The Reverse Mullet Healthcare Podcast
Ellen Brown, Justin Politi, and Dave Pavlik bring their 90 collective years of healthcare experience to BP2 Health where they're on a mission to effect real change in the industry. Connect with BP2 Health Here: https://bp2health.com/contact/
The Reverse Mullet Healthcare Podcast
Jim Jones - Improving Nutrition for EVERYONE (all 330 Million Americans)
The role of food in health is fundamental and the government plays a pivotal role in ensuring that our food system delivers health to 330 million Americans. The food industry and healthcare industry operate in silos so it was refreshing to learn Jim Jones, Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods at the FDA would be speaking at HLTH. He joined us for an eye-opening conversation about the FDA's groundbreaking initiatives aimed at reshaping how we consume and perceive nutrition. From finalizing the criteria for labeling foods as "healthy" to the development of a consumer-friendly logo, Jim gives us a sneak peek into the future of food labeling. He also sheds light on the ambitious phase two sodium reduction goals, targeting a significant cut in sodium levels in packaged and restaurant foods. As well as an exciting proposal for front-of-pack labeling that promises to make it easier for consumers to spot high levels of sodium, added sugar, and saturated fats.
But that's not all. We also take you beyond U.S. borders to explore international health policies that have proven effective in enhancing longevity and quality of life. Special cohost Erin Martin ensures we discuss the vital role that food quality plays in healthspan and how implementing successful international strategies like front-of-pack labeling could lead to better aging outcomes here at home. Join us as we envision a future where the United States not only learns from global practices but also leads in innovative food policy changes that promise to improve public health across the nation.
Welcome to the Reverse Mullet Healthcare Podcast. I am Ellen Brown, with my special co-host, erin Martin, and we are here, we get to talk about food and we're super excited.
Speaker 1:Actually, justin's walking in, so come on in, Justin, but anyways so super excited because we're here for a Live at Health edition. But, anyways, we so super excited because we're here for a live at health edition. But, on all seriousness, you're one of the most, you're one of the guests I'm most excited to talk to, because we are extraordinarily passionate about the need for food to be at the center of health, not just as medicine, as a prescription, but at the core of how we move away from sick care as our only option to something where we have health care. And so when we had the opportunity to talk to you, I was super excited. So, jim, without further ado, I am Jim Jones.
Speaker 3:I'm the deputy commissioner for human foods at the Food and Drug Administration and just to riff on your first comment about food being part of health care, we, just about a year ago, when we announced this human foods program, we announced that our vision was that food should be a vehicle for wealth. So I think we're very aligned on that.
Speaker 1:Exactly Quality I have a rather loud voice on LinkedIn about the need to, and I mean in all seriousness. I was in Boston last week at Katie Stebbins at the Tufts Food and Nutrition Institute of Innovation, the council meeting, and my two partners, dave and Justin, were in Tulsa with Erin and at her Think Regeneration event.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Advancing food is medicine.
Speaker 1:So we take it very seriously that if we're going to be part of a value-based care, outcomes-based transformation in this industry, then we really have to put food at the center of that. So tell us what you're working on and then we'll ask you our one question about change.
Speaker 3:Sure, so we have a number of really exciting activities right now, and what we refer to as the nutrition space.
Speaker 1:yep, um giving you your mic. Sorry, I'm like doing this real time, appreciate it the.
Speaker 3:Uh, I'm gonna start sort of with one that's about to hit a milestone. We're we're about to finalize a rule that will describe the parameters for when a food can say that it's healthy. Okay, so all fruit, fresh fruits and vegetables are eligible to be healthy, but in the packaged food arena we're going to be defining what has to be in a product to be healthy and limits for how much of certain things we don't want too much of it's fantastic Like sodium, saturated fat and sugars.
Speaker 3:So once we've defined what can say it's healthy, we're then going to follow that with the development of a logo so that consumers can start to see on packaging some consistency around how they can be able to recognize.
