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I spent a lot of time last week responding to reporters’ questions about Trump’s appointing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

Here’s what the president-elect said about the appointment on Twitter (X):

For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health…HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country. Mr. Kennedy will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!

Trump has instructed Mr. Kennedy to end chronic disease and “Go wild on food.”

In various statements, Mr. Kennedy has said he wants to get rid of “poisons”

• Ultra-processed foods in schools
• Artificial colors in cereals
• Chemicals, pollutants, pesticides
• Mercury in fish
• Fast food

He also wants to

• Restrict sodas on SNAP
• Promote sustainable, regenerative farming by small farmers
• End conflicts of interest between government agencies and corporations: Corporate capture is the biggest threat to democracy.

These are the kinds of things I’ve been saying and writing about for decades!

[He also is pushing for some things that are much less well grounded in science: getting rid of grains for kids, seed oils, and fluoride in drinking water; deregulating raw milk; and firing all nutrition scientists on day 1].

If he really does do what he’s promising here, it means taking on the food industry, in a way that no government has ever done, and Trump showed no signs of doing in his first term.

What can we expect?  I have no idea, but thist sure will be interesting to watch.

Mother Jones calls Kennedy’s appointment “a genuine catastrophe.”

For charges of hypocrisy, click here.

Civil Eats asked a bunch of people to predict “The Path Forward for Food and Ag.”  Here’s what I said.

I wish I had a crystal ball to say how food and agriculture issues would play out over the next four years, but all I have to go on is what Trump and his followers say. If we take them at their word, then we must expect them to implement their Project 2025 plan, which replaces one deep state with another that favors conservative business interests and ideology. This calls for replacing staff in federal agencies with Trump loyalists and dismantling them, stopping the USDA from doing anything to prevent climate change, reforming farm subsidies (unclear how), splitting the farm bill to deal separately with agricultural supports and SNAP, reducing SNAP participation by reinstating work requirements and reducing the Thrifty Food Plan, and making it more difficult for kids to participate in school meals.

On the other hand, some of the plans make sense: eliminating checkoff programs and repealing the sugar program, for example. So do some of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s goals: Make America Healthy Again by focusing on chronic disease prevention, getting harmful chemicals out of kids’ foods, and getting rid of conflicts of interest among researchers and agency staff. It’s too early to know how much of this is just talk, but I’m planning to do what I can to oppose measures I view as harmful, but to strongly support the ones I think will be good for public health.

The House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee has a lengthy (179 pages) new report ‘Recipe for health: a plan to fix our broken food system’.

Key finding: Obesity and diet-related disease are public health emergencies costing society billions in healthcare costs and lost productivity.

Key recommendation: The Government should develop a comprehensive, integrated long-term new strategy to fix our food system, underpinned by a new legislative framework.

Key actions (selected):

• Require large food businesses to report on the healthfulness of their products
• Exclude businesses making unhealthful products from policy discussions on food, diet and obesity prevention.
• Tax products high in salt and sugar; use revenues to make healthy food cheaper.
• Ban the advertising of less healthy food across all media.

No recommendation on reducing intake of ultra-processed foods?  Despite finding the link between ultra-processed foods and poor health outcome “alarming,” the report ducked the issue and recommended only to fund more research.

It also advised reviewing dietary guidelines with ultra-processed foods in mind.

Still, the recommendation to keep food businesses out of public policy discussions is a good one, not to mention taxes and advertising bans.

This, mind you, is the House of Lords.  Impressive.

LINKS

• Full report
• News story
• Shorthand version of the report
• Video
• Audio (Baroness Walmsley)

Late in September, the British government issued guidance about reducing intake of foods high in fat, salt, and sugar, collectively HFSS.

The guidance is based on  the provisions of the Food (Promotion and Placement) (England) Regulations of 2021.

The regulations provide for restrictions on the promotions and placement in retail stores and their online equivalents of certain foods and drinks that are high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) or ‘less healthy’.

The regulations have led to a flurry of product reformulations to get the fat, sugar, and salt below the cut point for the restrictions.

According to one report, “reformulation is rife in F&B but consumers aren’t sold yet: Brands are reformulating to improve nutritional value and reduce or remove ‘unhealthy’ ingredient levels. But this is not always a vote winner with customers. Why?… Read more”

In fact, just this week, food and beverage giant, PepsiCo, announced the reformulation of one of its flagship brands, Doritos. The US multinational said in the statement that, in addition to making its famous crisp ‘crunchier’, it was also cutting salt by 24% and fat by 15%, making it HFSS compliant…And while there are a variety of reasons for brands to reformulate their products, including the rising cost of commodities such as sugar, the primary reason is HFSS compliance.

