You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast count US Saturdays at one in seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. This week we look at the flu shot. Fewer kids are getting vaccinated for flu season, and that might actually pose a bigger problem for the older folks around them, like their grandparents. Also, after some severe whiplash in recent months, it looks like home buyers are about to catch a break, and the USDA is releasing its food guidelines soon. But if you're waiting for a warning against ultra processed foods, you might
be waiting a while. But first, let's begin with the humanities and social sciences. Their popularity in the US has been waiting in recent years. Bill Falls is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Vermont. Earlier this year, he told a local television station that the school has trimmed its budget, letting about five percent of their full time professors go and transitioning others to part time.
The concern that folks have had about taking away from the humanities. Maybe gets confused to think that somehow we don't value the humanities or don't want the humanities to thrive. I think it's just because of this shift in student interest.
It is a shift, he says, that started to show up back in twenty ten, as many students focus on stem fields with skills more directly applicable to their careers. But perhaps the humanities and social sciences have failed to train students to be critical thinkers, and that may be where artificial intelligence comes in. We get more on this with Bloomberg opinion columnist Alison Schrager, who covers economics and
is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Alison, why do you say in your column on the Bloomberg Terminal that the arts are no longer teaching students to be critical thinkers?
Well, I mean, traditionally, you know, you would read the great books, you would get this very sort of like great nuanced view of history. But it seems like more and more that, I mean, at least we keep seeing coming out of universities is a simple, more reductive view of the world. And you know that also just doesn't really sort of ask the big questions and come up with a sort of a way of understanding very complex
issues or really a great understanding of history. It seems like from definitely what we've been told or my friends who teach in the humanities, people, you're getting people they've sort of gone away from that, taken sort of a different view. Some call it postmodern, and you know, I mean,
there's a lot of different viewpoints of history. That's certainly a valid one, but the problem is when it takes over, you don't really sort of get those critical thinking skills of seeing different problems from different perspectives.
And it looks like that not only is enrollment in humanity's dropping, but more Americans are actually questioning the value of a college education.
Yeah, and everyone keeps saying that that's because students just you know, college has got a lot more expensive, and they want to get value for money. They want to go, they want to study something that will give them a job right out of school. And I think there's a lot to that for the decline. But I think it's also worth asking is are the communities also not doing what they're supposed to do and students don't want to show up for a class and be lectured about their
professor's political opinion. They actually do want to sort of like have a better sense of knowledge and truth. And you know, I think that's one of the reasons we've lost sight of why the humanities is actually very valuable and actually I think are going to be more valuable than ever for the way the economy is changing.
Let's get into that. This is where AI comes in then, and changing of the economy. How does that fit into this puzzle and make humanities maybe more valuable.
Well, I mean, no one knows what AI is going to mean for the labor market. There's a lot of doom and gloom. So I'm just going to rely on I think I mentioned to you I've not actually taken a lot of humanities in my own education, but I did take a lot of economic history, uh, just because I went to college in Scotland where they make you do that, and so I did study a lot of
the Industrial Revolution and what that did to labor. So I'm going off my own history education of what I think could happen with AI, and what we found in the Industrial Revolution is labor did find a way, but the found the way if you managed to work with
the new technology rather than be replaced by it. And so when it comes to artificial intelligence and it can do thinking, you know, you want to be someone who can really think well, so you can compliment that, like you know, you could I use AI right now, and I'm sure in the future a w'll be more as
like almost like a research assistant for me myself. You know, it sort of digs up stuff, but I still am as a critical thinker then think, all right, give this information AI has given me, I take it to that next level. So critical thinking skills is a great compliment to AI. And if you just sort of had this very reductive simple view of the world, well then you know,
AI can do what you can do. So we really need to be thoughtful thinkers and like just sort of learning vocational skills in college, those are the skills they're going to be replaced. So we really want to learn how to think well, and how to think critically, and how to especially people's skills, how to get along with people different ideas, how to weigh different arguments. I mean, this is really what you're going to learn. I have to learn how to do to thrive in the New Economy.
