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.”
Lancet series on chronic diseases, many of them diet-related
The Lancet has just published a series of articles on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) the collective term for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic conditions caused in large part by poor diets, lack of physical activity, or cigarettes or alcohol.
Since food politics is a big part of this discussion, these papers are worth a look. For example, as editor Richard Horton explains in his editorial:
So where are the global conferences on NCDs, the research meetings, the task forces, the grand challenges initiated by funders and foundations? They don’t exist. We, the global health community, understand that chronic diseases are a present danger to the health of our societies. Yet we are unable to translate that understanding into real political action. We cannot quite bring ourselves to put heart disease, stroke, cancer, chronic respiratory disease, diabetes, or mental ill-health, together with their associated risk factors, on an equal footing with childhood pneumonia and diarrhoea, preventable maternal death, or epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. The disconnect between the reality of people’s lives in countries and the concerns of professional and political leaders has rarely been greater.
Here are the papers in this series. Read them and ponder.
