American Conservatism and Defining Ultra-Processed Foods
October 6, 2023
Editor's Note
Washington, DC area think tanks commonly compile briefing books ahead of a new U.S. presidency, packed with their ideas and proposals for the future. The Heritage Foundation's version, the "Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise," has received attention because it sparked an abortion-related controversy over reauthorizing the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
This week, David P. Fidler digs deeper into the nearly nine hundred pages of The Conservative Promise, as a window into the evolving American conservative foreign policy vision for global health. The exercise yields important and sometimes surprising insights. For example, the report advocates more U.S. engagement with sub-Saharan Africa, but disavows global health as the means of doing so, arguing that such aid has failed to alleviate instability, conflict, corruption, and Islamic terrorism in the region.
Michael Pollan famously wrote that all diet advice can be summarized in three simple sentences: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Ultra-processed foods, Margherita Melillo at the O'Neill Institute writes, cannot be defined so neatly, which is why their effective regulation remains elusive. Those foods are formally defined as "formulations of ingredients, mostly of exclusive industrial use, that result from a series of industrial processes" and cover a broad range of products, many with adverse health effects and some even labeled healthy and nutritious.
Our final piece from Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, continues the ongoing debate over gain-of-function research, which could include adding biological functions to pathogens. The authors argue that rather than adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to regulation national policies should differentiate based on clear and scientifically sound definitions for categories of risk.
As always, thank you for reading.—Thomas J. Bollyky, Editor
