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
Nov
30
2007
Food banks in trouble
Today’s New York Times tells us that food banks are having a hard time meeting the need for their services. Food donations are down, and the number of people needing emergency food is up. I have heard this story over and over in the years since I first started writing about hunger policy. As Janet Poppendieck explains in her timeless book, Sweet Charity, food banks and emergency food–helpful as they are–are bad public policy. The Times article is excellent evidence for the need for better anti-hunger policies in the United States. It’s too bad things have to get so bad before anyone notices.
