

You can actually get retinol directly from foods, including eggs, milk, and beef liver, Katta adds. 

Is eating vitamin A the same as applying retinoids or retinol? 

A 2025 systematic review found that topical and dietary carotenoids (a group of plant compounds that include beta-carotene) offer anti-aging skin benefits, including lowered inflammation and improved hydration and elasticity. 

However, eating a retinol salad or other forms of beta-carotene “nowhere compares to putting retinol directly on your skin as a cream,” Green says. 

When applied topically, retinol penetrates your skin, where it can speed up cell turnover and boost collagen production, Katta says. Research shows that topical retinol can improve fine lines, hyperpigmentation, roughness, and signs of sun damage. Retinol can also exfoliate and plump the skin and help treat and manage acne.

Consuming carrots or other foods rich in beta-carotene is an inefficient way to get these benefits, since your body has to go through the process to convert it into vitamin A, Katta explains. 

The retinol salad is still good for your skin. But its benefits mainly come from the antioxidants in the ingredients, rather than the potential to add retinol to your diet, Green says. 

Antioxidants help maintain skin health by reducing the effects of oxidative stress from the environment, such as ultraviolet light radiation and pollution, research shows. Antioxidants also protect against free radicals, or unstable molecules that lead to premature aging and collagen breakdown, Katta says. 

Are there any downsides to the ‘retinol salad’? 

Beta-carotene from dietary sources is typically safe for most people, even in high levels, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. However, too much preformed vitamin A, which you could get from overusing vitamin A supplements—or, less commonly, by eating too many vitamin A-rich foods—could be toxic, potentially causing blurry vision, dry skin, nausea, or vomiting. 

One potential downside to the salad, Bragagnini says, is that eating too many carrots could cause beta-carotene to build up in your blood and possibly turn your skin a “yellow-orange color.” 

If you don’t normally consume vegetables, which are fiber-rich, eating too many at once could upset your digestive system, she says. 

What’s the best diet for healthy skin? 

“I encourage my patients to make sure they are eating a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables,” at least five servings a day, Bragagnini says. 

Fruits and vegetables contain different antioxidants that protect your skin from damage from UV rays and pollution, she says. Omega-3 fatty acids, found in oily fish, walnuts, and flaxseeds, reduce inflammation in the body, which may guard against skin conditions. 

Also, limit sugar, alcohol, and ultra-processed foods, like cookies, bacon, and sugar-sweetened beverages, Bragagnini adds. These foods may increase oil production in the skin and affect collagen production.  

Overall, Green recommends the Mediterranean diet, which incorporates many of these principles and has been shown to benefit overall health. Research shows that the diet can also help manage inflammatory skin conditions, like acne or psoriasis. 

Yet diet alone is “not going to necessarily change your skin in a month,” Katta says. It’s a long-term approach.  

When to see a dermatologist about your skin 

If you’re struggling with acne or are bothered by age-related changes like wrinkles, sagginess, or sun spots, see a dermatologist.  

For acne, doctors can prescribe topical retinoids like tazarotene or tretinoin, oral retinoids such as isotretinoin, or other types of medications, Green says. The goal is to clear breakouts, prevent new ones, and minimize scarring, Katta adds. Dermatologists may also recommend dietary or other lifestyle changes. 

Addressing wrinkles, pigmentation changes, and other age-related changes depends on the individual person and their skin issue, Green says. For example, dermatologists may prescribe retinoids or recommend Botox, fillers, laser treatments, or microneedling. 

“We can look at your skin and help direct you,” Green says, and that includes helping you develop a tailored skin-care routine. 

Over-the-counter retinol serums, creams, and other products are available, too. Katta says they’re beneficial but not as potent as prescription retinoids. Retinol also hasn't been studied as extensively as retinoids, so there’s not as much evidence on its effectiveness, Green says. 

Taking care of your skin should be a holistic approach that includes diet, and the retinol salad can be a part of that. Green says the dish is a “nice idea for the antioxidant benefits,” but won’t treat acne or address any unwanted signs of aging. 

