The Brief

If you want to know what healthy snacks you'll be eating in the next few years, Anaheim Convention Center was the place to be last week, for Expo West, officially Natural Products Expo West.

Known as the Cannes Film Festival of natural nibbles, the SXSW of organic snacks, the Super Bowl of conscious Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), Expo West is where global business gets done and the future of food is decided.

Over the four days — it started Tuesday and ended Friday — an estimated 65,000 people explored nearly 3,000 exhibitor booths. There was much to taste, from vegan cheeses to mini samosas to traditional chorizos to protein-dense waffles. It was hundreds of rows of tiny appetizers that don’t necessarily go together, but after you munch them all and the bites add up, you forget to eat lunch.

65,000 visitors are expected to visit Expo West

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Josh Heller

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I came prepared by meeting up with my friend Bob Goldberg, a pioneer of the health food scene and co-founder of Follow Your Heart. Goldberg has been coming to this conference every year since the first one in 1981.

“When you’re on the floor, the trend of the moment seems to come out," he said, noting that in the past the zeitgeisty word had been “organic” or “gluten-free.”

This year, it seemed the word was “functional,” as in, he said, “it’s not just a food, it does something for you.” With a laugh and as befits someone who’s seen everything over the years, “some of it’s real, and some of it’s unmitigated bull——.”

Out on the floor I saw the phrase in action. There was a Sati Soda with flavors like Clarity Lemon-Lime that described themselves as a “functional organic beverage line.” Eclipse Foods launched a brand of non-dairy Bon-Bons that “mimicked milk’s creamy molecular structure and functionality using plants.” I also saw a line of “Functional Mushroom Gummies” from NOON, which they say are “neuroscience-backed for Focus, Chill and Sleep.”

One of the many exhibitors showing their wares

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Upcycling

I also spotted a word I hadn’t connected to food before — “upcycling”.

At one panel, UC Davis professor Ned Spang hit us with cold, hard facts: one third of the food we produce is not eaten, accounting for $1 trillion in economic value and causing 8% to 10% of overall greenhouse emissions.

One solution: upcycling food that would otherwise be wasted — not just the food we throw away, but also the leftover byproducts of processed food production, like spent grain from a brewery, fruit rinds, coffee grounds and potato pulp.

Spang is using data to keep track of these leftovers, so innovators can use this raw material creatively — to make all new upcycled products.

It seems to be working. Back on the convention center floor, I tried some upcycled products, like Uglies Kettle Sweet Potato Chips. They’re made from potatoes that have small imperfections or may just be the wrong size or shape. Either way, I wouldn’t even have known because they tasted great.

I also saw Chee-Hoo, a Hawaiian dairy-free frozen dessert bar that upcycles bananas, RIND Snacks, freeze-dried fruit that uses upcycled produce, and Huxley, an energy drink made from the superfruit cascara, the antioxidant rich outer husk of a coffee bean.

Vegan steaks and mushroom meat 

I walked around the floor with Goldberg, who was looking for his Follow Your Heart head chef, Proof Fujiyama-Ahira. We found him munching away at the Chunk vegan steak booth. This is a frozen product that sells well at Follow Your Heart. They told the sales rep they’ve seen people walking out the door with four boxes at a time.

Chunk's Joe Loria told me that the meat substitute is a cultured soy and wheat protein that's fermented using a process called solid state fermentation that's been around for centuries and uses less energy.

I tried a sample of the Chunk steak with a chimichurri sauce. It really did taste like a hunk of beef, and later on I found myself picking pieces of the steak from my teeth, just like real meat. Loria said that Chunk is already on the menu at a steakhouse in Florida. It's clear fake steak is getting closer and closer to the texture and flavor of the real thing.

Chunk's vegan steak

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Bob had also told me to seek out a “great mycelium-based meat alternative” called Fynd.

Their explainer video felt like the beginning of a science fiction flick: "It all started in a volcano, millions of years ago actually, when a remarkable little microbe was born.” But they successfully cultivated this microbe found deep beneath Yellowstone National Park and turned it into a “complete protein with all 20 amino acids.”

