U.S. Health policy is in an unfortunately interesting place right now. CDC is in tatters. Our secretary of health has ripped up much of the vaccine policies that put an end to scourges like polio and measles. None of that seems like a winning agenda for the upcoming mid-term elections. So this administration is shifting gears. Increasingly, the focus of health policy is to turn up the heat on a national food fight.

It started in earnest when RFK Jr. announced his new dietary guidelines, resurrected the food pyramid so he could turn it upside down, and issued a rallying cry to “EAT REAL FOOD!”

How can anyone argue with that?

Who Are We to Judge?

Well, actually, it turns out that the specifics of eating “real” healthy food are devilishly difficult to agree upon. Writing for Business Insider, Emily Stewart explains that everyone has a different “right” answer to how we should eat:

“There is no ‘right’ way to eat. You wouldn’t know that, though, given how much we scrutinize each other’s diets.

“Much like child rearing, exercising, and shopping habits, food is one of those things we all make judgments about based on our own, individually concocted rulebook. Order DoorDash too much? Lazy! Think people should slow down on eating out and learn to cook? Inconsiderate! Our society stigmatizes and shuns overweight people, but it can also take a critical eye toward thin people, especially if the perception is that they’re ‘cheating’ by taking a medication to drop some pounds. There’s a political layer to it as well. Conservatives chafed at Michelle Obama’s push to make school lunches healthier. Progressives are now skeptical of the Trump administration’s new MAHA-inspired, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-touted food pyramid. Everyone thinks they’re the ones making sense.”

Nope. This food fight will not bring us all together.

Big Food Would Like a Word

Meanwhile, the food industry has had just about enough of what they see as hypocritical abuse lobbed at them by RFK Jr. Food makers are warning that an increased regulatory burden will drive up the cost of food staples that some Americans can barely afford now.

While some policy advocates are clamoring for reform in the regulation of food ingredients, industry is threatening legal action against an administration that likes to move fast and break things. Change seems warranted, but it is not clear that thoughtful, sustainable changes will see the light of day.

Political Spectacle

If the point of all this is to create a political spectacle – a national food fight – it can certainly succeed. But if the aim is to reform food systems and nudge people toward better diet-related health, we have some serious doubts.

Food policy is a tough and nuanced challenge.

Click here, here, here, and here for more on the simmering fight in food and dietary policy.

Mr. Peanut Goes to War, World War II era poster by USDA / Wikimedia Commons