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.”
Weekend reading: less sugar for kids!
The Global Food Institute at George Washington University has a new report out: Changing the Default: A Policy Roadmap for Reducing Added Sugars in U.S. Children’s Diets, by Fielding-Singh, P., D. Cherlin, and M. Maitin-Shepard. June 2026.
What the report is about:
American children today consume far too much added sugar, and it is harming their health. The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans set the most ambitious target yet for reducing this intake. This brief offers a policy roadmap for what it would take to make meaningful progress toward it.
It calls for reshaping the food environment to help kids eat less sugar. Its recommendations focus on educating families, but also setting higher school nutrition standards and reshaping sugar supply and demand.
Here’s why this matters:
The advice:
- Reduce sugars in the food supply.
- Tax sugary drinks.
- Restrict marketing of sugary foods and drinks to kids.
Comment
It’s a clear, succinct report with lots of good suggestions.
If only they could be implemented.
Get to work!
