Biden Administration Releases National Food Strategy
The White House has released the “Biden-Harris National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health,” which lays out the Biden administration’s policy goals on a number of food-related subjects. The third pillar of the strategy includes the administration’s intention to (i) “develop a front-of-package (FOP) labeling system to quickly and easily communicate nutrition information”; (ii) “make sure that foods labeled as ‘healthy’ align with current nutrition science and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans“; (iii) “adequately fund [the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)]’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) to prioritize its nutrition and labeling work”; and (iv) “facilitate making nutrition information easily available when grocery shopping online.”
The strategy also notes the policy goals of “lowering the sodium content of food” beyond FDA’s voluntary short-term reduction targets and “lowering added sugar consumption” by further researching strategies for reducing American’s sugar intake. The document further promises “regular updates to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.”
In addition, the administration intends to “address the marketing of unhealthy foods,” including through law enforcement actions by the Federal Trade Commission “to prevent the deceptive advertising of foods and dietary supplements, including deceptive advertising that might be targeted to youth.”
The fifth pillar of the strategy focuses on additional research for further development of food policy. “The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to developing innovative, inclusive, impactful, and science-based policy solutions to address nutrition and food insecurity,” the strategy states. “The federal
government spends approximately $2 billion on nutrition research each year, primarily through HHS National Institutes of Health (NIH). However, there are still gaps in the scientific understanding of nutrition and health.” Accordingly, the administration’s goals include “bolstering funding to improve metrics, data collection, and research to inform nutrition and food security policy, particularly on issues of equity and access; and implementing a vision for advancing nutrition science.”
