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Today, an expanding fig of Americans crossed the governmental spectrum – from Make America Healthy Again activists to mundane shoppers – are voicing interest astir the wellness interaction of ultraprocessed foods – those boxed and wrapped successful plastic, ready-to-eat items lining market store shelves.
Leading the complaint are 2 men who disagree connected beauteous overmuch everything other astir nationalist wellness – Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. David Kessler, the erstwhile commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The 2 men person recovered communal crushed implicit a communal culprit: a 67-year-old authorities classification for substances successful our food. It's called GRAS, oregon mostly recognized arsenic safe. Kennedy and Kessler accidental it has allowed large nutrient companies to usage ingredients without a afloat authorities information reappraisal and flood the marketplace with ultraprocessed foods that present marque up 50% of our calories and 60% of our children's diets.
David Kessler: Over the past 40 years, the United States has been exposed to thing that our biology was ne'er intended to handle. Energy-dense, highly palatable, rapidly absorbable, ultraprocessed foods that person altered our metabolism and person resulted successful the top summation successful chronic illness successful our history. Type 2 diabetes, pre-diabetes, hypertension, abnormal lipids, fatty liver, bosom attacks, stroke, bosom failure.
Bill Whitaker: From our food
David Kessler: From our food.
David Kessler was commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration during the 1990s erstwhile helium helped exposure however the baccy companies manipulated nicotine levels to hook consumers.
He was a driving unit successful bringing baccy executives earlier Congress and turning nationalist attraction to the industry. He's present aiming to bash the aforesaid with the nutrient industry.
Former FDA caput Dr. David Kessler
60 Minutes
Bill Whitaker: In presumption of a nationalist wellness crisis, however does this comparison with tobacco?
David Kessler: It's arsenic large, if not larger.
Bill Whitaker: It's that significant?
David Kessler: The standard of this-- this affects everybody. Understand, not everybody smoked. But look astatine the fig of radical who devour ultraprocessed food. It touches each of us.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: 70% of Americans are either obese oregon overweight, and it's not due to the fact that they got indolent oregon due to the fact that we became lazy oregon due to the fact that we abruptly developed elephantine appetites. It's due to the fact that We're being fixed nutrient that is debased successful nutrition and precocious successful calories and it's making – it's destroying our health
We met with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. past period aft helium issued new dietary guidelines that for the archetypal clip counsel against highly processed foods.
Bill Whitaker: You person said that these ultraprocessed foods are poisoning us. I deliberation galore Americans would beryllium amazed to perceive that.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: We're seeing successful our colonisation radical who are obscenely obese and astatine the aforesaid clip malnourished
Kennedy says that's mostly due to the fact that we don't cognize the wellness consequences of what we're eating - acknowledgment to the GRAS exemption enacted by Congress successful 1958 that allows nutrient companies to independently verify the information of their ingredients with nary authorities oversight if they are mostly recognized by experts arsenic safe. Pending White House approval, helium intends to adjacent that backdoor.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: That loophole was hijacked by the industry, and it was utilized to adhd thousands upon thousands of caller ingredients into our nutrient supply. In Europe there's lone 400 ineligible ingredients. This bureau does not cognize however galore ingredients determination are successful American food.
Bill Whitaker: They bash not know.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: They bash not know. The estimates are betwixt 4,000 and 10,000. We person nary thought what they are.
Bill Whitaker: How bash we cognize what is harmless to eat?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: There is-- no mode for immoderate American to cognize if a merchandise is harmless if it is ultraprocessed.
For his part, David Kessler is petitioning Kennedy to spell further and outright revoke the GRAS presumption for dozens of processed refined carbohydrates – sweeteners and starches specified arsenic maize syrup and maltodextrin - unless the companies tin beryllium they are harmless and not fueling obesity.
David Kessler: They took starch, right? Those cheap, casual calories. And they converted those into a full panoply of ingredients, that it was capable to reassemble. And those products are truthful rapidly absorbed successful our strategy that it caused metabolic havoc.
David Kessler: - they people the encephalon reward circuits that support america coming backmost for more. They, they trigger overeating. They deprive america of immoderate consciousness of fullness.
Bill Whitaker: What we each telephone bare calories
David Kessler: -- those calories are not conscionable empty. They're ending up successful your liver, and that abdominous successful your liver is gonna migrate into different organs. And it's the origin of cardiometabolic disease.
Kessler, a pediatrician, filed his petition with the FDA aft zeroing successful connected GRAS ingredients listed successful plain show connected the backs of packaged foods.
David Kessler: Pick up immoderate 1 of these products. You ever look astatine the-- the constituent label?
Bill Whitaker: A batch of 'em are things I can't adjacent pronounce.
David Kessler: Right. Is that food? Corn syrup, maize solids, maltodextrin, dextrose, xylose, high-fructose maize syrup. And past these ingredients were subjected to concern processing truthful that our strategy can't grip it.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: We volition enactment on-- connected David Kessler's petition. And the questions that he's asking are questions that FDA should've been asking a long, agelong clip ago.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
60 Minutes
Kennedy told america helium volition usage golden modular subject to reappraisal GRAS ingredients. but his credibility connected that people has been wide called into question due to the fact that of his past of vaccine skepticism and his agency's revision of the puerility vaccine schedule.
Bill Whitaker: Are you acrophobic astatine each that your stance connected vaccines mightiness marque radical reluctant to enactment you connected ultraprocessed foods?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: My stance connected vaccines is the same. People should person nutrient subject and they should person choice.
