Where Are The Policy Reforms To Support The Newest MAHA Report? – CleanTechnica

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Many people were hopeful that the strategy report released by the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission would offer some real insights into US diets and meaningful suggestions for better health. While the report does highlight the important role of food and fitness in our lives, with a bit of emphasis on nutrition and food systems, its glaring gaps in agricultural innovation and peer-reviewed evidence were disheartening.

So were other failures, such as the effects of gun violence on too many children. It undermines the most significant improvements in children’s health the world has ever seen: vaccines.

Importantly, the MAHA report fails to address in substantive terms the prevalence of ultraprocessed foods on US health. With indeterminate promises to “support potential future research and policy activity” and to explore “potential industry guidelines” about marketing unhealthy food to children, the report is more sugar than substance, more Whopper than wellness.

Is it a good thing that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has repeatedly blamed industrially manufactured food products for the country’s chronic illness and obesity crises?  Sure, because a large body of data confirms this conclusion.

Is it appropriate for Kennedy to suggest to people in the US that they limit their consumption of foods with added sugar, salt, fat, dyes, and preservatives? Absolutely — it’s always best to eat foods that are as close to nature as possible.

The report’s 128 recommendations speak to many different research and policy reforms. On first glance, that sounds good. It seems encouraging to rethink dietary guidelines, to improve front-of-pack labeling, and to close regulatory loopholes that permit unsafe additives.

However, there’s a problematic lack of implementation strategy or clear procedural lines from beginning to end. It’s an If Only list: not a formally articulated plan to make dietary life better for people in the US.

As a Vietnam War child, I was part of a new generation that was exposed to marketing that celebrated ultra-processed foods. These foods were part of a new paradigm of technology and innovation, a component of freeing people to indulge in leisure time activities.

Ultra-processed foods — those food products that have been altered in the production process with additives — now comprise nearly 73% of the US food supply. In adults they cause adverse health outcomes such as causing obesity and cardio-metabolic risks; cancer, type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases; irritable bowel syndrome, depression and frailty conditions; and all-cause mortality. Among children and adolescents, these include cardio-metabolic risks and asthma.

For policy changes to truly serve everyday consumers, they must be supported by peer-reviewed data. Deeply investigated research leads in turn to definitive and meaningful data, so that valid evaluations are the foundation for informed policy decisions. Empirical evidence can and should play a pivotal role in influencing policy, since new research highlights issues or offers novel solutions and can serve as a catalyst for change, as outlined by the Pepperdine School of Public Policy.

Because society is never static and the desires, belief systems, and actions of people advance, public policy must acknowledge and anticipate inevitable social evolution. Public policy must embrace vigorous approaches by modifying and redesigning its rules to maintain relevance and to adapt to ensure governmental law is relevant and productive for society. This is increasingly important in the contemporary era in which economies develop, cultures transform, and technology reinvents the norms inherent in everyday life.

More than 65% of people polled in the US support reforming processed foods to remove added sugars and added dyes, according to a January Associated Press and National Opinion Research Center poll. Yet the MAHA report doesn’t address how Trump administration policies, including massive subsidies to corn and soy farms, contradict that goal. High-fructose corn syrup, corn starch, dextrose, soy lecithin, and maltodextrin, are derivatives of corn and soy, two commodity crops that receive millions in agricultural subsidies.

In fact, the Trump administration is reportedly planning to roll out a $10 to $15 billion bailout for US soybean farmers as compensation for the loss of the Chinese export market.

Ben Lilliston, the director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, told the Guardian that “it’s hard to find a processed food, if you look at the ingredients, that doesn’t have corn and soy in there.” Because subsidies artificially drop the cost of soybean production “there’s so much of it, and there’s access to so much of it,” Lilliston added.

How did the MAHA Commission seek to improve the quality of food and nutrition available through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program while its own administration pushed to cut $186 billion from the program over the next 10 years? SNAP is a powerful tool for lifting families out of poverty and reducing food insecurity, argues Ashish K. Jha, dean of Brown University School of Public Health. Pointing out how its contradictions are “troubling,” Jha continues that the missing strategies for implementation make the MAHA strategy report “a scattered wish list that questions our greatest scientific achievements, ignores urgent threats to children’s health, and offers no real path to a healthier America.”

The MAHA report, unfortunately, draws upon a common corporate trope in its suggestions for change. It pushes for voluntary action to reduce ultraprocessed foods in everyday diets. It offers little guidance about regulating food and chemical companies and requires no limits on pesticide use or additives. “There’s anti-corporate rhetoric, but at the same time an inability and an unwillingness to actually take on corporate power,” Rebecca Wolf, food policy lead at Food and Water Watch, explained. “We’ve just [been] keeping a really close eye on the difference between narrative and policy, and what I’ve seen right now are policies that will not protect people, but in fact, further threaten their health.”

Public policy change is not merely about reacting to problems as they arise but also about having the insight to foresee future ones. It is imperative that public policy solutions are considered alongside ethical principles. Justice and protection of people should have been at the core of the MAHA report to ensure that its recommendations did not marginalize certain groups or create further inequalities. It failed at this and other possibilities for improving US dietary health miserably.

Featured image: “Hamburger – Cafe Vue” by avlxyz (CC BY-SA 2.0 license).