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.”
And now you can’t eat pistachios either
The FDA is announcing the “voluntary” recall of certain pistachio products. Certain, in this case, means a mere million pounds of products from Setton Pistachios of Terra Bella, CA. These appear to be contaminated with multiple strains of Salmonella. As with the peanut butter recalls, pistachios are used in many different kinds of products. The FDA learned about the problem from Kraft Foods, which found Salmonella in its Back to Nature Trail Mix. Nobody has gotten sick yet, but stay tuned. The FDA has a brand new pistachio recall page on its website. Now you can keep track of pistachio recalls along with the peanut butter recalls which continue to come in every day and now add up to nearly 4,000 products.
Will this ever end? While waiting for Congress to approve the appointment of Dr. Margaret Hamburg as FDA Commissioner, her deputy, Joseph Scharstein, has just taken over as acting commissioner. These new officials will have plenty of work to do to get this mess under control.
