The first Maha report, published in May and entitled “Rendering our children in good health”, said ultra-transformed foods more than 40 times, blaming them for negative health results in children.
The follow-up action plan which has just been published, which describes the strategy of the Trump administration to solve the problems identified by the first report, only mentions ultra-transformed food once, promising that government agencies would continue to try to develop a definition for them.
This is just a way in which the Maha strategy report, published on September 9, disappointed many defenders of public health – including some supporters of the Maha – who had hoped that the approach of Maverick by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could upset the decades of slow progress on the improvement of nutrition in American children.
“The first Maha report was revolutionary in a good sense,” said Jerold Mande, a Nutrition Auxiliary Professor at the Harvard Th Chan School of Public Health Health, who was a senior political official for nutrition in Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations. He suggested that the deep cause of chronic diseases in the United States was the food industry, a renegade position for the federal government. This action plan has considerably backed away from this position.
“What it tells me is that the first report was written by Maha,” he says, “and the second, the White House left the lobbyists of the writing it.”
Learn more:: Why ultra-transformed food is so bad for you
The figures from the Trump administration defended the action plan at a press conference on September 9, renting the report and its 128 action points which, according to him, will be made thanks to innovative research approaches, increased public awareness, a collaboration of the private sector and real -friendly incentives.
“Many of these 128 recommendations are things that I dreamed of all my life,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Social Services, during the press conference. “There has never been any effort like this.”
The Maha commission – was part of Kennedy and more than a dozen other administration officials, including the USDA secretary and the EPA administrator – with hundreds of stakeholders, including doctors, teachers, parents and farmers, said Kennedy, describing the many complex interests that the administration had to balance by presenting the report.
But observers always argue that Maha’s strategy lacks teeth. For example, the first report indicates that pesticides, microplastics and dioxins are “at alarming levels” in the blood and urine of American children. He mentioned that certain studies have established links between pesticides and unwanted health results, and that glyphosate can cause cancer and inflammation of the liver.
The September report, however, indicates that the EPA will ensure that the public is “to raise awareness and confidence in the procedures for revising solid pesticides of EPA” and that USDA and EPA will launch a partnership with the private sector to use precision technology for pesticides. He does not mention any pesticides by name.
Learn more:: Are pesticides in your food harmful?
When a project of the Maha strategy report was disclosed in mid-August, mothers across America, a non-profit organization that promotes awareness of toxins in food supply, expressed its disappointment. “The section of this report by the Maha Commission on pesticides was clearly influenced by chemical companies,” the group said in an article on its website. “It is not a representation of Robert F Kennedy’s commitment; This is a demonstration of many people whose names appear on the report, rushing on the profits of the pesticide company and addressing the convenience of agrochemical farmers. ”
Some of the group’s concerns include that the EPA pesticide examination process does not require long -term animal studies or studies that show multigenerational effects of pesticides. The group called on Trump administration to ban 86 pesticides that have been prohibited in other countries.
When a journalist asked during the press conference why the report was not more critical of pesticides, as some people expected, the administration defended its position, saying that the government had already set up a strong process of evaluating pesticides.
“EPA is undoubtedly the most rigorous, most of the data, the most scientifically supported deep review process in the world,” said USDA secretary Brooke Rollins. “To approve any product used by our farmers, he will have gone through years of research.”
EPA administrator Lee Zeldin added that EPA was “aggressively confronted” with the threat of prohibited pesticides that had been imported or trafficked in the United States
Another criticism of the disclose report came from Marion Nestlé, renowned nutritionist and professor of food studies at New York University. She castigated the report to have too few real plans to change the system and too many calls for more research.
“Regarding politics, it has a strong and global message: No more necessary research. Regulate? No chance, “wrote Nestlé on her website.” Everything else is Waffle Words: explore, coordinate, partner, prioritize, develop or work. “”
The final strategy plan indicates that it will address the chronic disease of diseases “by research research”, that it will launch a new research program on injury by vaccine, that it “will carry out research” prescription models for mental health drugs and “widen research on food models”, to name only a few.
There are, of course, certain groups that will be satisfied with the Maha strategy report, including those of the food industry that have been spared the regulation that the initial report seemed to assert. The strategy report largely avoids industry regulations and rather calls for industry guidelines, which are often determined and developed by businesses, not by the government.
Rather than regulating the direct marking of food for children, for example, the strategy report indicates that it will explore the development of potential industry directives.
This approach to industry is not so different from what Michelle Obama has done in her Let’s Move campaign, says Mande, of Harvard, who served in the USDA at the time. Obama government efforts to combat infant obesity highlighted companies that made their own efforts to achieve the objectives it had set in the move. Although she calls specific societies and would organize events with them to celebrate their commitments, many of these commitments have fallen by the way, he said.
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During the press conference, Rollins underlined the companies which had voluntarily agreed to withdraw oil dyes from their food products, calling them by name.
Certain groups in the food industry also seemed satisfied with the report, in particular those of the dairy industry.
They include the National Federation of Milk Producers (NMPF), which celebrated a line of the strategy report that suggests that the Trump administration will push whole milk to schools. For decades, scientific evidence has suggested that because whole milk contains high levels of saturated fat, consumers should favor fat versions. The Maha report, on the other hand, says that it wishes to remove restrictions on full milk sales in schools.
“The Made Made Commisse Made Nosts Sainters strategy again recognizes what the last science indicates and what we have long said: that bringing whole milk to school and stimulating dairy products in diets helps meet the nutritional needs of America,” said the president and chief executive officer of the NMPF, Gregg Doud on the children’s web website, ” of our country ”.
– With Connor Greene report
