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.”
Who funds research on food and agriculture?
The USDA has just released this summary of food research funding.
This graph clearly indicates what I view as a big problem: government funding for agricultural and food research has been declining since the early 2000s, whereas private funding—meaning corporations and industries—has sharply increased since 2008 or so.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Government funding can support basic research with no obvious commercial implications—science.
Funding by food corporations and industries has one primary purpose: to develop and promote products—marketing.
I’m not opposed to marketing research, as long as it is labeled as such.
The decline in federal funding for food and nutrition research has long-term implications for scientific progress.
We need basic research on agriculture, food, nutrition, and health.
These curves need to be reversed.
