"Many people feel that AI is something being done to them rather than developed with them." https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-community-engagement?share_id=9271068

Excited to see our guest post, “What Happens When You Host an AI Café,” published in @spectrum.ieee.org : spectrum.ieee.org/ai-community.... We need more public conversations, and more voices at the table, about what we do—and don’t—want from AI. Grateful to co-authors Cheryl Seals and Joan Harrell.

Auburn University just shared a lovely piece about my spring research stay in Denmark at the University of Southern Denmark: wire.auburn.edu/content/ocm/.... I’m exploring regional food branding—New Nordic Cuisine; the Mediterranean diet—and helping to foster cultural exchange. 🇩🇰🇺🇸 #foodstudies

Are you reading the Nutrition Facts label correctly? I'm quoted in this nice, short piece on common misunderstandings about the label, written by @debbieharry.bsky.social for WebMD's health news section Nourish: www.webmd.com/diet/news/20.... Check it out! #fromlabeltotable #NutritionFacts

My college's media team wrote up a nice article about an AI Café event I help co-organize: cla.auburn.edu/news/article... . The idea for the event was to give people a platform to talk about AI which wasn't simply "for" or "against," but to think about what AI in the public interest might look like.

Auburn people: Join us next week for a "Science Café on AI" ☕🤖 Nov. 6th, 6:30–8PM Well Red Auburn What is AI? How is it reshaping our world? Join Auburn University experts for a lively Q&A! Free & open to the public! Free drinks for first 20 participants! More info: cla.auburn.edu/events/?trum...

Auburn people: Join us next week for a "Science Café on AI" ☕🤖 Nov. 6th, 6:30–8PM Well Red Auburn What is AI? How is it reshaping our world? Join Auburn University experts for a lively Q&A! Free & open to the public! Free drinks for first 20 participants! More info: cla.auburn.edu/events/?trum...

My book From Label to Table (@ucpress.bsky.social) turns 2 today! To celebrate I’m sharing a chapter-by-chapter teaching guide I created to explore how food labels shape politics, power & trust, good for Food Law, Nutrition Policy, STS or American Studies courses: www.xaqfrohlich.com/_files/ugd/f...

Wow! Just came across this very positive review of my book that was published last year by @susanaramirez.bsky.social , and it's in very good company with books by @haushoferl.bsky.social and @charlottebiltekoff.bsky.social . Definitely agree these three books read well together! #FromLabelToTable

Excited my book was reviewed in the Journal of American History! Liked this quote in Bryan McDonald's review: "This informative study provides compelling insight to help us understand the effects of legislation and standards making on the American food landscape": academic.oup.com/jah/article/....

I'm really nerding out on this great critical history of GenAI in the @criticalai-journal.bsky.social : read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/... Just what I needed to wrap my head around how AI can work for the humanities, and the need for more critical AI literacy and human-centered AI.

My "Technology & Civilization" students kicked off our first AI-engaged assignment! They asked AI: “What Makes Me Human?” and shared their responses as artifacts on this collaborative Whiteboard. Try it yourself with the Assignment 1 prompt, posted here: auburn.instructure.com/courses/1654...

Thanks for sharing this! Reposting here for those in the #bizhis #appliedhistory community who may be interested. auburn.instructure.com/courses/1654…#BusinessHistoryr#DigitalHumanitiese#AILiteracyc#HigherEdE#HistoryTeachingng

Been building something new this summer: a 10-assignment AI Journal for my "Technology & Civilization" undergrad course. It blends AI tools + humanities learning to spark reflection and critical AI literacy. Guide + highlights here: auburn.instructure.com/courses/1654.... Check it out!

Auburn-Opelika people, I'm giving a talk at the Museum Of East Alabama in ten days: Saturday, July 26th 11-12PM. It's free and open to the public. I'll be using my book, From Label to Table (@ucpress.bsky.social, 2023), to talk about recent happenings in food politics. Join us for the conversation!

Absolutely love the video graphic accompanying this @nytimes.com story on the ongoing collapse of the @fda.gov: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/m... Some thoughts: I count myself among the “F.D.A. watchdogs” who were once constructively critical—now deeply dismayed by the agency’s gutting...