And we are talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Alison Schreeger about how AI can help make humanities degrees more valuable. And Alison, let me see if I can sum up what you've just said. I want to make sure I'm following you here. The student would eventually be competing in a way with AI, so they'd have to be critical thinkers in a way artificial intelligence cannot be, and that gives them the skill that is more marketable, something that AI doesn't offer.
Yeah, I mean everyone who is an AI enthusiast tells me AO would be doing critical thinking. But from well, I understand at least for large language models, and maybe
things will change. It's really good at taking a lot of sort of existing information and sort of finding sort of the most common argument with that, And so I mean that's useful, that gives you a lot, But when it comes to sort of coming up with novel information or sort of being faced with new information, I know for my own work with statistics, it's less good for that.
So while it's valuable and informs you really being able to think critically, how to really sort of understand different arguments and where they're coming at you and how to synthesize them actually becomes really valuable. And AI is super helpful but actually doesn't replace you.
Is critical thinking just too hard? I mean, how did we get here to the point where critical thinking isn't valued or isn't taught?
Well, it is hard, and it's really I got to say. I mean, I did a PhD, so I got pretty I guess advanced thinking skills, and I found the process very unpleasant. It's terrible. I mean it's upsetting as well for college students of all ages. It always has been, and I mean, I think this is an issue. It's
not just that the curriculum gotten less critical. It's also gotten less rigorous, because you know, most ideas you have when you're young are kind of bad and stupid or derivative, and you know you need professors to tell you that, Like yeah, like a gazillion people said that about Plato with the first time they read it, and they're wrong, and here's why. And that's unpleasant to hear. I could tell, I could mark of my own education how upsetting it was to be told my ideas were derivative or not
very good. But that's how you get better. And I feel like, you know, the humanities are supposed to be the tough ones who are like, guess what, you're kind of dumb. Here's how to think better. And I think there's a reluctance I noticed when I've teached to sort of be direct with students about that.
Now are reluctance to be more direct with students?
Yeah, as I said, because critical thinking skills are very unpleasant to acquire. They're incredibly valuable, yes, but they're hard to teach and they're even more unpleasant to acquire. And I feel like, you know, humanities are uniquely positioned to impart that, but just not really doing that work anymore.
Is this a US phenomenon or is this something we'll see globally?
I think it's global. I mean, I'm I said, I went to a university in Europe, and you know, from what I observe, I think it's happening there too.
At the same time, when you have more Americans thinking that perhaps higher education isn't worth it, do we run the risk of going too far the other direction?
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely not as worth it as it used to be, but it's still worth it. I mean, all the evidence still suggests that if you do get a good college degree, and by that I mean go to a decent school, do a four year degree, it does pay off. You will not only have higher wages, but you have more stable wages, you have much less of an incident of unemployment. So but I do think that the education isn't maybe as good as it used to be in a lot of ways depending on what
you study. And so I mean, I think we do run the risk of you know, the US I think is often succeeded more as an economy because we've also had the best universities in the world. And you know, if we don't really teach people how to be good thinkers at our universities, then you know, we do run the risk of people then not going to university, and then it just becomes a vicious cycle.
I wonder where trade schools fall in here, because we've talked before about the need for trade schools and how we can't just write them off.
