Dan Charles
Dan Charles is NPR's food and agriculture correspondent.
Primarily responsible for covering farming and the food industry, Charles focuses on the stories of culture, business, and the science behind what arrives on your dinner plate.
This is his second time working for NPR; from 1993 to 1999, Charles was a technology correspondent at NPR. He returned in 2011.
During his time away from NPR, Charles was an independent writer and radio producer and occasionally filled in at NPR on the Science and National desks, and at Weekend Edition. Over the course of his career Charles has reported on software engineers in India, fertilizer use in China, dengue fever in Peru, alternative medicine in Germany, and efforts to turn around a troubled school in Washington, DC.
In 2009-2010, he taught journalism in Ukraine through the Fulbright program. He has been guest researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and a Knight Science Journalism fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
From 1990 to 1993, Charles was a U.S. correspondent for New Scientist, a major British science magazine.
The author of two books, Charles wrote Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, The Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare (Ecco, 2005) and Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food (Perseus, 2001) about the making of genetically engineered crops.
Charles graduated magna cum laude from American University with a degree in economics and international affairs. After graduation Charles spent a year studying in Bonn, which was then part of West Germany, through the German Academic Exchange Service.
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The proposed changes to food stamps, now called SNAP, would be drastic: About half the benefits would be boxed-up, nonperishable foods. Recipients would lose a lot of their ability to pick their food.
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A new survey finds strong public support for organic food, and suspicion of GMOs — regardless of whether people vote Republican or Democratic. Also, people don't trust scientists much at all.
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Outbreaks of foodborne illness are ruining the holiday spirit for Chipotle. The latest cases erupted over the past few days among students at Boston College.
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Kids in America's schools are eating more local food, although it makes up only a small part of the average meal. Advocates say local food doesn't have to cost more, but buying it does take more time.
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The federal government is requiring farmers to keep more records on exactly when and where they used specific pesticides. And no children under the age of 18 will be allowed to handle the chemicals.
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A respected scientific group says that glyphosate, also known as Roundup, is "probably carcinogenic to humans." Yet the actual risks — which are mainly to farmers, not consumers — remain uncertain.
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A new study finds that restrictions on fast-food restaurants in South Los Angeles didn't reduce obesity as intended. That's partly because the ban didn't cover the most common types of food stores.
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The government wants to make your chicken meat safer to handle. The USDA is proposing legal limits on the chicken parts that are contaminated with salmonella bacteria.
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New GMO potatoes don't bruise as easily, and, when fried, they have less of a potentially harmful chemical. Yet some big chip and french fry makers won't touch them because of the stigma of GMOs.
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Coca-Cola got a lot of attention in November when it announced it was going into the milk business. In fact, its extra-nutritious milk product was invented by some dairy farmers in Indiana.