Getting Politics Out of Food
Diets are hard, research on diets is even harder. This country needs more nutrition research, without losing focus on what’s important.
The White House is hosting the first Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health since 1969. While the original conference influenced our nation’s nutrition policy agenda for more than a half century, this year’s event could be even more transformational—but only if it and the ensuing “national strategy” do not fall prey to partisan politics.
There is no denying that the U.S. has a problem with what we eat. Food insecurity, diet-related diseases, and healthcare inequities coincide and exacerbate one another. While conference attendees may know that systemic changes are needed across multiple sectors to address these growing societal challenges, this is not the time to get drawn into circular arguments about distractions such as the health effects of ultra-processed foods or how agriculture influences climate change. As important as these topics are, they create political roadblocks while lacking sufficient consistent and quality research to adequately inform the next few decades of policy decision making. This conference must seek to strengthen, not undermine, the foundation upon which current and future food and nutrition policies are based.
One ongoing issue should be a focus of bipartisan problem-solving: the lack of sufficient high-quality nutrition research, which ultimately affects every American’s health. It not only prevents experts from developing effective policies and communications that improve health but can lead to decisions that make Americans less healthy.
Federal nutrition guidance is currently too variable and based on lower quality and sometimes inconsistent evidence. Every five years, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture jointly publish Dietary Guidelines for Americans that are supposed to reflect the current body of nutrition science. Yet, the dietary reference intakes, or DRIs, published by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, on which the dietary guidelines are heavily based, are outdated, some of them by 25 years. There’s simply no federal funding dedicated to keeping them in line with the continuously evolving body of scientific literature. Clearly these must be updated, along with the process for developing the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, with heavy consultation from the food science community.
Along these lines, a National Institute of Nutrition should be created within NIH. Not only would this allow for an appropriated funding stream for nutrition research, but it would also encourage public-private partnerships to facilitate transparent, innovative, and community-level research that can be used to adequately inform policy decision making. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), our nation’s largest funder of nutrition research, currently spends less than 5 percent of its annual budget on nutrition. Improved coordination and investment in federal nutrition research focused on prevention and treatment of diet-related conditions is unequivocally the most effective means of decreasing the rising costs of healthcare.
Simple interventions that can have an outsized impact on health are currently overlooked in current policy. This must change. For instance, while dentists know that sugar-free gum supports oral health, the public at large is relatively unaware of its role in re-mineralizing tooth enamel and preventing gum disease, which has been linked to much more serious and life-threatening health conditions. This means that American consumers have an important and low-cost tool for nutritional improvement in their desk drawers and corner shops, but that the available evidence is simply not communicated to them.
Members of the American Society for Nutrition put out a summary of federal efforts that can strengthen and coordinate nutrition research. More recently, an independent group of experts convened by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Food Systems for the Future, The Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, and World Central Kitchen publicly released its comprehensive report in advance of the conference. Every participant of the White House Nutrition conference should peruse these groundbreaking documents.
This year’s meeting should keep its focus on ideas that can attract significant bipartisan support. While the president may take executive action on his own, the most effective proposals will require the president and Congress to work together. Joe Biden needs to prioritize structural reforms over performative and cosmetic changes.
Dr. Taylor Wallace, PhD, CFS, FACN (www.drtaylorwallace.com) is the Principal & CEO of the Think Healthy Group, Inc., an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at George Mason University, and a member of Forbes Health Advisory Board.