The first heat wave of summer hits like a wall. One day the air is crisp and cool, and the next it’s impossible to go out without sweating through a shirt. The store feels like it’s on the far side of the Amazon, or maybe the Gobi. And yet, the thermometer reveals a number that is not all that high, compared to later in the season. So why is the heat so unbearable? 

Scientists who study temperature regulation have found that the body takes time to adjust to seasonal changes and other thermal changes: a process called heat acclimatization. Research suggests that in people who regularly spend time outside, the body adjusts how it sheds heat to make the environment less stressful. “We can adapt to the heat we're in, and it's obviously progressive,” says Julien Périard, a professor at University of Canberra in Australia who studies the phenomenon. Your body in the summer, it turns out, might be fundamentally different from your body in the winter.

How does the body adapt to seasonal temperature changes?

Spending most of your time indoors in the air conditioning might slow the body’s changes, come summer. “But if we spend time outside exercising, or even just being physically active outdoors, we'll adapt to those conditions,” Périard says.

When you go for a walk on a hot summer day, before you’ve adapted to the heat, both your skin temperature and your core temperature may go up. That sets off alarms in the body, announcing heat stress. “With that, we trigger lots of sweating, and we increase our skin blood flow,” says Périard. Sweat evaporates from the skin, cooling skin down, and blood sent to the surface of the body helps shed heat. 

The volume of blood pumping through the body also goes up. More blood volume allows more heat to be shed and supports greater sweating without dehydration. There are also changes at the level of the cell, with some proteins’ production going up to protect normal functioning in greater heat. The process of reaching a fully adapted state might take a few weeks, although the precise details will depend on the situation. 

These changes can be triggered in advance, with a little bit of exposure at a time. In fact, athletes and people working in warm conditions, like utility workers out in the Texas sun all day, may slowly ramp up their time in the heat to stay healthy under strain. 

Does adapting to heat reduce the risk of heat stroke?

Being adapted to the heat lowers the risks. But it isn’t carte blanche to go for a run at noon in Havana. People who’ve adapted are still vulnerable to heat-related illness, like heat stroke and heat exhaustion, says Glen Kenny, a professor of physiology at the University of Ottawa in Canada. 

What’s more, researchers who study heat adaptation are worried about the stresses that the future climate will bring, when warming may be so swift, and so extreme, that the body can’t react fast enough. In an experiment meant to mimic an extreme 3-day heat wave in 2021 that killed 619 people in British Columbia alone, Kenny spent three days at 104°F in a special chamber in his lab, which allowed him and his colleagues to monitor what happens to the body. “Over three days, you'll see that the body will show some progressive adaptation. But in this situation, you're seeing a decay in the physiological system supporting the maintenance of core temperature,” he says. He lost about 10 pounds in three days because he couldn’t hydrate fast enough. “You're losing so much sweat. You're seeing cell function deteriorate.” 

What happens if you lose your heat adaptation?

Spending a few weeks in a cooler climate can mean the body will roll back some of these changes. “But what's interesting is we have some sort of heat acclimation memory,” says Périard. “If within a month, for example, I've removed you from the heat, and then I've put you back in the heat, in three or four days you'll probably get adaptations that are similar” to what would have taken ten days to build up originally.

Does your body adapt to the cold, too? Yes, but there’s a lot less to work with, says Périard. “We've evolved to be tropical animals, so our heat-loss mechanisms are very potent. But if you think of conserving heat, the only two things we can do are physical constriction—to try and keep the warm blood in the central circulation, essentially—or shivering, which produces a bit of heat but not too much.” Exercising can warm you up, but an essential feature of human culture—clothing—has a far more important role to play here than biology. 

“You can exercise all you want. But if it's -40° outside, you're going to get cold pretty quickly if you don't have any clothes on,” he says.  

An alarming number of professional football players in the U.S. may someday have chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the neurodegenerative disease associated with repeated concussions and sub-concussive hits to the head, a new study suggests. 

The research, published in the BMJ, studied the brains of NFL players who died from 2016 to 2021 and found that one in four had CTE—a figure that is almost certainly an undercount, the researchers say. Depending on how they crunched the numbers, the CTE incidence rose as high as 91%. 