Speaker 3:Exactly. It won't just be based on what the manufacturer wants to say in the label. They'll be able to put a logo on it so you'll be able to identify products across product categories, within product categories. What's healthy. So that's one thing we've got going on that we're really excited about. We've had a number of conversations here just today with retailers who are very interested in helping us create more consumer demand around that. So that's very exciting.
Speaker 3:Another activity we have going on is that we have just announced in September is proposed so we're taking comment from all stakeholders right now what we refer to as phase two of our sodium reduction goals. These are voluntary goals. They relate to all packaged foods, 163 different categories of food, both packaged and restaurant. And it's phase two because phase one just ended last April and that was a two and a half year goal to achieve a 13% reduction in average sodium consumption by Americans. Americans consume way too much sodium in their diet and at the end of phase one we still don't have we're about a year away from having a full picture of how well we did.
Speaker 3:We have a because there's about a data lag of a year. The early data that we have indicates about 40 percent of the categories are already meeting or are close to meeting the first reduction, which is why we decided we were in good position to do a second reduction. This phase two set this, the second group of reductions. Phase two will will would reduce, if successful, another 13 percent uh of the average consumption of sodium in the diet. So that's another exciting um initiative we have underway. And then the last one and I'll let you guys start the question because we got a lot- going on.
Speaker 4:My blood pressure is already lower as we speak.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it, it is around front of pack labeling and that would be a proposed rule. A number of countries around the world have front of pack labeling. We have a schema we're planning to propose in the next several months where you bring from the back of the label to the front of the label, in a way that's very easily understood by the consumer, around three nutrients. I say in air quotes that we know Americans are consuming too much of Sodium, added sugar and saturated. You put that on the front of the label with some descriptor related to it. So there's three things we have going on right now that I think have a great opportunity to really move the needle in the nutrition space.
Speaker 2:And so you talked a lot about displaying and kind of reducing sodium and looking and being able to identify healthier products. How about? You know we've got a big differentiation. You know the Kellogg's issue is really hot right now about how in other countries some of the ingredients you know are safer in other countries in the same products and they're not as safe in America. So what is being done at looking at that and why is that? And how can we also warn people? We are saying this is healthy, but how are we going to assess if something is maybe, maybe more dangerous for them?
Speaker 3:So chemical safety, which is another part of our program. So chemicals have to be authorized by the FDA for use in food, and so that has been ongoing for the last 60 years. Historically, fda has not looked at its initial authorization except for in what I would describe as an ad hoc way. Every once in a while a chemical gets so much attention in the media that FDA will go and take a look at it. We are working right now to stand up a systematic post-market process where we are routinely identifying chemicals that we think warrant a reevaluation. Something has happened since the original authorization, like new data has been generated. We know more about a chemical than we did than the original authorization. That would lead us to re-evaluate it, and so we are planning on putting in place we've got the early work underway to have a systematic post-market. It just becomes part of our program that we're routinely going back and looking at previously authorized chemicals.
Speaker 4:Do you see a universe where there's fewer chemicals in the future as part of that process, or is it just evaluation and it's not necessarily? Here we're trying to reduce the number of overall chemicals.
Speaker 3:So our objective is that chemicals that are authorized for use in food be safe. So I've done this in two other pre and post-market chemical review programs and inevitably they will ultimately, based on an assessment, be determined not to be safe and they will be removed from the market. But I don't prejudge any of them until we've actually done it. The objective is that anything that's authorized is safe. Something's not safe after an assessment, you take action to make sure it's either removed from the market or used in a way that is safe.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to flip it more into an opportunity perspective and say so I'm involved in another podcast. Somehow I went from never in my life having any desire to be part of a podcast and now be part of two of them. But it's the Food is Health Revolution and we had Eric Smith from Audacious on and you know his whole objective is to create a system to be able to categorize and measure nutritional density. So it goes beyond just the ingredients in there, but the nutritional density. So it goes beyond just the ingredients in there, but the, the nutritional density that's involved in those greens, which I think is an interesting right. So do you see opportunities, not specifically with audacious, but just when you talk about packaging and labeling and really engaging consumers to give them information? Like, do you see a vision where maybe someday I understand policy has to be enacted but you know where people can really be empowered to understand their food better? When it's shelf stable, when it's you know?