I gave it a try. The breakfast patties tasted as savory as a mass-produced meat sausage that I claim as a guilty pleasure. The non-dairy yogurt tasted indistinguishable to me from the real thing.

Mushrooms grow incredibly fast and don’t require lots of energy or water to produce. This could become a major source of protein for masses of humans in a world of uncertain food stability. And it tastes really good.

Health trends come and go

Not all new products at Expo West are strictly healthy, however.

“Right now everyone is eating chia seeds and lentils, but in 20 years everyone is still gonna be eating Doritos and they’re still gonna be eating Tantos,” said Top Chef alum Joe Sasto. “We’re not a healthy or better for you snack, which everyone is doing. Health trends come and go."

Chef Joe Sasto and his Tantos brand

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He was there promoting his new line of puffed pasta chips, Tantos. They're seasoned with traditional Italian flavors like marinara, pesto, and cacio e pepe. Sasto says they're inspired by a “combination of my favorite food groups: pasta and nachos.”

I tried the marinara flavor. It was crunchy and savory and hit all the notes that a snack should deliver. I'd definitely eat it again.

This is no struggling start-up. Made in Burbank, Tantos officially launched last July. The chips are now available in 1,300 stores and in the sky with Jet Blue. Sasto and his partners came to Expo West to get their product into more places.

“So we’re hot, up and coming," he said. "Everybody loves pasta.”

L.A. County CEO Fesia Davenport, who has been on medical leave for the last five months, has announced she’ll be stepping down in mid-April, citing health concerns. While on leave, she has faced scrutiny from the public and county employees — as well as a lawsuit — over a secretive $2 million payout she received last August.

Davenport gave notice on Wednesday to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors — her bosses — that she plans to step down effective April 16, according to a spokesperson for her office.

Davenport remains on medical leave and her second-in-command, Joseph Nicchitta, continues to serve as acting CEO, according to a statement from the CEO’s office.

“We appreciate Fesia's nearly three decades of service to Los Angeles County and all that she has accomplished on behalf of its residents and communities,” the statement added.

Davenport said in a LinkedIn post she was stepping down “to focus on my health and wellness.” She also emailed CEO office staff to say she’s learned she has a predisposition for the same type of health problem that killed her brother Raymond in 2018 and that two of her sisters experienced last year. One of her sisters will require 24-hour care for the rest of her life, Davenport wrote.

“The County CEO role requires an extraordinary amount of time and energy to meet the demands of the job, and although I originally assumed that I would be able to return in early 2026, I now know that I would be unable to continue to do the job as it deserves to be done while also prioritizing my health,” she added.

The $2 million taxpayer payout from the county was in response to her claiming she was harmed by a voter-approved measure that will change her job almost two years after her employment contract expires. The settlement was marked “confidential” and not made public until it was brought to light by LAist.

A lawsuit filed last month claims the payout is illegal because Davenport did not have a valid legal dispute with the county. Under the state Constitution, local government settlement payouts are illegal gifts of public funds if they’re in response to allegations that completely lack legal merit or exceed the agency’s “maximum exposure,” according to court rulings.

On Tuesday, county supervisors ordered new transparency measures in response to LAist revealing the secretive payout to Davenport. The county will now create a public dashboard of settlements between the county and its executives, and make sure all such settlements are reported to the public on meeting agendas after they’re finalized.

In her message to staff, Davenport said she was proud of their work together. She pointed to balancing the county’s budget, developing a plan to compensate victims in the largest sexual assault settlement in U.S. history and protecting the county's credit rating when other agencies were being downgraded.

As word of the damning sexual abuse accusations against César Chávez spread this week, California’s farmworking communities struggled to process and reconcile the disturbing details with the image of a labor icon and civil rights fighter many considered a hero.

Reached by phone, people described feeling stunned and disjointed after learning the news from a neighbor’s call, conversations with relatives, work meetings or social media.

