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.”
Weekend reading: The U.S. Food System
Roni Neff, editor. Introduction to the U.S. Food System: Public Health, Environment, and Equity. Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, Jossey-Bass, 2015.
This is an undergraduate textbook for students in courses dealing with almost anything having to do with food as it relates to larger societal issues of economics, policy, marketing, culture, security, health, and the environment. It is large (542 pages, 8.5 x 11), easy to read, and well illustrated. It ought to be terrific in stimulating thinking about these issues, particularly because it covers everything you can think of that’s important in this area, from farm subsidies to school lunches. The only thing missing is international dimensions, but that would take another book of this size.
Also focused on the U.S. food system is the Institute of Medicine’s report I wrote about a couple of weeks ago: A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System.
Between the two, you have a full course on food systems, especially because the IOM report comes with:
- Infographic (PDF)
- Key Figures (PDF)
- Report Brief (PDF)
- Introductory slide
- Archived Webinar
