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Over the past several weeks, from Food Tank’s programming at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Brazil to my time ground-truthing in Guatemala, I’ve been thinking deeply about how the food we eat impacts our well-being. And in the coming months, I’ll continue to share reflections on how communities in Guatemala and elsewhere are building climate resilience, food sovereignty, and nutritious diets.
Next week, Food Tank is heading to Capitol Hill for a bipartisan Summit exploring a major public health challenge within the food system: ultra-processed foods.
I hope you’ll join us at 12PM ET on Dec. 10, either via livestream or in person in Washington, D.C.! Please click HERE to reserve your spot, or you can also bookmark THIS LINK to join the livestream directly.
Ultra-processed foods are industrial products created and packaged to prioritize convenience over real nutrients. As Marion Nestle puts it, “They’re designed to be irresistibly delicious, if not addictive. They have lots and lots of added sugar, salts, and different kinds of additives, and you can’t make them in your own kitchen.”
And it’s not an exaggeration to say ultra-processed foods are virtually unavoidable in American diets—and that they could wreak havoc on our health. By some measurements, more than 73 percent of the U.S. food supply is ultra-processed, and a study in the medical journal The BMJ notes direct associations between ultra-processed foods and worse outcomes across cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, metabolic, and mental health and rates of cancer, diet-related diseases and mortality.
At what point does this become a public health crisis—and how should policymakers respond to help keep us nourished and healthy?
At this Summit—”Eating Ourselves Sick?: Ultra-Processed Foods and U.S. Health Policy“—presented alongside the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, we’ll be joined by speakers including: U.S. Member of Congress Vern Buchanan, Anuraag Chigurupati, Devoted Medical; U.S. Member of Congress Maxine Dexter, M.D.; Kyle Diamantas, U.S. Food and Drug Administration; U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall; Dariush Mozaffarian, Food is Medicine Institute; Radha Muthiah, Capital Area Food Bank; Robert Paarlberg, Harvard Kennedy School; Jennifer Pomeranz, New York University; Secretary Arvin Singh, West Virginia Department of Health; U.S. Member of Congress Shri Thanedar; and more to be announced!
This is an opportunity to engage directly with leaders shaping the future of food and health in the United States. As Dariush Mozaffarian, Director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, reminds us, Americans’ poor metabolic health is a systemic problem that needs systemic solutions.
“When you have three out of four adults with overweight or obesity and half of adults with diabetes and pre-diabetes, you know the system is broken,” he told Food Tank recently. “This isn’t any longer a problem of individual behavior.”
Across the food system, we’re seeing a variety of approaches that remind us what a more health-forward food system might look like. Just this week, the city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit against ultra-processed food manufacturers, alleging they are knowingly producing products that are addictive and linked to serious health issues.
In Pennsylvania, farmer Christa Barfield’s CornerJawn stores aim to flip the script on the kinds of foods offered in corner stores. The organization Dion’s Chicago Dream is putting fresh crops, not ultra-processed foods, at the core of food assistance. Leaders in both Michigan and Maine are imagining what better school meals look like. And there are so many more solutions being developed on the ground, as I’ll discuss at Bold Fork Books in D.C. later this month with Nancy Matsumoto, author of “Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System.”
Ultra-processed foods are deeply ingrained within the modern food system—but they don’t have to be. I hope you’ll join us next week on Capitol Hill as we explore how to build food policy that does more than just fill us up, but that truly nourishes us and keeps us healthy!
HERE is the link one more time to find more info about making your voice heard at this Summit.
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Photo courtesy of Sulav Jung Hamal, Unsplash