Speaker 3:so. So our, our, our healthy definition captures that concept of density of foods we are. We want people to be consuming that you know. We want people to be consuming. My view is that we got 330 million Americans that we really want to improve their nutrition, and I want to do it for everybody. I want to be able to give everybody the information, and to me that means we've got to work really hard at presenting information that is accessible to everyone.
Speaker 1:You should not have to be studying this at all.
Speaker 3:You shouldn't have to spend a minute of your time studying this question. It should just be obvious. And so, in our work on front-of-pack labeling, we sampled over. We surveyed 9,000 people in this country and we oversampled people who are known to be not have the same level of nutrition literacy, so rural americans um poorer americans and because we want whatever, whatever label we come up with to be understood by everybody, universally, universally, so you don't have to do a ton of education.
Speaker 3:You see it, you know what we're trying to say exactly and so I think healthy. The healthy symbol is similar. Similarly, everybody should understand we're trying to communicate, yeah, um so, and that's, that's fundamentally what we're trying to do so.
Speaker 1:I know we only have like three more minutes and I'm being respectful.
Speaker 1:I'm looking at your, your press secretary, saying I want to be respect because he said you are and I am I actually, I am very grateful that you were able to squeeze this in, so I will be very respectful of that. But I'll just ask you, you know, I think it's amazing that you're here at health, because health is like tech and you know, it's kind of the opposite of health, of really what healthcare should be. This is like the sick care conference. You know, in terms of all the tools, what do you think? First of all, I love that you're here To me, it makes a statement. But secondly, if I ask you, you know, what do you think could affect real change in health care?
Speaker 3:All caps, all caps, real. What's the trick? What I'm, what I'm excited about? So and I was on a panel this morning about it and it relates to tech and nutrition. We're working with Instacart to help them be able to help their customers quickly understand what foods that they are buying through Instacart that are good for them, and I think that the technology is available right now and there is generally going to be in the private sector. Fda is not going to invent these products of. Working with companies who have this is part of their mission to see how our knowledge of the FDA we have a lot of knowledge around nutrition, chemical safety, how that can then be translated in these technologies to help consumers buy and get healthier food, and I think that that can play a huge role in how people get healthier?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. You guys have any last comments?
Speaker 4:Apologize for my tardiness.
Speaker 1:But you jumped in smooth.
Speaker 4:It's like just smooth as silk. You came right in and it was all good, but you jumped in smooth as like, just smooth as silk.
Speaker 1:You came right in and it was all good, but maybe just like one.
Speaker 2:Last final question is you know what do you think maybe we could learn from other countries? You know that maybe have you know different quality standards. What do you think we could learn from them that we could incorporate them here in the US, because there's certainly people with better health in other countries?
Speaker 1:And so I'd love to see some of that incorporated. Oh, you mean the Commonwealth study that I've heard cited like 25 times because of our position at the bottom right quadrant compared to the other countries with health outcomes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I certainly like, from a longevity standpoint, my background's in long-term care I'm a gerontologist and and food's got this huge ripple effect on health span longevity. And I know in other countries people are aging better because I've been there and I've seen it. Just wanting to understand maybe how we could incorporate some of those values here in the US.
Speaker 3:Well, two of the initiatives I described front of pack labeling and voluntary sodium reduction goals are things that we've learned from other countries' success. Both of them came from other countries having done such, and basically that's where the ideas came from.
Speaker 1:Well, that's good to know. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:I hope we can have you for a full episode.
Speaker 1:And so we're not like speed dating, but we really appreciate you making the time on the way to the airport.
Speaker 2:We do, thank you. Thank you so much. All right, thanks, jim you.