If PepsiCo can do this in England, it surely can do this here.

Apparently, it takes government action to get companies to do these things…

I attended a meeting at Cornell last week at which FDA Commissioner Robert Califf answered questions from faculty and staff.

He started out by remarking on the poor health status of Americans, despite our spending twice as much on health as any other country.  He noted the disparities in health status, particularly singling out the declining health of rural Americans.

In answer to questions from panel members and, later, from the audience, he said (my notes and paraphrase, unless in quotes):

• We have real health problems on the ground right now.
• The  big issue is chronic disease, on which we are “doing terribly.”
• We have to deal with the marketing of ultra-processed foods designed to make you hungry for more.
• On tradeoffs in trying to discourage ultra-processed foods: This isn’t like drugs with clear risk/benefit calculations.  Food research has big confidence intervals and less rigorous estimates. The FDA has lots of bosses.  The executive branch and Congress can overrule anything it does.
• One Health (the movement to treat human and animal health issues as parts of a whole) is essential to the future of humanity.
• Climate change has moved pathogens into areas where they didn’t used to be.
• Action on animal antibiotics stagnated as a result of the pandemic: “We are all sinners in this regard.”
• We need a global strategy; infectious diseases do not respect borders.
• ”There is a lot of rhetoric about food safety, but the systems do not come together as they should.
• There is too much financial influence on policy.  “Policy is everyone’s job.”
• A lot of people are making a lot of money on our food and health systems, but it’s not spent on the right things.
• On the Supreme Court’s overturn of Chevron: the FDA cannot extend its rulings beyond what Congress intended.  It will slow things down.
• “We should reserve most of our energy to do our jobs well.”
• Courage is important: we must have courage to do things differently.

Comment

I was impressed by his knowledge, thoughtfulness, and concern about public health issues, especially those around food, as well as his understanding of the current political barriers against using expertise and regulation to improve food systems and public health.

He used the occasion to encourage students to consider careers in the FDA and noted the remarkably low turnover of permanent staff.

Jerry Mande sent me a link to a report of remarks the Commisioner made in December: America has a life expectancy crisis. But it’s not a political priority (Washington Post), and also to Helena Bottemiller Evich’s report, FDA Commissioner says ultra-processed foods drive addictive behavior.

So the Commissioner is giving serious thought to these issues.  So are others: see Announcement below.

The big question: who at FDA will take the lead on all this?

The FDA has just undergone a major reorganization.

As of October 1, the Human Foods Program looks like this.

The big question: who will head the new Nutrition Center of Excellence?

My big hope: Califf will appoint someone to that position who shares his committment to reducing diet-associated chronic disease.  Fingers crossed.

Announcement

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), announced that his Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) will hold a hearing on the urgent need for the FDA to “adequately protect Americans – especially children – from unhealthy foods that are pushed on consumers by the food and beverage industry.”  Here is his invitation letter to Commissioner Califf and Deputy Commissioner Jim Jones, who heads the FDA’s Human Foods Program.

When: 10:00 a.m. ET, Thursday, December 5, 2024
Where: Room 562 Dirksen Senate Office Building. The hearing will also be livestreamed on the HELP Committee’s website and Sanders’ socials.

Welcome to the online Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies, edited by Darra Goldstein.

The articles submitted to this project so far are here.

I wrote one for it: Nestle M.  Food Politics and Policy.

I looks to me as though these articles are Open Access, meaning you can read them for free.

Enjoy!

There is much fuss these days over the American Heritage Foundation’s extreme right-wing 2025 Mandate for Leadership project, and whether presidential candidate Donald Trump supports it or not and, if so, to what extent (see account in The Guardian).

The Project 2025 plan includes calls for replacing civil servants with Trump loyalists, eliminating the education department, putting the justice department under the president’s thumb and banning the abortion pill…Among the plan’s more drastic proposals are to fire thousands of permanent civil servants and replace them with hired conservative Trump loyalists, dismantling the federal education department, asserting presidential power over the Department of Justice – which is nominally independent – and a ban on the abortion pill.

The 2025 project’s 900 pages aim to pack the government with extreme radical conservatives, make them political appointees, and put them in charge of—and staffing—every government department.

