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Food-borne illness is a public health crisis: Congress must act (The Hill)

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THE HILL | On Jan. 31, the Food and Drug Administration proposed a redesign of its human food program in response to several ongoing food crises impacting public safety and the health of millions of Americans.

The redesign attempts to solve leadership and funding problems identified by an expert panel in December. 

Unfortunately, the proposal does little to fix the most urgent or fundamental problems within the agency and the safety of our food. Only Congress has the necessary tools to do that.

The festering food leadership failures at FDA were brought to public attention in part by the recent shortage of infant formula. In response to criticism over their role in the shortage, FDA appointed an expert panel to investigate the root causes of the problems and to recommend solutions, sparking a broader conversation about the various ways FDA’s food programs have recently fallen short. 

Read more at The Hill: https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/3883327-food-borne-illness-is-a-public-health-crisis-congress-must-act/

Commissioner Califf needs to put the F back in FDA (Stat)

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STAT | Robert Califf is taking the reins as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration with the nation in a nutrition crisis. Americans are living shorter, less-healthy lives due to the foods they are being sold. The new commissioner can meet this challenge by harnessing the FDA’s effective but underused food-related regulatory powers, which were created with FDA itself for a similar food crisis more than 100 years ago.

At the turn of the 20th century, food was making Americans sick. Illnesses due to chemical and microbiological contaminants were among the top 10 causes of death. Food producers, eager to meet consumer demand for cheap, quick, appealing, and tasty food, were adding harmful ingredients without concern for people’s safety and were intentionally mislabeling food. Milk contained chalk and formaldehyde; canned foods had salicylic acid, borax, and copper sulfate; corn syrup was sold as honey; and colored animal fat from pig stomachs sold as butter. Food manufacturers were unchecked by government regulation, basic food safety, or labelling requirements.

Under the leadership of President Theodore Roosevelt and Harvey Wiley, a chemist working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the federal government was able to make the country’s food supply safer through research and policy. Wiley conducted groundbreaking research on food additives by testing them on a group of men that came to be known as “the poison guard.” This research culminated in sweeping food safety laws — and the founding of the FDA — through the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.

Read the full article here: https://www.statnews.com/2022/03/14/commissioner-califf-needs-to-put-the-f-back-in-fda/

How to wean America from its dangerous food addiction

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(The Week, posted on May 22, 2012 )

By Bill Frist, M.D.

The nation’s obesity epidemic is as much about brain chemistry as it is poor diet and laziness — a fact we must realize if we’re going to treat obesity effectively

In ancient history, eating was for survival. Food was tough to come by and we consumed what we needed. Food was a necessity. In today’s America, it is an addiction.

Much of the conventional wisdom about obesity, including what your doctor has probably told you, is wrong. My fellow doctors, for the past four decades, have preached a “calories in — calories out” approach, suggesting that weight loss must be achieved by restricting calories or expending more energy. That approach is failing… miserably.

Contemporary medical research, most of which has not yet made it to mainstream understanding, suggests we should focus on two other more promising areas: Food addiction and diet. Consider it an “it’s what you eat” approach that takes into account human biology and the response to certain food types.

According to the research of Nicole Avena of Princeton University, eating sugar triggers a dopamine-mediated response in the same part of the brain that is similarly targeted by cocaine, nicotine, and other highly addictive substances. Originally, this “reward center” evolved to reinforce behaviors, such as food and sex, that maximize species survival.

To combat this epidemic, we may have to start with the brain, not the stomach.

Sugar, however, seems to hijack the same neural and biochemical connections in the brain. The intense cravings for sugar may be explained by the intensity of dopamine secretion in the brain when we consume sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, both of which are staples of the common American diet. Consistent eating of sugary and processed food literally rewires our brain. In 2011, 28 studies, from animal investigations to clinical studies of compulsive eaters, all point toward unhealthy foods as being addictive.

So why do we get fat? It’s not a simple matter of calories consumed and calories expended. It’s probably wiser to think of obesity as a result of a hormonal imbalance, with the dominant obesity hormone being insulin.

Insulin secretion is stimulated by eating easily digestible, carbohydrate-rich foods: Refined carbohydrates (including flour and cereal grains, starchy vegetables such as potatoes, and sugars) and high-fructose corn syrup. Eating more of these makes us fat, hungrier, and even more sedentary.

Why does all this matter? First, your kids are going to live a life with more disease and will die younger than they should. This does not have to be the case, but we can only reverse course if we act. With a third of adolescents in the U.S. overweight, and adolescent diabetes and prediabetes skyrocketing from 9 percent in 2000 to 23 percent in 2008, we are on the path to an explosion in heart disease, high blood pressure, and cancer.

Second, healthcare spending is driving you and the country bankrupt. Obesity, a problem which didn’t really exist even 40 years ago, today accounts for almost a fifth of our nation’s health spending, which amounts to more than $150 billion every year. That is an annual tax of $1,400 on every household, and it continues to escalate.

The good news is that the obesity problem is solvable. It is reversible, if we act smartly, both individually by our own life choices and collectively through wiser, more active public policy.

What can we do?

1. Focus on the root causes of why people crave food, often hungering for the unhealthiest options, and not just deal with the aftereffects. Studies show that exercise alone does not lead to weight loss (but it is very healthy for you!), replacing lost calories with increased appetite. It’s what you eat that you should concentrate on. Weight loss regimens succeed long-term when they get rid of the fattening carbohydrates in your diet.

2. Think out of the box. If the increasingly strong hypothesis that sugar is addictive is correct, we need to treat it as such. An addiction demands attention to replacement foods, development of new classes of anti-craving and relapsing medicines, and possibly even more intense use of 12-step programs for therapy.

3. Public policy tools and tactics that affect advertising, availability, and cost (including taxation) have been effective in fighting alcohol and tobacco addiction. Our society instinctively rejects policy that suggests “food police.” In the future, however, expect these tools to be considered much more aggressively since obesity stands as an even greater public health threat than tobacco.

We cannot afford to ignore obesity. But let’s be open to changing our approach. To combat this epidemic, we may have to start with the brain, not the stomach.

 

This article was originally featured in The Week http://theweek.com/article/index/228248/how-to-wean-america-from-its-dangerous-food-addiction