No, they're super important. And you know, I was reading this article in The Economist about how the trades are really sort of dominating now the labor market, and it reminds me, have you seen a recent episode of South Park where it's always so present, where they have like this handyman who becomes effectively the Elon Musk of That's economy because he's the only one who can fix things. So reading this article in The Economists, it reminded me of that. So I mean that is also going to
be an important part of the economy. Although, to be honest, like when I talk to like if a plumber comes to my apartment or I do have a contractor come, like, have you've seen their work? Like even there, they're not just like dirty work anymore. Like I mean, they also have to use a lot of skills, incorporate technology into what they do, and they also really have to be
very thoughtful about what they're doing. Their work's getting a lot more complicated and technical too, So it's not just a matter of like doing a plumbing apprenticeship and then you're good to go. I mean they've got to really engage in, stay current and keep learning too. I mean, as I said, we've all got to learn how to be good thinkers. And I mean doing a four year Lobal Arts degree doesn't mean everyone should do it. I don't think it's efficient that the entire popular labor force
go through that. But you know, if you are going to go that route, that's really I think a valuable path too, and I think we undersell it.
Alison, thank you for taking the time with me today, Oh anytime. Alison s Trigger is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist who covers economics and is a senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Coming up, we're going to look at the cold and flu season and how some parents are not getting flu shots for their kids, and why you're listening the Bloomberg Opinion.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast count ut Saturdays at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris, and we are well into cold and flu season, not just for adults, but for youngsters too. And while every parent knows the feeling of helplessness when your little one has a nasty cow or a fever, not every parent is making sure their child is vaccinated. Westchester County Health Commissioner doctor Shirlita Ambler in New York says people need to get those flu shots, even if they're tired of hearing about vaccines.
I if anyone understands that there's a lot of vaccine fatigue out there, but we still have to work to protect ourselves and our family and everybody that we care about.
Let's get more on this with Bloomberg opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis. Lisa covers biotech, healthcare, and the pharmaceutical industry. Lisa, does that make sense to you that there's just this vaccination slash shot fatigue and folks are tired of hearing about it and don't want to deal.
Yeah, you know, I think that's certainly part of it. I think there's a confluensive issues potentially happening related to the rollout of the COVID vaccines, which might have made it so that people were having a hard time finding that vaccine and they were planning to get their flu shot at the same time and didn't do either if
they couldn't find the COVID one. But certainly, you know, we have heard a lot for a while, every six months reminders to go get some sort of shot or another, and you know, I think people are starting to tune out a little bit. I think there's a number of things good on and I'm happy to talk about all those.
Yeah, let's get into that. Why the hesitancy? What are some of the things that are going on.
It's easy to kind of reflectively think, oh, it's COVID vaccine driven hesitancy. That's the reason behind this flu shot decline in kids. And it's a modest decline, but it matters because kids already weren't getting vaccinated at the rate that we'd like to see them at, because they're really important part of protecting adults when it comes to the flu. Older adults are the ones who are most vulnerable to
the worst outcomes. But you know, as I mentioned, the commercial rollout of COVID shots really hit the pediatric vaccines the hardest, and so parents were scrambling for weeks after the vaccines were supposed to be initially available looking for
those shots. And any parent that's had their kids vaccinated nose you only want to go once and get both shots at the same time, so you don't have the angst of two trips and more tears potentially, And so you know, if someone couldn't find a shot, they might not have gotten it at all. And there were some wrinkles when it came to coverage of the COVID shot.
Initially not all insurers had the right coding in place, and so if you went in you had an appointment and then we're told you were going to have to pay for it out of pocket, you might have decided not to get either vaccine. And then anecdotally, you know, I've heard from pediatricians and I've noticed this in my own community that there have just been fewer vaccine clinics.
A lot of times pediatricians' offices will run, you know, several weekends in a row of flu vaccine clinic and it's just like a mill, bring your whole family in and get the shots. And a lot of them didn't do that this year. In part, it seems like because there's just a shortage of healthcare workers, and so I think it's a complience of things happening, but all of it kind of translates into not a great situation.
Do we know how many kids so far have gotten the flu shot percentage wise and what the goal is?
Yeah, so as of early November, because there's a little lag in the data that we see from CDC the national numbers where thirty six point five percent of kids had gotten their shot last year and this year it was thirty two point six percent. That's the lowest in five years. Twenty nineteen, the trend had been overall kids were starting to get more their flu shot more consistently, and then we saw a little leap that first year of COVID. I think parents feeling helpless without a COVID shot.
