Join host Vonnie Estes on “Fresh Takes on Tech” as she welcomes back Mollie Van Lieu, VP of Nutrition and Health in Government Relations at IFPA. They delve into the implications of the MAHA Commission’s first report, co-chaired by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., highlighting its focus on ultra-processed foods, regulatory reform, and the influence of industry on nutrition science. Mollie shares insights into challenges with corporate influence, opportunities for produce initiatives, and anticipates changes in public health policy. Discover how these findings could shape the future of food and health policy.

Key Takeaways

•         The MAHA Commission’s first report identifies ultra-processed foods and environmental chemicals as key contributors to child health deterioration.

•         Mollie Van Lieu suggests both “hits” and “misses” in the report, especially regarding the mention of fruits and vegetables in fighting root causes of diet-related diseases.

•         An ongoing challenge in public trust is the intertwined relationship of industry-funded research and policy influences; the need for increased federal funding in nutrition research is crucial.

•         Produce incentives and produce prescription programs are vital yet under-discussed elements within federal nutrition policy initiatives.

•         Future directions may include regulatory actions on ultra-processed foods and school meal contents as well as restructuring of dietary guidelines to be more concise.

Guest Resources

•         International Fresh Produce Association: freshproduce.com

•         Federal SNAP and WIC programs

•         MAHA Commission led by HHS

Engage with the full episode as Mollie Van Lieu offers rich insights into the complexities of nutrition policy and its potential future shifts. Stay tuned to Fresh Takes on Tech for more groundbreaking discussions on food innovation and public health.

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0:00:24 Intro Speaker: Let’s get into it.

0:00:58 Vonnie Estes: The MAHA Commission, co chaired by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is tackling what it calls the root causes of deteriorating child health, pointing to ultra processed foods, environmental chemicals and industry consolidation. What struck you the most when you first read this report last week?

0:02:01 Mollie Van Lieu: We know people have barriers to access for a variety of reasons. Some of that wasn’t addressed in the report. But Secretary Kennedy has a strong point of view. So the report was pretty consistent with what he knew his priority, what we knew his priorities were. I think there are some hits and there are some misses in it. They got things right with the fact that our food system consistently under delivers on nutrient dense foods.

0:03:13 Mollie Van Lieu: I wish they would have talked more about fruits and vegetables so that even though because it was the root cause, you weren’t going to blame fruits and vegetables for that. But I think we would have liked to have seen a call out of because only 1 in 10 Americans are eating fruits and vegetables that that’s contributing to childhood diet related disease.

0:03:48 Mollie Van Lieu: Yeah. So I think what’s really noticeable is you don’t often see a document coming from the highest level of office, which is the White House saying things so explicitly. And in some ways this is a toned down version of some of the language that Secretary Kennedy has used, like sugar is poison and we’re poisoning our kids with chemicals and environmental toxins. So those types of things weren’t in there in those explicit wording, but it was said in kind of different ways.

0:04:50 Mollie Van Lieu: So that was, I think, a different approach than what we’ve typically seen when folks have talked about nutrition and health from this office before. But many of these things are areas that the fruit and vegetable industry has been championing for years, specifically food is medicine interventions. I think the biggest elephant in the room on this is that this sort of language in some of these positions are things that really have never been said by a Republican administration.

0:06:04 Mollie Van Lieu: So seeing how that reconciles with that approach is going to be really interesting.

0:06:25 Mollie Van Lieu: Well, I mean, he himself, if it’s an EPA regulation, no. But what we’ve also seen is typically cabinet members, Cabinet being the head of the Department of Health and Human Service or head of usda, they typically stay very much within their jurisdiction of what they have control over. But this is kind of revolutionary, too, in that he’s talking about. You see him talking about the SNAP program a lot, and he technically has no jurisdiction over that, but is calling for governors to put in SNAP waivers.

0:07:52 Vonnie Estes: And that would be through the FDA.

0:07:56 Vonnie Estes: Yeah.

0:07:57 Vonnie Estes: And so just because Secretary Kennedy says it, doesn’t make it so, I guess is the point I want to make, you know, that it has to go through some sort of process from a policy perspective.

0:08:42 Vonnie Estes: So the report didn’t pull any punches when it comes to corporate influence. It notes that the vast majority of nutrition research is funded by industry players, and it even Critiques the makeup of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. How can we rebuild public trust when science and policy are so closely tied to corporate interests?

0:09:43 Mollie Van Lieu: But I think that there’s also some of the language used as if it’s almost a conspiracy theory and it’s intentional. And I think if you kind of pull back, we got to this place a little bit unintentionally, too. So we’ve had so many technological. If you look at kind of humans in general, it is a very quick timeline where we went from not being obese to having overwhelming rates of obesity in this country. But when you look at kind of the trajectory over the Last hundred years, 100 years ago in the U.S.

0:11:05 Mollie Van Lieu: And then you kind of compound that with societal changes where you had both adults in the household working and not as much time at home to grow food or prepare food. And I don’t think most people want to go back to that. So we have kind of this. All of these technological advances and really solving for issues and then societal changes. But now we have this problem that we have to deal with. So in terms of what’s the corporate influence, there’s really kind of three things that are called out and I think are worth discussing is one, lobbying.

