It's the Food
Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall: It’s Not You. It’s the Food.
The Trump administration seems to agree to an extent. On Tuesday, Mr. Kennedy released a new report from the Make America Healthy Again commission, which correctly identified the rise in diet-related chronic disease as being driven by a food environment that is increasingly composed of highly processed foods. But instead of suggesting policies for reducing their consumption, the report makes vague recommendations. When it comes to ultraprocessed foods, it says only that the government will “continue efforts to develop” a definition for them and will recommend reducing consumption of highly processed foods in forthcoming dietary guidelines that Americans have traditionally struggled to follow. That doesn’t go far enough.
If large swaths of the population were being sickened by a poison released from an industrial plant, no one would suggest that the solution is to just offer home filters, wearables and supplements. The only real path to restoring health would have to include mandating the removal of the poison from the environment.