We're pretty good about getting their kids their flu vaccine, and we've just seen a decline. Since the goal always is to get seventy percent of the population vaccinated, we never get to that place in the US, you know, I think we do the best, which is good with older folks, but older folks also have immune systems that just don't aren't as robust even with vaccination, and so they rely on the rest of us to kind of help cocoon them from the worst outcomes of the flu.
You were just talking about the elderly. Let's talk about that a little bit more. The risk isn't necessarily then, from what I'm hearing you say, for children per se, it's for the spread to make sure the kids don't give it to grandma and grandpa.
That's right. I mean, just like we've all come to learn very well with the COVID shots, the flu shot isn't necessarily going to prevent you from getting the flu, but but like it does actually help lower the spread of the virus. And kids are vulnerable to you know, hospitalizations from the flu, just like they are from COVID.
But really the biggest threat here is to you know, grandma and grandpa, and so, you know, folks over the age of sixty five are the ones who end up with the most hospitalizations and are responsible for, you know, the majority of deaths. One thing that I always keep in mind is that there was a study that people still cite kind of Japan that showed that when you had a high percentage of school age children vaccinated, you
actually saw fewer deaths among older the older population. And so, you know, it just is it's I try to think about that when I think about why it is that, you know, I take my own kid in to get her flu shot. It's for her, but it's also for the people around her.
Are there efforts being made on the government level, on the school level, the local level, to get more kids vaccinated. Is there a push there.
I think there's always been a push, and the CDC had a different blue vaccine campaign. They try to change their messaging up a little bit this year, essentially to try to get at this idea that it's not gonna prevent you necessarily from getting the flu, but when you get the flu, it's not going to be a severe and they I think, you know, we're seeing mixed success
with that. It's a complicated season, you know, to be fair, We've got COVID shots that we're rolling out, the flu vaccine, and then there's new RSV shots for older folks and in RSV preventive therapy for infants, and so I think just the messaging has been really muddled because people are trying to keep track of a lot of things. And as you know, you pointed out the very beginning, this is coming amid some fatigue around getting shots in general.
Are there certain areas of the country that are are not getting vaccinated? Is it demographically divided?
Yeah? I mean so, I think one of the reasons that there's you know, concern around hesitancy is because when you look at the map of the places that have dropped the most in terms of kids in flu vaccines. You know, many of them are in red states, some of them are in states where the political rhetoric around
vaccination of COVID has been the hottest. And so you know Florida, for example, which has been in the bottom kind of twelve states in general in the past when it comes to vaccinations for the flu for kids, but
this year they saw another drop in their vaccinations. And you know, we know we've heard that Governor Ronda Santis in his presidential campaign has really been kind of hitting on COVID vaccines and initially wasn't even going to participate in some of the booster rollouts for that, and so you know there's a worry that that's bleeding over into other childhood vaccinations.
I want to talk about that just briefly, because you know, COVID, a rather vaccination hesitancy or anti vax if you will, is not new. That's been going on since before COVID. I'm wondering though, if now that we're seeing parents more hesitant to get the flu shot for their kids, is it becoming more mainstream. It used to be such an outlier. Now are more parents sort of jumping on the anti vax bandwagon. Where could this wind up?
Yeah, it's really worrisome, to be honest with you. This is a thing that I've been trying to watch closely, and I think everyone is trying to see with every new scrap of data comes out, you know what it means. We saw that there was a drop in childhood vaccinations for kindergarteners. You know, when you go into school for the first time, there's a series of shots that you
need to have. And fewer kids in January when the data came out, were up to date in twenty twenty two than had been in the past, which is concerning. I think it's hard to unravel if it has to do with vaccine hesitancy, if it has to do with fewer people having access to healthcare. You know, I probably is a number of factors. What does seem to be happening.