“The one in four figure is intentionally the most conservative estimate possible,” says lead author Dr. Daniel Daneshvar, chair of the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Mass General Brigham and associate professor at Harvard Medical School. “We know the true prevalence is higher than that.”

It was in 1928 that pathologist Harrison Martland first described the condition now known as CTE in boxers experiencing what he called “punch drunk” syndrome. It was not until 2002 that the disease was first diagnosed in an NFL player, when neuropathologist Bennet I. Omalu examined the brain of Mike Webster, a former player for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and found the buildup of tau proteins around blood vessels, thinning of tissue, and overall brain atrophy that characterize the disease. CTE is only firmly diagnosable by autopsy, but the range of symptoms that point to the disease—including memory loss, confusion, aggression, depression, apathy, tremors, and slurred speech—can be pronounced during a person’s life.

“Many of these former players had dementia,” says Daneshvar, “meaning their cognitive symptoms were severe enough to interfere with their ability to function independently. These are not just microscopic changes that we happen to find when someone dies. We are talking about a disease that can profoundly affect people’s ability to think, work, maintain relationships, and live independently.”

What the research found

In the new study, Daneshvar and his colleagues examined the brains of 235 former NFL players who had donated their brains to science. (A total of 878 players died in that 2016-2021 window.) Of the brains studied,  215 were found to have CTE—or 91%. The researchers arrived at their much lower one-in-four figure by making the exceedingly cautious assumption that none of the remaining 643 brains would have shown signs of the disease—an assumption that Daneshvar believes would not stand up if the brains had been examined.

“Among the people who did not donate,” he says, “16% had dementia listed on their death certificate. That certainly does not mean they had CTE, but it illustrates how unrealistic it is to assume that every non-donor was disease-free.”

Another part of the study looked at a larger time window—from 2008 to 2021—during which 1,712 former NFL players died. Of those, 338, including the 235 already analyzed, donated their brains to research, and of that group, 315 had CTE. That makes for a possible CTE prevalence of as high as 93.2%, though if the researchers once again made the conservative—if unrealistic—estimate that all of the unexamined brains were disease-free, the figure would drop to 18.4%.

How to make football safer

What makes CTE particularly insidious is that it is a cumulative disease, one that builds up over a career’s-worth of hits that don’t begin when a player is tapped for the NFL, but can stretch back into college, high school, and even childhood play. In 2011, the NFL, mindful of the growing incidence of CTE, established its concussion protocol, sidelining players who take a hit and exhibit any signs of possible concussion, such as confusion, amnesia, ataxia—a lack of muscle control—or any loss of consciousness.  

That’s a big improvement over the days when concussed players were simply described as having had their “bell rung,” and then sent back out onto the field to continue the game. But concussions are only the most extreme symptoms of brain trauma; there’s a lot of damage that’s done invisibly, with no signs at all. According to one 2012 study in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering, a college football player may sustain up to 1,000 subconcussive hits to the head over the course of a single season of play.

“Concussion protocols are important,” says Daneshvar, “but concussion management and CTE prevention are not the same thing. The evidence increasingly suggests that CTE risk is related to cumulative exposure to repetitive head impacts, including the many impacts that never cause a diagnosed concussion. A player can follow every concussion protocol appropriately and still accumulate thousands of head impacts over a year.”

In addition to the concussion protocols, the NFL has made other rule changes to reduce the incidence of brain trauma, including outlawing both helmet-to-helmet hits and so-called blindside blocks, in which an unsuspecting player is struck from behind, often leading to head and neck injuries. Bigger changes could come during practice, when 70% of hits occur, Daneshvar says. These friendly collisions, he adds, do as much cerebral damage as actual blows sustained during a game.

“The NFL has already moved dramatically in this direction,” he says. “NFL players now have less than one full-contact practice per week.”

Another concern is that measures like this may be coming too late, since young players may be reaching the NFL having sustained brain damage already. Former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez, for example, was only 27 when he died by suicide while serving a life sentence for murder. He had spent just four years in the NFL and he was posthumously diagnosed with the worst case of CTE that Boston University researchers had ever seen in a person his age. 