“It’s almost too difficult to believe what is happening,” Maria García Hernández, a farmworker for more than 30 years, said in Spanish on Wednesday afternoon. The 52-year-old, who lives in Tulare County, said she and her parents benefited from Chávez's advocacy to include undocumented farmworkers in the last major comprehensive immigration reform in the 1980s.

“I still can’t quite believe it — that such a courageous person who fought for all of us to ensure we had shade, water, clean restrooms, better working conditions, that such a person, so dedicated to the people … could do that,” said García, who seeds and harvests plants in a job represented by the United Farm Workers, the union that Chávez and Dolores Huerta co-founded.

Huerta, now 95, revealed for the first time publicly that Chávez manipulated her into sex and raped her in the 1960s, telling The New York Times that the two encounters each left her pregnant. The Times’ multi-year investigation, published Wednesday, also detailed accusations by two women, daughters of union organizers, who said Chávez sexually abused them when they were children in the 1970s.

A farmworker picks grapes at a field in Fresno on Sept. 3, 2025.

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When Rolando Hernandez first heard about the allegations from coworkers during a job training meeting, the former agricultural worker was confused. He thought the discussion must be about someone else.

“Excuse me, but which César Chávez are you talking about?” Hernandez, 33, asked at the gathering. “Because I only know of one César Chávez who fought for farmworkers’ rights so that there’d be better wages and not so much injustice in the fields.”

“That’s the one,” came the response, leaving Hernandez speechless.

“It landed really heavy,” said Hernandez, an outreach educator for a Fresno-based farmworker nonprofit who began harvesting chile fields as a 14-year-old in Arizona before working with grapes and oranges in California.

The fallout from the revelations was almost immediate. California lawmakers announced they plan to rename the state holiday named after Chavez as Farmworkers Day. Cities, states and organizations, including the UFW, moved to postpone or cancel celebrations planned for March 31 in honor of the Mexican American labor leader’s birthday. Officials are considering renaming streets, parks, libraries, schools and other buildings named after Chávez.

For decades, Chávez and Huerta’s collaboration to advance farmworker rights has been celebrated in children’s textbooks, biographies, movies and parades. Now, mothers like García are troubled that more was not done sooner to prevent and respond to the alleged attacks.

“I feel for them; it really pains me in the bottom of my soul what happened to them,” García said. “But if what happened is true, why wasn’t it spoken of a long time ago? Why now?”

Chávez died in 1993. Huerta said she stayed silent for 60 years because she feared hurting the reputation of a man who became the face of the Mexican American civil rights movement, known for national boycotts, marches and strikes that achieved significant gains for thousands of farmworkers.

“I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work,” Huerta said in a statement after the Times investigation was published. “I have never identified myself as a victim, but I now understand that I am a survivor — of violence, of sexual abuse, of domineering men who saw me, and other women, as property, or things to control.”

Luz Gallegos, whose childhood experiences accompanying her parents to UFW pickets and marches inspired her to become a farmworker advocate, said she felt shattered by the revelations. Now the director of TODEC Legal Center, an immigrant and farmworker nonprofit in the Inland Empire and Coachella Valley, Gallegos praised the courage of Huerta and the other victims who carried their pain before choosing to speak up.

“We stand with our compañera Dolores Huerta and the survivors. What has been revealed is very painful and deeply disturbing,” said Gallegos, her voice cracking. “We know firsthand that silence has never protected our farmworker communities, and no movement or justice can ask people to stay silent about abuse — not then and not now.”

She, like others who spoke with KQED hours after hearing the news, said they want this moment of reckoning to help prevent similar abuses in the future. They hope the allegations against Chávez don’t undercut gains by the farmworker movement as a whole, built by many laborers and their families over decades.

“Right now, we are holding grief. I am holding so much pain in my chest, in my mind, in my heart,” Gallegos said. “At the same time, it’s a reflection that we cannot stay silent, we cannot let our movement end … reassuring our community that their voice matters and that no one should endure any type of abuse.”

A farmworker picks grapes at a field in Fresno on Sept. 3, 2025.

