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 Dietary Guidelines saga continues: II. The same old recommendations
Every five years since 1980, we get to go through the most enormous fuss about dietary guidelines that have not changed in any fundamental way since then.
Then and now, they say eat more vegetables, balance calories, and reduce intake of foods high in sugar, salt, and fat.
You don’t believe me? Here is the much more straightforward 1980 version.
Reminder: The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is just that: advisory. The agencies will write the actual guidelines. Until the guidelines actually appear, everything remains speculative. They are due to appear by the end of 2025. Between now and then, we have an election to deal with. No matter who wins, political appointees in the two sponsoring departments will change and could greatly intervene.
I love the Dietary Guidelines. They are endlessly entertaining examples of food politics in action.