“We don’t need to eliminate football to make it substantially safer,” says Daneshvar—but just like in the pros, high school and college football programs could be changed to minimize or eliminate collisions in practice, and to outlaw hits during games that could be exacerbating trauma to the brain.

Dolly Parton knew a thing or two about working 9 to 5. Working out was another matter.

“If you tell me I’ve got to do an exercise routine…I dread it so bad,” she told Allure in 2021. Her workaround was “rejoicing exercises”: a freewheeling combination of gospel music, singing, stretching, shouting, and praising. “I do more ‘rejoicing’ than I do ‘working out,’” she said. She occasionally added a few floor exercises and squats—especially, as she put it, “diddly-squats.”

In doing so, she stumbled upon an important truth: Movement doesn’t have to feel like punishment to count.

“Dolly honored herself through movement,” says Michelle Segar, a lifestyle-change sustainability scientist at the University of Michigan and author of The Joy Choice: How to Finally Achieve Lasting Changes in Eating and Exercise. Parton tossed out the rules about what exercise was supposed to look like and designed something that reflected what she needed. “She knew this was for her,” Segar says. “And because it was for her, she had to design it for herself.”

That instinct—to stop chasing the supposedly perfect workout and start with movement that feels good, meaningful, or restorative—could make it easier to keep moving over time. Here’s what we all can learn from Parton’s views on exercise and movement.

“Rejoicing exercises” were quintessentially Dolly

Parton’s routine combined the forces that shaped so much of her life: faith, music, and creative self-expression. She began singing in her maternal grandfather Jake Owens’ church at age 6, and later described feeling divinely inspired as a songwriter, says Leigh H. Edwards, a professor of English at Florida State University and author of Dolly Parton, Gender, and Country Music.

“She often approached her expression on her own terms,” Edwards says, “just as she did when she created her own Dolly image and charted her own trailblazing path for her career.” Exercise was no exception.

Judy Eaton, a professor of psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, teaches positive psychology—the study of how people flourish, rather than only how they struggle. She calls Parton “the poster child for positive psychology.”

Many of Eaton’s students arrive knowing Parton only from Hannah Montana. Eaton introduces them to her as an example of gratitude, optimism, and authenticity; after Parton passed away, former students emailed to say they were grateful her class had helped them understand who she was as a person.

Stop looking for the “right” way to exercise

Many people have absorbed the idea that there’s one correct way to exercise. “We as a society have been taught you’re supposed to exercise in this way for this long, and your body has to feel this way,” Segar says. “You have to breathe hard.” If you can’t—or simply don’t like it—“you don’t do it.”

Public-health guidelines are useful for describing how much activity is associated with certain health benefits. But they don’t necessarily tell people how to fit movement into hectic, unpredictable lives. Fitness marketing has strengthened the idea that a workout only counts when it meets a particular standard, Segar says, creating an all-or-nothing trap: Do the “right” workout, or do nothing.

Parton built her routine around what she would actually do. Instead of deciding exercise wasn’t for her, she decided the gym-and-sweat version wasn’t for her. “We don’t start with the right way,” Segar says. “We start with our way.”

Dr. George Hennawi, physician executive director of geriatrics and senior services at MedStar Health, sees particular value in that approach as people age. When he asks his patients what it means to age successfully, their answers usually involve continuing to do what they already love—whether that’s traveling, gardening, singing, or spending time with their grandchildren.

“She flipped the equation,” Hennawi says of Parton. “What makes me happy? How do I define living successfully, living happily, aging well?” Her answer, as he sees it: “I don’t love exercise—let me bring exercise to the stuff that I love to do.”

That also means reconsidering why you’re moving. Goals like losing weight or preventing a disease years from now can be “abstract, future, often even shame-producing reasons for exercise,” Segar says. Parton’s reason was immediate and personal: She wanted to rejoice. “She’s using movement to fuel herself and live her life,” Segar says, “not to comply with doctor’s orders or to meet some standard of beauty.”

Ask how you want movement to make you feel

“Joyful movement” is a useful phrase, but Segar encourages people to expand their vocabulary. Not every worthwhile walk will make you giddy. It might instead make you feel grounded, energized, connected, or less stressed. It could help you shift out of work mode before walking through your front door—or give you five quiet minutes before the rest of the day begins.