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García, who started accompanying her parents to work in agriculture at the age of 10, said sexual harassment by farm labor contractors and supervisors was rampant. She was fired from jobs, she said, as retaliation for not agreeing to men’s advances. But joining the UFW helped improve her job conditions and feel supported to complain if there were problems, she said.

García said that if union insiders or others knew of the allegations against Chávez but failed to investigate or willingly ignored the underage victims, there should be consequences.

“If those people are still around — if they are still alive — then they must be held accountable,” she said.

Outside a courtroom in Fresno, where the UFW is fighting a Trump administration plan to make it cheaper to hire temporary farm labor, union president Teresa Romero asked the public to respect the privacy of victims who came forward, according to CalMatters.

“We do not condone the actions of César Chávez,” Romero said. “It’s wrong.”

Three candidates for Long Beach City Council have joined forces in their bid to unseat the incumbents they’re challenging in the primary election this June.

Deb Kahookele, running for District 1; Tara Riggi, running for District 5; and Sequoia Neff, running for District 9, announced their combined ticket in a video published on social media earlier this month.

At a joint campaign event in front of around 100 people in Bixby Knolls on Wednesday, they reiterated their goal of “breaking up the 9-0 votes” they say are all too common on the mostly closely aligned Long Beach City Council, where it’s rare to see a narrowly-split vote.

All three are political newcomers, coming from careers in real estate.

They’ve claimed the grassroots lane this election, winning backing from resident groups like the Long Beach Reform Coalition that views itself as a check on City Hall power, occasionally suing — and winning — on tax issues.

Kahookele, Riggi and Neff say they feel disenfranchised from the current city government, something they emphasize in their slogan: people over politics.

They’re taking on three well-established incumbents: Mary Zendejas in the downtown area’s District 1, Joni Ricks-Oddie in North Long Beach’s District 9 and Megan Kerr in District 5 that extends east and west from Long Beach Airport. The three have already raised tens of thousands of dollars each for their reelection races and won endorsements from the mayor, other local politicians, labor and business groups.

Tara Riggi, center, and Sequoia Neff, left, talk with voters before a campaign event in Long Beach on March 19, 2026. Riggi is running for the District 5 seat.

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Long Beach Post

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Riggi said she decided to run for office after moving to the Cal Heights neighborhood and becoming president of the neighborhood association.

“My allegiance is to my community,” Riggi said at the event. “We are a truly grassroots campaign.”

Kahookele, who moved around a lot at an early age because her father was in the Army, said she found Long Beach home after moving to the city in 2010 and has since risen to prominent roles in several local organizations, including the Promenade Area Residents Association, Long Beach Pride and Long Beach Rotary.

“My votes aren’t going to be bought,” she said.

Deb Kahookele speaks with voters at a campaign event in Long Beach on Wednesday, March 19, 2026. She is running for the District 1 City Council seat.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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Neff, a Poly High School grad and mother of six who founded a local youth basketball league and track club, owns a brokerage firm that operates in multiple states. Early this year, she held a walk to raise awareness about human trafficking in her district.

“North Long Beach has been unheard and overlooked for too long,” Neff said. “And it’s time we’re a part of the conversation, and I just want to step up and do that.”

At Wednesday’s campaign event, they repeatedly hit on the theme that current representatives aren’t doing enough to represent their constituents, and they vowed to dig into the city’s spending to remedy a looming $80 million deficit. They pledged to vote against the possibility of any new tax measures.

Sequoia Neff speaks with voters before a campaign event in Long Beach on Wednesday, March 19, 2026. Neff is a candidate for the District 9 seat.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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North Long Beach resident James Murray said he showed up Wednesday to hear more from Neff after she attended a recent Starr King Neighborhood Association meeting, and he came away convinced.

“I think it’s time for a change,” he said.

Dan Pressburg, a longtime neighborhood organizer in the DeForest Park neighborhood, said the three candidates joining together was the right move: He wants people outside the current political structure to have a chance to rise to power.

You can see a full list of candidates who will appear on the June ballot here. The Long Beach Post will have continuing coverage, including a full voter guide to be published in the coming months.