Overall, this blueprint for destroying any inconvenient aspect of government says “trust markets, not government.”

I took a quick look at the agenda for federal agencies dealing with food issues.  Here are a few things I noticed.

USDA

Understand that the word “reform” in this context means “dismantle.”

• Proactively Defend Agriculture [stop focusing on climate change and renewable energy]
• Reform Farm Subsidies; repeal the sugar program [hard to argue with this one]
• Separate the agricultural provisions of the farm bill from the nutrition provisions [SNAP]; Move the USDA food and nutrition programs to the Department of Health and Human Services.
• Reform SNAP: reimplement work requirements; reform eligibility; reevaluate the Thrifty Food Plan
• Reform WIC; reevaluate excessive regulation of infant formula
• Reform school meals [translation: reduce participation]; reject universal school meals
• Eliminate checkoff programs [again, hard to argue]
• Remove obstacles to agricultural biotechnology [e.g., GMOs]

FDA

As far as I can tell, the plan only deals with FDA’s oversight of abortion and other drugs.  It says not one word about undermining the FDA’s oversight of foods and food safety [I’m guessing this an oversight].

EPA

Most of the discussion is about getting the EPA to stop fretting about climate change.  But take a look at this one:

• Revisit the designation of PFAS chemicals as “hazardous substances”

FTC

The report asks: Should the FTC Enforce Antitrust—or Even Continue to Exist?

On the other hand, it tosses in “The FTC should examine platforms’ advertising and contract making with children as a deceptive or unfair trade practice, perhaps requiring written parental consent.”

Other provisions

Basically, the aim of this document is to give the Republican President a roadmap for replacing one deep state with another that favors conservative business interests and ideology.

John Oliver explains all this better than I can.

The bottom line in a seemingly impossible situation

• You must not vote for Trump.
• You must vote for Biden.
• Sitting this out or voting for a third-party candidate is a de facto vote for Trump. Not a good idea.

Here’s cartoonist Clay Bennett’s take on it..

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.

Jerry Mande, a co-founder of Nourish Science wrote me to urge support for a national action plan to reduce obesity—and the chronic diseases for which it raises risks. (Note: he also has an op-ed in The Hill on NIH research and leadership needs).

Here is what we should do. It’s time for a new federal nutrition goal. For decades it’s been some variation of “access to healthier options and nutrition information.” Jim Jones [the new head of food and nutrition at FDA] used that last week in his vision for the new human foods program. It’s in USDA FNS’s mission too. The WaPo reporting on life expectancy, fatty liver disease, & Lunchables in school meals reveals that goal has failed and needs to be replaced.

The goal should be updated to: ensuring that every child reaches age 18 at a healthy weight and in good metabolic health. Cory Booker proposed making it the U.S. goal in his attached letter to Susan Rice on the WHC [White House Conference]. It’s part of the Nourish Science vision.

It’s doable.  USDA has the necessary power, reach, and resources. Over half of infants are on WIC, 1/3 of children in CACFP [Child and Adult Care Feeding Program], virtually all in school meals, and almost ½ of SNAP recipients are under 18. If we leveraged those programs to achieve the new goal and with FDA’s & CDC’s help, we could make substantial progress. For example, USDA was able to raise school meal HEI [Healthy Eating Index] scores from failing U.S. average of 58 to an acceptable 82 in just three years.

We have a successful blueprint in FDA regulation of tobacco. When we began our FDA investigation in 1993 1/3 of adults and ¼ of kids smoked cigarettes. Today we have a $700M FDA tobacco center and 11% of adults and only 2% of high school students smoke cigarettes.

We should set the new goal in the upcoming Farm Bill. We should change USDA’s name to the U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture and state the new goal.

The only needed ingredient to make this happen is an effective federal nutrition champion. That’s how tobacco happened.

I’m optimistic. We can do this.

I like the vision.  I’m glad he’s optimistic.  Plenty of work to do to get this on the agenda.

Some background

• The CDC on how nearly 70% of American adults are overweight or have obesity.
• My report on the White House Conference, a year ago
• Politico (Helena Bottemiller Evich, now at Food Fix)  on how diet- and obesity-related diseases are a huge public health problem, especially for COVID-19, but no government program exists to prevent them.
• Politico (Catherine Boudreau and Helena Bottemiller Evich) on how federal research on prevention of diet- and obesity-related diseases hardly exists.