They're kind of hardening into you know, I feel really good about vaccines or I really don't feel good about it, instead of there's less folks living in that grey area, and so that's worrisome, and I think, you know, certainly there's things that we need to be doing to understand where the demographics and where that's happening, and to be thinking about how to better target those folks.
Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis covers biotech, healthcare, and the pharmaceutical industry. This is Bloomberg Opinion.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast Countess Saturdays at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
This is Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. Home Buyers have been suffering through some pretty severe whiplash in recent months. After hitting eight percent in October, mortgage rates are now kind of flirting with seven percent. There's some signs that sales and inventory are picking up. Let's learn more about this where this could be headed. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Connor Sen joins me now. He is a founder of Peach Tree Creek Investments and has been following the housing market
very closely. Obviously, now, Connor, what has changed.
It's really mortgage rates. That's the show stopping story. Where when rates hit eight in October, I think a lot of people said this is ridiculous. I'm not going to try to buy a house. I'm not going to try to sell a house. It's just it's broken. And then mortgage rates just have basically crashed over the past month due to a decline in inflation to some extent, some softening in the economy, and a belief that the FED will cut rates perhaps in the first half of next year,
maybe as soon as March. And so rates have come down a lot, and it happening at a time of the year when people typically aren't buying houses. Maybe hasn't led people to appreciate that, but I think it sets the housing market up for a really interesting January.
The US housing market, though, has been defying expectations. When you think it's going to zig its zags. Is that going to continue?
I think so.
And the same thing happened a year ago. If you're a call, where rates hit seven in October twenty twenty two, and that was at the time sort of unheard of, and people gave up on the housing market for the year, and then people came back in January and a lot of people who felt like they had to buy a house, they just went out there and tried to look and at the time it was the new home market that had supplied because builders had built up these big inventory
levels when rates were lower and they had to sell them. So builders were in a position to sell homes to people who suddenly needed to buy them, in some cases using mortgage rate buydowns to make the rate more affordable. And that led to the first quarter of the year being surprisingly strong for the new home market. And I think now that we're seeing some signs of loosening in
the resale market on the inventory side. We could see the same for existing home sales in the first quarter of twenty twenty.
Four, so we have seen this pattern before then as recently as this time last year.
Exactly. It really is kind of an eerie groundhog day where you see mortgage purchase applications pick up in November, but people are busy with the holidays, maybe not paying attention, but you see signs in the weekly data that people are responsive to rates, and now that there's more supply, there's more choice for buyers, and I think again we're
going to get past Christmas in the new year. First couple weeks of January, people went out there and you could see a lot more activity than people think.
So that's when home buyers are going to start to see or feel that break and that pressure that you've been talking about coming up in January, the first quarter of twenty twenty four.
Right, the seasonality in the housing market's really gotten weird since COVID, and I think maybe a part of it was COVID. Part of it just mortgage rates are so high that or went from so low to so high that it's a scrambled things. And then just the general lack of inventory has made it so that if you want to sell home, you can almost always sell it,
no matter what time of the year you want. And then there are so many people looking to buy that you do have people looking to buy in November December just because they didn't they weren't able to in May, June, July.
You know, let me clarify something with you, or get you to help me clarify it. You know, we started this by talking about home buyer suffering through the whiplash, and now they're about to get a break. What's that break going to look like exactly? Will it be stability, will it be affordability? What's the break they're waiting for?
I think mortgage rates being lower all else EQL makes affordability better. I think the home price conversation is tricky, and we can get into that a little bit later, but I think the real one is just that there will be more inventory, and so if you've been feeling like there's nothing to buy, there'll be a little bit more choice. And that goes for first time buyers as well as people who have a home to sell before
they can buy. So if maybe you haven't been selling your home because you haven't found the one you like, and now if you do find one you like, you can sell your own home, which then creates inventory for somebody else. So it kind of just unfreezes the market a little bit.
