President Joe Biden wants Americans to change the menu, telling a food conference Wednesday that it’s time to end hunger while at the same time improving diets to address the country’s crisis of obesity and other diet-related diseases.
The Democrat will be addressing the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, the first gathering of its kind in more than half a century, with government leaders, academics and activists plotting a healthier, leaner America, a senior administration official said.
The plan, according to the White House, will be “to achieve the goal of ending hunger and reducing diet-related diseases in the United States by 2030.”
The Biden plan – partly relying on executive orders and partly requiring Congressional approval – is “ambitious but achievable,” said the senior official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.
More than 50 years since then-president Richard Nixon held a similar diet summit, “the US has yet to end hunger and is facing an urgent, nutrition-related health crisis,” the White House said.
This includes rising cases of diet-related diseases like type 2 diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and certain cancers. “The consequences of food insecurity and diet-related diseases are significant, far-reaching, and disproportionately impact historically underserved communities,” the White House said in a statement.
“There is no silver bullet to address these complex issues, and there is no overnight fix,” the statement warned.
However, the White House statement said that many of these diseases are preventable, while at the same time helping the country’s poorest to escape hunger, “where no one wonders whether they will have enough money to put food on the table.”
