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.”
Industry-funded study of the week: Mushrooms!
Conclusion: “Addition of mushrooms to USDA Food Patterns increased several micronutrients including shortfall nutrients (such as potassium, vitamin D and choline), and had a minimal or no impact on overall calories, sodium or saturated fat.”
Funding: “The study and the writing of the manuscript were supported by the Mushroom Council.”
Conflict of interest : “SA as Principal of NutriScience LLC performs nutrition science consulting for various food and beverage companies and related entities; and VLF as Senior Vice President of Nutrition Impact, LLC performs consulting and database analyses for various food and beverage companies and related entities.”
Comment: As I keep saying, all fruits and vegetables have nutritional value. Some have more of one nutrient than another. A good dietary strategy is to vary them to meet needs for the nutrients they contain. The only scientific purpose of this study is to demonstrate that mushrooms have nutrients. I could have told them that.
This study is about marketing, not science. It was conducted by a firm that specializes in industry-funded studies useful for marketing purposes.
