The MAHA Challenge: Can It Lead to a Healthier and Safer Food Supply?
Let us agree at the outset that food policy and regulation is too important to be ignored. After all, every American ingests food multiple times each day. Nothing else is such a ubiquitous part of our lives.
So, I am fully committed to the value of a major government initiative to improve our food system. It should advance all three of FDA’s primary food responsibilities:
assuring a safe food supply;
protecting us from any harmful food chemicals (additives); and
furthering research and educating Americans to eat nutritiously[1].
So far, HHS Secretary Kennedy’s MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) Initiative is off to a fast start. In the context of addressing chronic disease in children, the topics for the first meeting with “MAHA mothers” were 1/ nutrition, 2/ physical activity, 3/ over-medicalization and standards of care, and 4/ environmental impacts.
On a separate front, Secretary Kennedy met with a few major food companies and delivered the message: “get synthetic dyes (and other controversial ingredients) out of your food, or the government will crack down[2]” (here). He made a short video about the meeting (here).
In a general sense, all of this is good because it puts a spotlight on the neglected area of food policy and regulation. It should stimulate worthwhile changes in our food system and in our health.
As a movement, MAHA is relatively young, so it is a particularly good time to raise questions that need to be addressed. Here are two of mine (more to come in future columns):
Does MAHA Include Continued Support and Investment in a Safe Food Supply? As I pointed out in a column last week, greater attention to chronic diseases is compelling, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of our investment in acute conditions and prevention (here). Similarly, attention to food chemicals and nutrition (collectively, healthier food) is compelling, but it should not be at the expense of our investment in food safety.
Foodborne illness is an ever-present risk. We cannot let our guard down.
Our complex and far-flung food supply is only safe because tens of thousands of people work vigilantly every day to make it so. A well-funded federal-state-local-global network lessens the risk, although even with adequate funds the risk never goes away.
Will MAHA Incorporate Both Supply and Demand Approaches to Achieving Healthier Foods? Companies stay in business by supplying the market with products that people want to buy that can be sold at prices that people are willing to pay. They would go bankrupt otherwise. At least in the food space, corporate decisions are top-down, but based on focus groups, taste testing, consumer trends, and sales tracking (i.e., information about individual preferences).
Which is to say, we cannot hope to have people consume healthier foods if we ignore the pivotal role of bottom-up individual decisions (demand) based on taste, convenience, accessibility, cost, and other factors. People tend to talk about wanting to eat healthily, then ignore opportunities to do so. We need to accept Pogo’s admonition that: “we have met the enemy, and they are us.[3]”
Realistically, we need the food industry to offer healthier foods…and we need consumers to purchase healthier foods. Focusing just on businesses (supply) or consumers (demand) will not move the needle. Let us find strategies that help us do both.
A healthier and safer food supply is both politically and substantively possible. We have a head start: a decade of industry/consumer goodwill in the food area that has accumulated as part of the implementation of the Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA).
As Executive Director of the Alliance for a Stronger FDA (a post I held until a few months ago), I witnessed two particular examples. First, industry and consumer groups worked together to rally support for strengthening FDA’s relationships with state food and agriculture agencies.
Second, I saw a groundswell of support for FDA to expand its investment in evaluating food chemicals. Groups that were fighting each other in state courts were, nonetheless, in agreement that FDA needed the resources to “up its game” in this area.
This is not necessarily a full list of FDA’s food responsibilities, and it does not include the responsibilities of the Center for Veterinary Medicine. However, it mirrors the three operating divisions within the FDA Human Foods Program https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-organization/human-foods-program.
This and many of the other details are from Helena Bottemiller Evich’s Food Fix column on March 14. For those trying to follow the MAHA effort, her Friday newsletters (free) are indispensable. You can get an even more robust picture by subscribing to her Tuesday newsletter. It is well worth the cost. Her website is www.foodfix.co.
Walt Kelly created the quote and used it in his comic strip on the first Earth Day in 1971. It later became a famous poster. “The quote used as the poster’s headline is still famous today — and the concept embodied in the poster still holds true. We cannot just blame the big bad corporations for the environmental problems we face. Most of the time, they are just giving us what we “demand” as consumers at a cost we are willing to pay and abiding by laws created by politicians we elect. We all need to our own small part, as consumers and voters.” https://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2022/04/we-have-met-the-enemy-and-he-is-us/