Information about the Aspen Ideas Festival is here. I am scheduled for a session, The American Wellness Paradox, currently scheduled from 11:00-11:50 a.m., at the East Lawn Tent. This will be a discussion with senior HHS policy advisor, Calley Means. Here’s the blurb on it: “Americans are spending more than ever on healthcare, supplements, wellness trends, and “clean eating,” yet rates of chronic disease and metabolic illness continue to climb. As skepticism fuels the rise of movements like MAHA, debates over what Americans should eat have become deeply cultural, political, and economic. Two influential voices with sharply different perspectives on nutrition and food science explore how food systems, farming practices, consumer culture, and the wellness industry collided to create one of the defining public health debates of our time.”
by Marion Nestle
Apr
2
2008
FDA says HFCS cannot claim to be “natural”
According to Food Navigator, the FDA says it’s too busy to deal with the question of whether high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) can be labeled as “all natural,” something the Sugar Association and Sara Lee would dearly love to be allowed to do. This non-action, in effect, is the FDA’s way of just saying no. HFCS, as the FDA points out, requires enzymes to break starch into glucose and to convert some of the glucose to fructose, and that ain’t necessarily natural. The Sugar Association is “deeply disappointed” in the FDA’s decision. Why am I not surprised?

