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.”
The big push to reduce salt
The Institute of Medicine’s long awaited study, Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake in the United States, will be released next week at a public briefing in Washington, DC.
According to study director Chris Taylor, the briefing will be held Wednesday, April 21, from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. at the National Press Club, 529 14th Street, NW, Washington, DC. Those who cannot attend can listed to a live audio Webcast at http://www.nationalacademies.org/. Anyone who wants to attend should register at http://www.iom.edu/Activities/Nutrition/ReduceSodiumStrat.aspx. For information, contact the news office at the National Academies, (202)-334-2138 or onpi@nas.edu.
In what can hardly be a coincidence, General Mills has announced that it will be reducing the sodium in several lines of its products by 20% between now and 2015.
The great majority, perhaps 80%, of the salt in U.S. diets comes from processed and pre-prepared foods. If salt is to be lowered, the processed food and restaurant industries must do it. Just about everyone agrees that salt reduction has to occur gradually and across the board. It’s great that General Mills is signing on to this effort.
