Posts Tagged ‘food policy’

Your Diet Is Awful! Let Us Fix It for You

September 1, 2022 — Just this week, the White House set its date for its big Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health. It will be a full day on September 28. The agenda – as defined by conference pillars – sticks to safe concepts that should find broad support. But the same cannot be said for nutrition activists with […]

UK Food Policy: Volume First, Not the Planet or Health

June 14, 2022 — Boris Johnson has come to a new view on food, health, and obesity. “The best way to lose weight, believe me, is to eat less,” he said yesterday. And thus, he seems to justify dropping any pretense of interest in addressing obesity. In line with this, his UK government released a new food policy document […]

Are Food Policy Wonks Giving “Big Food” a Free Pass?

May 15, 2022 — Ten years ago, PLOS Medicine published an examination of the role of “Big Food” in global health with a collection of articles. It was an indictment, to be sure, and this theme continues to resonate today. PLOS Medicine editors summed it up: “Big multinational food companies control what people everywhere eat, resulting in a stark […]

As Ideologues Clash, Food Insecurity Becomes a Crisis

April 24, 2022 — We’re now two months into an utterly stupid war in Ukraine. Life in that country has been turned upside down. Global trade with Russia is grinding to a halt. As a result, 12 percent of the calories in the world’s food supply is at risk. Moving fertilizer into farms is becoming a challenge in this […]

How Sound Are Recommendations to Cut Added Sugar?

April 8, 2022 — We are in the midst of a great reformulation of food products. A little more than a decade ago, Robert Lustig stirred everyone up with his bold claim that sugar is toxic. So added sugar took over the role of dietary bad boy in place of fat. In 2015, U.S. dietary guidelines started recommending a […]

Research Shows Water Is More Important Than Food

April 1, 2022 — New research today tells us that water is more important than food for good health. Scientists from the Westphal Academy for Systematic Study of Exogenous Rehydration (WASSER) hailed it as a “landmark.” The study was a three-arm, randomized crossover study. It appears today in the American Journal of Food Policy. In a random order, 100 […]

Wrangling a Hot Mess That Magnifies Obesity

February 15, 2022 — In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a hot mess out there. And the mess is messing with our bodies and our food systems – bringing global problems with obesity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Bill Dietz and Sydney Pryor tell us we need to get comfortable with the concept of syndemics. But for now, let’s just […]

A Healthy Diet Is Too Costly for Three Billion People

December 28, 2021 — The COVID-19 pandemic has caused price spikes for corn, milk, beans, and other commodities, but even before the pandemic about 3 billion people could not afford even the cheapest options for a healthy diet. Recent analysis of global food price data reveals that as of 2017, the latest available year, around 40% of the world’s […]

ObesityWeek: Scoping Out the Virtual Excitement Ahead

October 29, 2021 — Who would have thought that two years could change so many things? But here we are on the cusp of our second virtual ObesityWeek® since we were all together in Las Vegas in 2019. We’ve seen a lot since then and we have a lot to look forward to in the week ahead, starting Monday. […]

FNCE: Moving from Food Assistance to Food Equity

October 17, 2021 — FNCE 20201 opens today online. But pre-meeting symposia yesterday set the table for four days of rich information flowing about food and nutrition. COVID is still with us, so the meeting is virtual. Thus an outstanding session on nutrition, equity, and COVID-19 hit the mark especially well. In particular, it drew us into thinking more […]