Start by asking: “What do you want to feel while you’re moving?” Segar suggests. Then choose an activity likely to deliver that feeling.

The answer will look different for everyone. “For one person, it could be, ‘I’m going to close my door and put on headphones and dance for five minutes,’” Segar says. Someone else might grab a colleague and walk the stairs at lunch, or chase their kids around the backyard. A walk might serve an entirely different purpose: “I want to transition from my work brain to my family brain,” someone might decide, and head around the block before going home.

Think of movement as a menu rather than a prescription. “You choose what you want based on what you feel like,” Segar says—and that might change daily. “When we toss out the rules, physical movement can be the mechanism for achieving those things.”

Connecting movement to something personally meaningful can also make it more motivating. “Doing things because we have to is never the right way to get us to engage in them more,” Eaton says. “If tying it to something that’s really meaningful to you gets you doing it, then all the better.” For Parton, that meant singing gospel songs and praising—a routine she traced to her Pentecostal upbringing.

Positive emotions can create momentum, too. Eaton points to psychologist Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory: “If you can make yourself experience positive emotions, it makes you more willing to try new things,” she says. A favorite song might put you in the mood to start moving; movement can lift your mood further, making it easier to come back for more.

Rejoicing exercises could engage the mind along with the body, Hennawi adds. “When you’re dancing and singing, you’re stimulating your brain,” he says. “You’re stimulating your body, and you’re connecting all those dots.”

Create your own rejoicing exercises

There’s no official choreography—and prescribing one would miss the point. Choose music you love, if that helps. Dance, stretch, sway, walk, garden, or wave your arms around your living room. Try it for five minutes instead of waiting until you have time for 30. The goal is to finish feeling better than when you started.

Here’s one very Baltimore example from Hennawi: Suppose an older adult’s idea of joy is watching the Ravens and eating ice cream. Without missing a play, they could add arm raises or gentle knee and hip movements while watching on the couch. “Can you add a tiny little bit of exercise?” he asks. “We can do it incrementally, step by step.” 

Eaton suspects Parton wouldn’t have issued instructions for copying her routine. The point isn’t to move exactly like Dolly. It’s to move more like yourself. “I think she’d just say, ‘Do what feels good to you,’” she says.

This summer, it’s been hard for consumers to know what to put in their grocery cart. Recalls have affected hundreds of products, including lettuce, which was linked to a Cyclospora outbreak; eggs and jalapenos that were connected with salmonella; and blueberries that were potentially contaminated with E. coli.

These incidents have left shoppers across the United States wondering whether this summer has been a particularly bad one for foodborne illnesses.

Here’s what to know—and why consumers may be perceiving a greater number of outbreaks than usual, despite what the data shows.

Read More: What Food Safety Experts Are Eating During the Cyclospora Outbreak

The number of food recalls are about average, but a few have been unusually severe

According to federal data, the number of food recalls regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is relatively on par with an average year. So far, there have been 483 recalls in this fiscal year (Oct. 1, 2025 through Sept. 30, 2026), with a projected total of 551 by the end of October. In the past decade, the U.S. has seen a range of 400-800 annual recalls. 

But what stands out in 2026 is the severity of some of the outbreaks caused by contaminated food this year.

“I don't know that I would necessarily say there are more outbreaks,” says Janet Hamilton, the executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. “However, what I would say is the scale and magnitude of outbreaks that we're facing right now are unprecedented. It's like we're being eclipsed by the scale and magnitude of these outbreaks with the staffing levels that we have.”

The summer’s Cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce alone sickened more than 10,000 people, caused over 400 hospitalizations, and led to at least two deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Epidemiologists believe it could be among the largest documented foodborne illness events in U.S. history. 

"We've never seen anything like that before,” Hamilton says.

The volume of food affected is higher than average

While the total number of recalls has been about average, USDA-regulated recalls affected more than 37 million pounds of food during the first half of 2026—the highest it has been in a decade.

