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.”
by Marion Nestle
Aug
29
2025
Weekend reading: National Food Museum’s update on Trump Administration Food Scorecard
Michael Jacobson, founder and former president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, is now promoting development of a National Food Museum. One of its projects is keeping score on administration food policies.
He lists them as positive or negative, like this.
The most recent entry is dated June 26, a negative: the huge cut in SNAP benefits.
Alas, the negatives far outweigh the positives. Take a look.
Thanks to Food Fix for this collection of tracking sites
- STAT News: Isabella Cueto’s report on MAHA’s minimal progress
- HHS: “MAHA in Action” public health wins (Food Fix says this is more like a campaign site).
- FDA: Food industry pledges to remove food dyes (promises, but not much action yet)