0:12:22 Intro Speaker: Right, exactly.

0:12:56 Mollie Van Lieu: I mean, the produce industry funds a lot of research. Right. And if we don’t fund it, nobody else is. Or we’re partnering and getting some money from the government, some money from academic institutions. And those are things around, you know, improving nutrient density or mechanization or pest and disease. And if you label like any research that is funded by an industry as not trustworthy, there’s severe implications to that.

0:13:40 Vonnie Estes: The commission calls for gold standard science to better understand links between diet, environmental exposures and disease. It also highlights a stark contrast in funding. Industry spends over 60 billion annually on nutrition science while the government allocates just 1.5 billion. Where do you think we need to focus new research efforts and where could the funding realistically come from? You started to talk a little bit about how we’re trying to fund some stuff and other coalitions, but where will that funding come from with all the cuts?

0:15:03 Mollie Van Lieu: So we definitely want to see an increase there. I mean, we could go. And I’m not a scientist, so I don’t want to. I know on podcasts, people like to pretend they’re people that they’re not sometimes in science, I’m not going to be one of those people. But. But you could go on and on about what exactly that research is. And there’s so much because it’s so severely underfunded, but really what we need is national coordinated response on research.

0:16:06 Mollie Van Lieu: I mean, we can say we want more funding for it, and we do, but in this environment, when the government is cutting, cutting, cutting, that’s not really realistic. And then when you look at a place like the NIH that’s also doing research on Alzheimer’s and doing research on rare diseases that private companies will never do because the ROI is not there because it impacts so few people and the research is really expensive. But like, if that’s your kid, you want the government to be doing it. So it’s like, what do you take away from.

0:16:48 Vonnie Estes: How does that national coordination happen? Like, is that supposed to come from HHS or where does that come from?

0:17:27 Vonnie Estes: So, interestingly, while the report critiques ultra processed foods, it barely mentions successful federal produce initiatives like Snap Fruit and vegetable incentives or produce prescriptions. Why do you think these kinds of programs are overlooked and what should be done to elevate their role in national nutrition policy? I know you’re really involved in these programs and we need to push them out there.

0:18:19 Mollie Van Lieu: But certainly how they talk about food and how it relates to diet related disease and how it relates to healthcare costs is laying the framework for produce prescriptions. But Dr. Oz, who many people know from his TV show, is the administrator for the center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and so would love to see him come out and say that these federal health care programs will make these a standard practice of clinical care. Because once we see coverage happen in Medicare and Medicaid, you typically see it happen in private insurers as well.

0:19:44 Mollie Van Lieu: But we’d love to see in the next report really talk about how you can bolster so not just stating ultra processed foods are a problem, but therefore this is the resources that we’re going to give to schools to ensure that they have other options. Because it’s not as simple as just saying don’t serve ultra processed foods, you need food to replace it with. And when 70% of the food system is ultra processed foods, like there’s a gap there that people can’t just turn on a dime.

0:20:18 Mollie Van Lieu: There’s certainly been, I mean there’s been cuts to the SNAP program. They’ve cut some of the smaller, smaller, like a billion dollars, which is only small in government terms. But in some of the local food procurement, there’s an effort to reduce what’s called the community eligibility provision that allows school schools to streamline their paperwork and just serve food to all kids without kind of doing individual checks.

0:21:37 Mollie Van Lieu: And obviously a Congress that’s looking to reduce the federal deficit. So, yeah, it’s going to be interesting to see how they handle some of these tough questions.

0:22:02 Mollie Van Lieu: Yeah, so we’re really watching what Congress does with this report. Like, are they going to take it and be inspired to introduce legislation? Are they going to ignore it? Right. Which that sends a signal too. So I think really seeing what Congress does is going to be interesting. That being said, certainly the administration is very bold and their approach to these things. So based on the report, I think we’ll see a lot of attention on ultra processed foods. I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to do something in the school meal space related to ultra processed foods.

0:23:05 Mollie Van Lieu: But how the dietary guidelines work is that they are recommendations for all Americans. But certainly most of us are not, you know, going through the 160 pages and determining how we’re going to our our daily meals. But they do it is kind of the baseline nutrition guidelines that go to hospitals, that go to dietitians that go to that are how school meals are. Nutrition standards are formulated. So as a result of the last dietary guidelines, as I said previously, you have to serve a fruit and you have to serve a vegetable. But for vegetables, because the dietary guidelines separates vegetables into subgroups over the course of a week, a school has to serve starchy vegetables, they have to serve dark green vegetables, they have to serve red and orange vegetables, they have to serve legumes. Yeah.

0:24:23 Vonnie Estes: Yeah. Get a lot of white things. Thank you so much, Molly. I really appreciate your time and your understanding and helping us navigate these issues. It’s really complicated and I think it’s really helpful to have experts like you come on and just kind of guide us through it and we’ll be listening to you in the future and seeing what’s going on.

0:24:49 Intro Speaker: Thanks for tuning in to Fresh Takes on Tech, hosted by Vonnie Estes. If you enjoyed the conversation, please subscribe, rate and share it with your network. You can find more episodes and resources at freshproduce.com See you next time for another Fresh take.