Wrote a review for @hnetreviews.bsky.social of a great food studies book, Ways of Eating by @benwurgaft.bsky.social & White: www.h-net.org/reviews/show... Choice quote: “many of the things we imagine to be traditional or permanent features of our lives with food are, in fact, very recent arrivals”

One more AI-related course certificate received! This one for Auburn University's Writing Across the Curriculum course, "Teaching Critical Thinking with AI-Engaged Writing Assignments." If you have any good ideas for university-level AI-engaged assignments, I'd love to hear them!

Check out this fun conversation I had with historian David Parsons about "MAHA Moms" and food politics past and present on his podcast, Nostalgia Trap, "Ep 416 - America Eats Itself w/Xaq Frohlich": www.patreon.com/posts/131914.... (Also on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and YouTube). #FromLabelToTable

Did this fun interview about my book, From Label to Table, with two food historians Kelly Spring and Matt Phillpott, as part of their "Hungry Historians" podcast series: open.spotify.com/episode/1QYV... It's a new #foodstudies series, but they've already lined up some great food studies speakers.

Very excited to announce I'll be doing a research and teaching stay at @sdu.dk in the Spring 2026 semester. Was awarded the 2025-2026 Distinguished Scholar in American Studies Grant from the Binational Commission for Educational Exchange between Denmark and The United States of America.

Obtained a new certification: "AUAI: Experimenter" from Auburn University Biggio Center! Part of my month-long deep dive into how to use AI tools for food studies, STS, and humanities research and teaching. Will be sharing ideas in the months to come. I welcome your thoughts here on how to use AI.

Happy Earth Day! And happy last day of Environmental History Week. @berghahnbooks.bsky.social has a sale on enviro history books, including our volume, Risk on the Table: www.berghahnbooks.com/title/Creage.... Buy it this week and get 25% off with the code EARTH25! #environmentalhistory #earthday

It's AI Week for me! • Tues: playing with DALL-E and Deep Research in our "Visualizing History Lab" grad seminar • Wed: Google AI Day @ Auburn: biggio.auburn.edu/programs/art... • Thurs: The Conversation webinar on "Using AI Safely" Goal: how to use AI to augment work in STS and the humanities

Join me and @seanvanatta.bsky.social online a week from today for our talk about both our books and intersections between legal history and business history, part of the American Society for Legal History Virtual Book Club, co-hosted with @businesshistoryc.bsky.social : aslh.net/virtual-book...

This is a great book by @haushoferl.bsky.social , a must read for anyone seeking a critical history perspective on foods that promise optimized health through consumption and the colonial origins of our modern dietary regimes: academic.oup.com/jah/article/.... Happy to have reviewed it! #foodstudies

This is no April Fools' joke: Smartfood popcorn just doesn't taste the same — and @jayasaxena.com found out why.

I'm quoted extensively in this fun @eater.bsky.social article where @jayasaxena.com tries to reverse engineer an ingredients label for Smartfood white cheddar popcorn: www.eater.com/24394718/sma.... The big question: was the product silently reformulated? Check out her story!

Today is Equal Pay Day, marking how many days the median woman would need to work into 2025 to earn what the median man earned in 2024. - Sharing this with my students to make them aware of it - Thanking all the working women around me for being exceptional despite this clearly unfair reality

I #StandForFulbright as a proud alumnus (Spain 2009-2010) and an American researcher hoping to be a future Fulbright scholar again. 💙 How can you help? ◾ Share your Fulbright story with #StandForFulbright and tag your alumni network ◾ More ways to help: fulbright.org/advocacy/

From Harvard to Heidelberg, Tokyo to Gijón, and Oxford to São Paulo, the BHC 2025 gathering this week will again be a vibrant mix of historians spanning North America, Europe, Asia, and + 🌍 🎓 If you are in Atlanta 📅 March 13-15, 2025 please join us as well thebhc.org 🔗 More info: buff.ly/PohUIuP

This Saturday at @businesshistoryc.bsky.social: Roundtable on Applied History: Bringing Business History to Policy Chair: Jonathan Coopersmith Panelists: Edward Balleisen Patryk Babiracki Laura Phillips-Sawyer @leev.bsky.social @comedoergosum.bsky.social Arthur Daemmrich Michael Wahlen Join us!