At the same time, epidemiologist and former CDC adviser Katelyn Jetelina says that it’s very hard to tell just how bad this summer’s outbreaks have been—and our lack of federal data does not help.

“Our data is just not great in the United States,” she tells TIME. “We’re patching things together to try to figure out what is reality versus concern and public perception, and it's hard to know where the line is.”

“That’s what's most frustrating for me as an epidemiologist as well as a mom,” she adds.

There are seasonal factors, and surveillance has improved

It’s normal for foodborne illnesses to peak in the summer, since warmer temperatures help bacteria and other organisms multiply. That is why there have been more outbreak incidents in recent months. But this is a consistent seasonal threat, epidemiologists say, and not specific to 2026. 

There has also been an increase in media attention around food safety, which can make it seem like the magnitude of any given event is higher than it actually is. This increased coverage is partially due to improved surveillance tools. Laboratories are better equipped than ever to detect foodborne illnesses, track how bacteria multiply, and find links between patients. 

Because we have more information than ever on some of these bacteria, and we are able to process data faster than ever before, this means that the information can be quickly and easily shared with the population—which potentially makes it feel like the country is experiencing more outbreaks, when consumers are really just seeing more updates.

Federal staffing shortages may be weakening the safety net

Experts say that while we are able to more quickly detect and identify food safety issues in past decades, health departments at the federal and state levels have experienced significant decreases in funding and staffing—potentially weakening food safety oversight. It can be hard to tell how this is impacting outbreaks.

One potential outcome is having less ability to monitor and control an existing outbreak, Hamilton says.

“Health departments are mounting responses quickly, but when the outbreaks need additional sustained surge support, the system is quickly overwhelmed,” she says. “That leads to situations like what we have seen with Cyclospora. This would have been a complicated outbreak to begin with, and then when you don't have the staffing to keep pace with the level of detailed interviews that you need, the ability to rapidly control the outbreak diminishes.”

Hamilton and her colleagues at the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists conduct regular surveys to track staffing levels in state and territorial health departments, and their recent reports found that one-third of public health officials in state health departments have left their positions since the Trump Administration took control in 2025. On the federal level, some of the staffing cuts were led by the Department of Government Efficiency.

Federal cuts to the CDC and FDA also affect state and local health departments, since federal funds provide more than half of their total budgets, according to KFF.

Hamilton says that public health officials are like a “protective shield” around the complicated food systems in our country. Workers look at data “carefully and thoughtfully,” interview people impacted by foodborne illness, and “tease apart” what foods might be contaminated.

This work is harder with fewer staff members who are stretched increasingly thin. Even advanced tracking and surveillance technology may not be able to counter the loss of knowledgeable human engagement amid these outbreaks.

“Our food supply chains are complicated, and I don't know that people really appreciate the detailed work and the complexity that goes behind understanding where foods and ingredients come from and exactly how people are exposed,” she adds.

Jetelina adds that part of the role of public health officials is distinguishing “correlation from causation”—a consideration that applies directly to questions about whether and how staffing and funding cuts have affected responses to illness outbreaks this year. Reduced oversight may have allowed some contamination events to go undetected or unaddressed, while staffing shortages may have delayed the collection and dissemination of information that could have helped officials contain outbreaks and reduce the risk to consumers. But without further investigation, it is difficult to determine exactly how the cuts affected the number of recalls, the speed of outbreak responses, or other key measures in 2026.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that cuts to the CDC and FDA have not hampered the investigation of Cyclospora.

“Those criticisms are invalid,” Kennedy said during a press briefing on July 21. “We had no cuts in the surveillance program. We did cuts in the FoodNet program, but they were for redundant surveillance.”

FoodNet, short for the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, was no longer required to actively report on six of eight pathogens, including Cyclospora, as of 2025. The CDC characterized the change in a statement to the Associated Press in August 2025 as a way to “prioritize core activities” and “steward resources effectively.”

TIME has reached out to the CDC and FDA for comment.

When it comes to consumer safety, it’s important to note that the vast majority of food moving through the system is free from contamination. Experts say consumers can stay safe from outbreaks by keeping up with food recalls, washing produce well, refrigerating produce properly, and monitoring symptoms linked to foodborne illnesses.