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.”
Colombia is taxing ultra-processed foods!
Let’s start the new year with some good news.
I was excited to read in The Lancet that Colombia has enacted a tax on junk foods.
The new tax was included in a wider reform that passed into law in December, 2022, seeking to reduce the
burden of obesity and other diseases on Colombia’s health system, while also bringing in revenue in a country that manages a fiscal deficit.
This is a tax on ultra-processed foods!
The tax is being implemented gradually, beginning at 10%, before rising to 15% in 2024 and 20% in 2025, and targets foods are high in salt and saturated fat, as well as industrially manufactured prepackaged foods.
Colombia already has warning labels. Here’s who else has them.
The warning label movement!
Now, if we only could get these in the U.S….
But note: not everyone loves the tax. The Guardian reports charges that it is unfair to the poor. But so is type 2 diabetes.
