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.”
New York City’s food initiatives
I’m having a had time keeping up with all the things the New York City food policy office is doing to improve the city’s food system, so I asked for, and got, an impressive list.
For starters, it has a plan: Food Forward NYC: A 10-Year Policy Plan
And its done a 2-Year Progress Report
The office published or supports the publishing of other city reports:
- Food Standards Compliance Report on the nutritional quality of the 219 million meals served City agencies
- NYC Food by the Numbers summarizing data on everything it’s doing
- Good Food Purchasing Dashboard with data on what the city buys
- Prioritizing Food Education in Our Public Schools: A Path to Developing a Healthy Next Generation, a guide to building healthy school communities.
- Cultivating Urban Agriculture, a planning document
It announces a new grant to the Department of Corrections to train prison foodservice workers to prepare plant-based meals
These are on top of initiatives to:
- Promote Healthy Food in New York City.
- Improve Food Standards and Good Food Purchasing
- Promote Healthy Foods in City Publications and in Advertising on City Property
- Hold Plant Powered Fridays in schools
- Improve standards for beverages offered in City vending machines
- Require chain restaurants to post sugars
- Serve healthier food in NYC-run hospitals
The Mayor’s Office of Food Policy has a remarkably low profile. Trying to find out who’s in it and what they are doing is not easy, which is why I wanted to try to get a handle on it.
I think Kate MacKenzie and her handful of colleagues are doing impresssive work, not least because of their outreach and partnership with multiple city agencies.
Impressive, indeed.
