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 fight over non-milk “milk”: the dairy industry plus FDA vs. soy producers and USDA
All those non-milk “milks’ in the dairy section—soy, almond, cashew, hazelnut, pumpkin seed, flax, hemp, coconut—make the dairy industry unhappy. Milk says the FDA, is the “lacteal secretion” from cows.
Government agencies can’t agree; the USDA wants to help soybean farmers and favors selling soy milk as milk.
This dispute, obviously, is about marketing advantage.
Now Food Chemical News has a nifty investigative report on the fight between USDA and FDA over soymilk in the 2015 Dietary Guidelines.
The Good Food Institute filed a FOIA request and got 1500 pages of emails dating from 2011.
The USDA likes “soymilk:” everyone knows what it is.
The FDA prefers “fortified soy beverage” to indicate that the soy product does not have the same nutrient composition as cow’s milk.
This marketing dispute involves lawsuits, petitions, and more, according to the Associated Press account.
As I’ve written earlier, this is about market share. Let them fight it out.
In the meantime, I don’t have any trouble telling which is which, and I’ll bet you don’t either.
