Abstract
Diet-related diseases are the number one killer of Americans. Nutrition and food healthfulness are increasingly seen as foundational to public health. As a result, the healthy foods industry is booming, the medical community is integrating nutrition into healthcare, and even insurance companies are subsidizing food prescriptions. The federal government invests heavily in nutrition, spending more than $166 billion a year on federal programs that provide healthy food to vulnerable populations. After the Biden Administration announced its agenda to “promote a healthy diet among Americans,” the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) and the United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) sprang into action, redefining “healthy” food, updating the cost of basic healthy nutrition, and redesigning nutritional guidance. More recently, the new Trump Administration too announced its plants to “Make America Healthy Again” through increased regulation of processed foods. While these developments are encouraging and represent a huge step forward in public nutrition, they all have a significant and foundational blind spot. Both common parlance and regulation simplistically define “healthy food” based solely on micronutrient content and food groups. In other words, if a food item is protein-rich and contains little or no sodium, added sugar, and trans fats, it is unquestionably classified as healthy. Under this narrow definition, food can be labeled “healthy” even if it has diminished nutritional content because of intensive farming practices, contains disturbing amounts of toxic chemicals, or is a vector for food-borne illnesses. Policy and regulatory actions taken based on this myopic definition, in turn, can have devastating long-term health consequences for consumers, undermine the effectiveness of the myriad federal programs seeking to improve public health, and erode public trust. This article challenges the predominant narrative on food healthfulness and proposes an alternative, “One Health” framework which, even as it takes on a fully anthropocentric view of food, accounts for the close interplay between environmental health, food health, and human health. Part I provides a historical overview of the federal government’s attempts to define healthy food. Part II interrogates the current predominant definition of healthy food. To make its thesis plain and palpable, this section intentionally sidesteps the many modern nutritional debates (animal versus plant food, keto, paleo, gluten-free, etc.) and instead examines only what are universally recognized healthy foods—fresh produce, legumes, whole grains, and nuts. In this near-utopian healthy food realm, this part catalogues the many markedly un-healthy properties these food items can have, including nutrient depletion, environmental toxins, and food-borne pathogens. Part III then introduces the concept of One Health. This theoretical framework has recently gained prominence in the field of pandemic preparedness and zoonotic disease transmission but has not yet been extended to nutrition and food health. This section examines the possible application of One Health’s broader, multi-system, and multi-disciplinary lens to the definition of food health. Part IV offers proof of concept. It considers the National School Lunch Program and reflects on the legal, economic, and practical consequences of adopting a One Health definition of healthy food in that context. Finally, part V responds to anticipated objections that could be raised against such a paradigm shift.
Recommended Citation
Katya S. Cronin,
A "One Health" Approach to Healthy Food,
91 Brook. L. Rev.
169
(2025).
Available at:
https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/blr/vol91/iss1/4