After playing a fictional member of the Resistance a long time ago, I never could have imagined it ever happening in real life, but here we are.

Excellent 🧵 on this evening's NIH announcement of a dramatic reduction in indirect rates for research institutions, which amounts to a generational restructuring of the US research and development ecosystem. These cuts are effective immediately, not just for new grants but for existing ones.

In Connecticut - NIH FUNDING: $770M JOBS SUPPORTED: 6609 ECONOMIC ACTIVITY SUPPORTED: $1.68B

Join us in 10 days for an online roundtable discussion of our edited volume, Risk on the Table, where historians look at how food and risk cultures have evolved over the past century. Register for the event here: www.paris-iea.fr/en/events/ri.... #foodhistory

Shared my doubts with a @nytimes.com journalist about how much I think the FDA’s new front-of-package labels are going to improve consumers’ health, quoted in his article here, “F.D.A. Proposes New Food Labels to Detail Sugar, Fat and Salt Levels”: www.nytimes.com/2025/01/14/h.... #FromLabelToTable

I was quoted on the new FDA definition of "healthy" in this article by @hunterschwarz.bsky.social: www.fastcompany.com/91252181/new.... Basically I told him, yes, the definition was an improvement, but just a drop in the bucket of needed reforms to address misleading food labeling and marketing.

The @fda.gov finally published its rules on the new definition for "healthy" labels: www.fda.gov/food/hfp-con.... They provide this great graphic on what it changes. For context, I wrote a piece on this a couple of years ago: cla.auburn.edu/news/article.... #FromLabelToTable

Nice bio piece here by Randy Maniloff in the ABA Journal on Peter Barton Hutt, eminent food lawyer and a protagonist in my book, From Label to Table, about the history of nutrition labeling: www.abajournal.com/web/article/.... #nutritionlabeling #foodlaw

“what if we approached obsolescence as more than a side effect of progress? Could it turn out to be something different, even hopeful? @limnpress.bsky.social 11 gazes into innovation’s rearview mirror to find out” limn.press/issue/obsole...

The other day I was pitching our Gilded Age course to undergrads: “Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a nation where the wealthy had insane power and ordinary people were reoeatedly crushed by them until they lashed out in anger?”

If you pick up a package of food in the US you expect to find a white box on the back with information about things like calories & vitamins. But why is that Nutrition Facts label there & why does it look that way? Learn its fascinating history on Unsung History w/ guest @comedoergosum.bsky.social!

Here's a new set of short pieces on "AI and Scholarly Journals" put together by @mbaldwin.bsky.social and Brigid Vance: online.ucpress.edu/hsns/issue/5... My piece, "Blurry Authorship," situates LLMs within the long history of attempts at condensing scholarly knowledge. doi.org/10.1525/hsns...

Melons could kill you; so could melancholy. In his new book Eating and Being, the historian of science Steven Shapin analyzes the longest-enduring system of medical and gastronomic thought in European history, dietetics. My review is up at LARB: lareviewofbooks.org/article/on-m...

For the afternoon crowd! You've heard of "you are what you eat"? Steven Shapin, expert on the scientific revolution (and on food and wine to boot) has a new book out on the history of dietetics. I had the pleasure of reviewing it for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social lareviewofbooks.org/article/on-m...

bullied the pod into rerunning the fluoride episode (tried to get them to rerun our polio vaccine and pure food and drug act eps, and call it RFK Jr week, but no dice)

@hagleycenter.bsky.social @businesshistoryc.bsky.social go.bsky.app/C5toySb

⏰ Please share far and wide, #foodhistory and #foodstudies friends: The CFP for the Amsterdam Food Symposium 2025 is out ⏰ This is a very special year, as it coincides with the 750th anniv. of Amsterdam and an exhibition on the history of food in Amsterdam. allardpierson.nl/en/news/call...