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.”
New books: the farm bill and farming
It’s spring and the books about food and farms are flooding in. I’ll start with these.
Daniel Imhoff, Food Fight: The Citizen’s Guide to the Next Food and Farm Bill, Watershed Media, 2012.
Michael Pollan and Fred Kirschnmann introduce this new, gorgeously illustrated edition of Imhoff’s lucid explanation of the farm bill and the vast number of issues it covers. I’m not aware of anything else that comes close to explaining this most obscure and obfuscated piece of legislation. Congress is fussing with the bill right now. If you want to understand what your elected officials are fussing about, start here. I will use this book in my NYU classes and will borrow the stunning illustrations for talks.
Jim VanDerPol, Conversations with the Land, No Bull Press, 2012.
This is a book of personal reflections on farms, farming, and farmers. VanDerPol talks about the weather, people and communities, and better ways to produce food and to live. From his base in Minnesota, he gives his thoughts about the way agriculture has changed and what can be done to make it better.
