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.”
Danish groups oppose European food ranking system
Several Danish consumer groups have banded together to oppose the food industry-backed GDA system for ranking the nutritional quality of processed foods. The GDA (the Guidance Daily Amount) system is already in use on some products and food industry groups want it required for all European Union food labels. Of course food companies want it. It doesn’t use the U.K.’s red/yellow/green traffic light system that encourages people to avoid the red-labeled products.
The “Stop GDA” campaign argues that the GDA system encourages purchases of processed foods at the expense of the real foods. It has produced a clever pamphlet to back up this argument. Its criticisms apply just as well to all scoring systems for food products, except the traffic lights.
