Red America, Blue America, and Food Policy

Earlier this week, protesters descended upon Kellogg's Battle Creek, Michigan headquarters to call the company to task for its past promises around food additives. In 2015, Kellogg's then President told investors, "We have been working to remove artificial colors and flavors" from the company's foods, and "[o]ur goal is to complete this transition by the end of 2018." That transition never happened. Kellogg's decided it wasn't worth the effort, and now activists like Vani Hari, "the Food Babe," are trying to hold the company accountable.

On behalf of consumers, I wish them success. But let's be honest, a system that relies on public outrage to police the chemicals in Froot Loops seems downright "stoopid". Where is FDA? For color additives, the agency's website acknowledges evidence that the chemicals harm "some" children. But that apparently is not enough to justify any policy intervention, like requiring a warning label. Since 2010, manufacturers have had to advise European Union consumers that foods with artificial dyes "may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children," and unsurprisingly, many manufacturers have opted to replace those chemicals with alternatives like pumpkin and carrot extract.

Many other food chemicals are banned outright abroad, and increasingly, state legislatures and regulators are seeking to fill the void left by FDA. Last year, legislators in Sacramento enacted the California Food Safety Act, which bans brominated vegetable oil ("BVO"), potassium bromate, propylparaben, and red dye 3 in foods. Not long thereafter, FDA made a long overdue determination that none of us in the country should have to worry about BVO. Sorry SunDrop! With any luck, FDA will be similarly swayed by legislation in other states, such as a New York bill to shine a light on novel food chemicals secretly determined to be "generally recognized as safe" or "GRAS" by their manufacturers, a Pennsylvania bill to ban the preservative butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), or a recently enacted California law to ban harmful dyes in school meals.

Already, FDA has gestured that it intends to take a more proactive role. The agency held a public meeting last month to discuss its plan for developing a post-market chemicals assessment program. As consumer advocates pointed out, however, the agency has plenty of evidence now to take action. The conceptual approach presented by the agency at its meeting seems like a game plan for continued delay. To break out of the status quo, pressure needs to come from all sides.

And increasingly, that seems to be happening. As it turns out, few things may unite Americans as much as the fear that our food system is out to kill us-or at least out to make it very difficult to maintain a healthy weight. CDC estimates that an astounding 40.3% of U.S. adults qualify as "obese." That number dipped slightly from the prior year's estimate of 41.9%, but "severe obesity" rates increased from 7.7% to 9.4%. With so many of us suffering ourselves, or witnessing friends and family member suffering from the diet-related diseases that these numbers indicate, food policy must transcend politics.

And indeed, that may be starting to happen. The last time I saw the Food Babe in the news, she was speaking on a panel organized by the Republican Senator Ron Johnson, entitled "American Health and Nutrition, A Second Opinion." As Sen. Johnson wrote in an op-ed tied to the event, "panelists described how whole natural foods have been replaced by ultra-processed foods, contaminated by synthetic pesticides, heavy metals and microplastics." The event underscored how traditional divisions around nutrition, toxicology, and food safety are blurring.

One of the upshots of this emerging understanding is that pharmacology will not fix the diet-related disease problem. To be sure, some people have and will continue to reap enormous benefits from GLP-1 receptor agonists like Ozempic, which dampen many patients otherwise overpowering food cravings. But as another one of Sen. Johnson's panelists, Dr. Casey Means, has pointed out, using these drugs to consume the same unhealthy foods, albeit in smaller quantities, will not address the underlying metabolic dysfunction at the root of diseases like diabetes. Only access to high-quality, safe food can do that.

Which brings us back to food policy. Certainly, raising awareness of the deficiencies in our food system is critical to generating demand for healthier foods, and nudging the market towards a healthier direction. But let's not kids ourselves. Making low-quality, unhealthy food is very profitable. And if public policy does nothing to prevent food companies from flooding our environment-and particularly our children's environment-with messages to consume these foods and opportunities to buy them, our problems will continue to grow, and faith in the public institutions meant to protect us will continue to erode.

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