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.”
My latest honor of sorts: Stat News’ expert on MAHA
5 food experts making sense of MAHA’s vision for a new way of eating
Marion Nestle
Marion Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University, molecular biologist, and the author of more than dozen books, has been a prominent voice on nutrition and advocate for food policy reform for years. But as a New York Times headline recently declared, “At age 88, she’s meeting her moment” in the MAHA-verse.
Nestle isn’t on board with all of Kennedy’s food concerns — she’s pretty neutral on seed oils, for example. But they share many criticisms of the food industry, arguing that the rise of addictively delicious, nutritionally deficient ultra-processed foods is linked to higher obesity levels in the U.S. and favoring measures like banning soda from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. (Nestle wrote the book on the soda industry’s threat to public health, 2015’s “Soda Politics.”) As such, Nestle’s commentary is a valuable guide to understanding the logic behind Kennedy’s proposals, whether or not you agree with them.
It’s actually six others: Dariush Mozaffarian (Tufts), Susan Mayne (former FDA official), Eri Schulze (UPSIDE Foods), Jerold Mande (Nourish), and Helena Bottemiller Evich (Food Fix).
I’m happy to be in their company.