Bill Whitaker: Some doctors interest that-- the caller immunization docket sows disorder and volition pb immoderate Americans not to vaccinate their children
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: People who wanna get those vaccines tin get them and they tin get them afloat insured.
David Kessler: The caput and I, you know, we disagree connected a fig of issues, I mean, successful the strongest imaginable terms. When it comes to vaccines I disagree. But if he's consenting to instrumentality enactment connected these ultraprocessed foods, I volition beryllium the first-- to applaud that.
Bill Whitaker: If you don't spot him connected vaccines, wherefore spot him erstwhile it comes to ultraprocessed foods?
David Kessler: I don't deliberation it's a question of trust, Bill. I mean, this state is ill. I'm a doc I attraction astir the nationalist wellness of this country. And if we tin marque advancement connected that, let's bash that
In December, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu filed a landmark lawsuit against 10 manufacturers of ultraprocessed foods alleging that, similar the baccy companies, they knowingly engineered and marketed addictive, unsafe products portion hiding the risks and causing a nationalist wellness crisis.
The Consumer Brands Association, 1 of the largest commercialized groups representing the nutrient industry, declined to respond to america astir the lawsuit. But successful a statement to 60 Minutes, said determination is nary "agreed upon technological explanation of ultraprocessed foods" and "companies adhere to the rigorous evidence-based information standards and nutrition argumentation established by the FDA to present safe, affordable and convenient products that consumers beryllium connected each day."
We met with nutrient writer Michael Pollan, who for decades has been informing astir inexpensive, factory-processed food.
Michael Pollan: Granola bars, those look precise steadfast each of these would suffice arsenic ultraprocessed foods--
Bill Whitaker: All of them?
Michael Pollan: --even though they're precise different. This-- you know, we person a snack good-- mates of snack foods.
Bill Whitaker: Even the Nature Valley?
Michael Pollan: I would argue, due to the fact that of the fig of-- ingredients successful it. So there's a batch of sweetener successful here
Bill Whitaker: But this is sold arsenic a wellness food.
Michael Pollan: Yeah, a wellness food.
Michael Pollan
60 Minutes
Pollan commends Kennedy for shining a airy connected ultraprocessed foods. He ties their ubiquity to longstanding national workplace subsidies.
Michael Pollan: We subsidize arsenic taxpayers, done the Farm Bill, the slightest steadfast calories successful the diet.
Michael Pollan: Most of which goes to radical farming maize and soybeans
Bill Whitaker: What's incorrect with maize and soybeans?
Michael Pollan: When you perceive maize and soy you deliberation food. This is not maize connected the cob. This is commodity corn
Bill Whitaker: It's not the saccharine maize we devour successful the summer?
Michael Pollan: No. You can't devour it, successful fact. It's each starch, large cobs. You'd interruption your teeth connected it. And past soy, which is not, successful the signifier we turn it arsenic a commodity, is not edamame. You can't devour it. These are earthy ingredients for processed foods and carnal feed.
Bill Whitaker: So the-- the authorities is subsidizing crops that are making america unhealthy?
Michael Pollan: Sick. Yes. Yeah. And 1 mode to look astatine it is we are supporting some sides successful the warfare connected benignant 2 diabetes. We are-- we're subsidizing the precocious fructose maize syrup that's contributing to causing it. And past we're paying for the healthcare costs. I mean, it makes nary consciousness astatine all.
In a statement, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest wide workplace enactment successful the U.S., told us: "[a] steadfast fare relies connected a assortment of nutrient-dense foods and a equilibrium of steadfast fats, carbohydrates, macromolecule and fiber, immoderate of which tin travel from shelf-stable foods"
Bill Whitaker: Why are determination not subsidies to nutrient much of the steadfast foods?
Michael Pollan: Cheap nutrient is the extremity of each governments. If you were to region these maize subsidies determination is interest that the terms of maize would raise. And that would beryllium a occupation for the full nutrient industry, which, of course, is simply a precise almighty lobby, and would beryllium a occupation for the consumer, conceivably.
Bill Whitaker: When you're taking connected ultraprocessed foods, you're besides taking connected almighty industries, Big Ag, Big Food. What makes you judge you volition prevail?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: My content that I volition prevail is due to the fact that we person the president down us.
Bill Whitaker: But the president has shown himself to be-- beauteous overmuch against regulations. So, wherefore would helium enactment regulating ultraprocessed foods?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Well, I'm not saying that we're going to modulate ultraprocessed food. Our occupation is to marque definite that everybody understands what they're getting, to person an informed public.
Bill Whitaker: There are Americans who unrecorded successful alleged nutrient deserts with small entree to full foods. And these are foods that galore of them can't spend anyway. So however bash you talk to that American?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: We are laser-focused connected making each of these foods affordable and accessible to each American.
The Consumer Brands Association told america the GRAS process enables companies to "innovate to conscionable user demand" and that "food companies adhere to FDA's subject and risk-based valuation of ingredients[...]before and aft they are successful the marketplace." David Kessler says that's not enough.
David Kessler: We changed however this state views tobacco. We request to alteration however this state views these ultraprocessed foods.
Bill Whitaker: Would you similar to spot the CEOs of large nutrient companies travel earlier Congress and rise their manus and beryllium questioned similar the baccy manufacture was?
David Kessler: I'd similar them to recognize the consequences of what they are doing and to bash thing astir it.
Produced by Sarah Koch. Associate producer, Amanda Winograd-Schnur. Broadcast associate, Mariah Johnson. Edited by Craig Crawford
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