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.”
Melamine in U.S. infant formula?
Oh great. So now trace amounts of melamine are turning up in infant formulas made by all the big makers. The amounts – 0.1 to 0.2 ppm or less – are way too low to be harmful, says the FDA. This seems logical, but does this mean that trace amounts of melamine are in everything? And it would be good to know what concentration of melamine mixed with cyanuric acid – or uric acid – is safe. I can understand why the FDA might not want to get into all this but I wish the Associated Press could have gotten this information without having to file a freedom-of-information-act request.
Updates: Here’s the more circumspect account in the New York Times, and a skeptical commentary from LawyersAndSettlements.com. The Washington Post (November 29) reported specific figures: The FDA tested 87 infant formula products and has results for 77. Of these, it found melamine at levels of .137 and .14 parts per million in Nestle Good Start Supreme Infant Formula with Iron in liquid form. It also found cyanuric acid at levels between 0.245 ppm and 0.249 ppm in Enfamil Lipil with Iron (Mead Johnson Nutritionals/Briston-Myers Squibb). These are very low levels.