And we are talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Connor Sen about home buyers finally starting to see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. However, Connor, you just said that the outlook for prices is tricky.
How so I think you're rising inventory all SEQUL should put a little bit of downward pressure on prices because maybe price is held up this year just because there was nothing to buy and so there just wasn't an ability for prices to fall when there's always a buyer to step in whenever anything went for sale. So like Redfin, the online brokerage site, predicts that home prices will fall
one percent twenty twenty four. And my view is that could they fall a little bit, sure, could they rise a little bit if mortgage rates fall, definitely, But it's really I think people have been looking for shelter. Think of it as are you looking for shelter and shelter that you own? And if so, then you should be focused on can I just secure the house I want? And am I going to pay two percent too much
or too little? I don't know. I don't think you're looking at a big decline or big rise in either case. It's really just about it should be easier to find the home you want in twenty twenty four.
Let's get a little more granular with this. There was a time, particularly during and just after COVID, when people were just throwing money at realtors and throwing money at sellers. Whatever you're asking price is, I'll top it by another twenty grand, and they were selling houses. We're not seeing that. You don't anticipate that, do you?
No?
I don't think we're going to see big price booms
like that. You might see bidding wars again, but that will be more about four people competing for one house and only one person can get it, even if I don't know if it'll be somebody will pay ten percent over just that, There's still are only so many houses to go around, and I think you will see more inventory next year, more more sellers, more new listings, but buyer demand could come in strong, just sort of people coming off the sidelines in response to not just rate stability,
but rates declining.
And are we seeing more of the flip side of that, coin sellers who are basically cleaning out a house, not really doing much with it cosmetically, not worrying about an inspection, and just selling it as is and getting it off their plate.
I think so.
And when inventory is low, they have the ability to do that, to just wave inspections and not do a whole lot of work because they know there is a buyer for the home, even in the shape it's in. And so again we'll see more inventory next year. I don't think it's going to be just a deluge, but it should be better than twenty twenty three, and sort of in my business. Just the direction and the change is more important than the levels.
So the problem had been that people weren't selling. Why are they more motivated to sell now? I mean, is it beyond just the interest rates?
It's time. So yeah, rates were low until about April May of twenty twenty two, and then rates shoot up.
If you're a seller, you think, I don't want to get in there, I'll just wait until rates come down or whatever, and then time passes and eventually you just have to sell in a lot of cases, and sort of the interesting thing is one of the places where inventory is rising the most right now is Florida as well as Arizona, and I want or if it's because there are more retirees there, and so you do have more people just you know, dying or having to move
into assisted living, and just you have people who sort of physically can't afford to wait and they're putting their homes in the market or they're a status putting their homes in the market.
Now, you had said earlier in this interview that we've seen this before. Is this now the new pattern? Is this what we need to start anticipating in the next few years? Is this sustainable?
I think twenty twenty three was peak mortgage rate lock in because you had sort of the most number of people with three percent mortgage rates that you'll ever see, and they also had had them for a very little amount of time. They hadn't been in their homes that long, so they could afford to wait a year and just not sell their home and wait for things to settle out.
And now every year that passes there'll be fewer people with those pandemic error mortgages and more people who, whether it's for marriage or kids or death or divorce, whatever, feel they need to sell. And so I think from here inventories likely tick up, not rapid, but I think you'll see more supply in twenty twenty four than you did in twenty three, probably more in twenty five than you will in twenty four, and so it should get largely better from here.
So more supply in the coming year, more supply possibly the year after that. If I were looking to buy a home, maybe hustle and strike while the iron is hot.
There are a ton of buyers out there who want to come in, want to find a home. And again we saw in the new home market this year where I think if you bought that home in January when builders were still looking to sell and there were still options out there, they're pretty happy versus people who waited maybe thought mortgage ridge come down, thought prices would come down. And I think you want to get out there before spring and there's more of awareness that, oh, rates have
come down, people are looking to buy. Beat the crowd would be my advice to people.
