There are many reasons why health policies have become so distorted, based on unscientific agendas and polarizing.But today is not a day for political pontificating about why that is. It is enough to say that too few scientists are willing to speak out and address controversial and emotional food policy issues.The food policy world has just lost a great light, Chris Raines, who at only 29, was already showing policy wonks and agriculture industry leaders how to take on the most complex food policy issues while staying above the fray.Raines was a lot more than a professor of meat science at Penn State, a university known for top agriculture academicians. He saw it as his mission to spread the gospel of science to make sure that food policy was indeed based on the science, no matter how unpopular that science is, especially when matched up against sound bites, popular wisdom, fear and plain old folklore.