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.”
FDA says it’s OK for women and children to eat more fish (oops)
The Washington Post says the FDA has breached the policy on fish consumption that it worked out with the EPA in 2004 and now proposes – in the last days of the Bush administration and without discussing the matter with EPA – to increase the amount of fish considered safe for women and children. Why? Because, it says, the benefits of omega-3s in fish outweigh the risks of methylmercury contamination. The EPA and environmental groups that work on fish safety are outraged, and with good cause, I’d say. Check out the arguments. You know this is about politics (translation: support of the fisheries industry) when the FDA says this is “science-based” policy (always a dead giveaway) and the Environmental Working Group says the FDA is nothing more than a “patsy for polluters.”