When you are doing these types of analyzes, how long does it take for the market to sort of catch up with what it is you're saying.
Well, the nice thing about housing is that there's pretty like certainly around this time of the year, there's pretty predictable seasonality. Even if you I wanted to buy a home today, it's not like maybe your wilter's on vacation, maybe the appraiser or some part of that chain that you need to actually secure that home can't be reached, and so you're kind of forced to wait until the
new year. So I think the next three to four weeks it's going to be quiet just because you can't get people and so, but I think you will see signs of this by mid January.
If I'm right, all.
Right, Connor, We're going to wait and see if you are right. Thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks Amy.
The US government's next set of dietary guidelines for twenty twenty five may include warnings against ultra processed foods, but nonprofits say, don't bet on that. There are just too many committee members with conflicts of interest. Bloomberg opinion columnist Bobby Ghost joins US. Now, Bobby first, set us straight. What's the difference between a processed food and an ultra processed food?
Just cooking food makes it processed, right, But ultra process food is food that is that essentially comes out of a substantial degree comes out of a laboratory. I mean they come out of factories, but they're designed in laboratory. They're designed using the science of chemistry, and they're brought together and you know the way the US federal government defines that. It can be quite confusing. If you have a is bacon a ultra processed food or a processed food?
If you have is bread processed or ultra process Take a guess. Most breads are ultra processed foods. You and I most people don't really think of bread like that, but particularly bread that is designed to survive for several days, which is not a natural thing. In bread, long life breads a certainly ultra process long like milk is ultra processed. All kinds of things are ultra processed.
With so much evidence though that all these foods are bad for you, certainly the Committee would be mentioning them in these guidelines, you would.
Think, except, of course, the Committee for decades has been under scrutiny, to put it politely, for pressured by or
influenced by big food, the food industry through lobbyists. Many members of the Committee have been shown to have conflicts of interest, to have received money from big food to conduct research, let's say, and that has made its guidelines suspect in the eyes of a lot of people, and a lot of people who've been on the committee before say that they come under a lot of this pressure. Part of the problem is that the USDA, the Department
of Agriculture. These guidelines come out from the USDA and the Health and Human Services, But the USDA's primary function is to try and promote the product of American agriculture, you know, to promote the kinds of foods that are produced by American farmers, and quite often American farmers are producing foods for the food industry, which then takes this stuff and processes it and ultra process it, if you like, and puts it on our shelves and in our restaurants
and our fast food joints. And so there is a direct conflict of interest for the USDA itself.
So then what's the point of having these food guidelines every few years?
Therefore, nutrition is they are for policymakers. They're not for you and me. They're not really for consumers. There's a whole separate thing that is designed for consumers, and that is called my plate. You'll remember the food pyramid. You'll have seen it in your school, right. My plate replaced the food pyramid. Instead of a pyramid, it's the shape of a plate. It's like a pie chart that shows
you what proportions of different things you should eat. But here's the thing that too, is produced by the government, the Obama administration, particularly Michelle Obama, the first Lady, put quite a lot of her personal energy into it. But that's kind of fallen by the wayside. Even those who have heard of it. A tiny, tiny fraction of people say they've tried to live by the prescriptions of my play. The larger point is that most people know that processed
foods aren't good. If the government is serious about getting people to eat fewer processed foods, the solution is not that difficult. You tax these foods, you subsidize the more wholesome foods. But of course that would involve going against very powerful lobbyists, and the political climate just simply does not exist at the moment for that sort of action.
Bobby goes. She is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering culture, and that does it for this week's Bloomberg Opinion. We're produced by Eric Mallow. Find all of these columns on the Bloomberg terminal, and we're available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. Stay with us. Today's stories and global business headlines are coming up. I'm Amy Morris, and this is Bloomberg.