Friday News Bits: Longevity
Longevity Week
Update on Food is Health Newsletter
We started this newsletter on a simple premise:
Chronic disease has spiraled out of control in the US over the past 50 years
If you fix food, you prevent chronic disease
Innovation enables quality, affordable nutrition
Not many people believe this. We think they are wrong. So, we decided to do what we could to educate consumers, entrepreneurs, industry players, investors, and policymakers on the steps to improve food so we can then improve health. It will take a lot of effort, but it becomes easier to fix when we speed up the flow of information with this newsletter. So, we write every day. With more than 1,100 daily readers, mostly early adopters of the Food is Health idea, we are prepared to expand our reach to convince the doubters.
Please take a moment to send us an email so we can better understand how the newsletter has helped you and what we can do moving forward to assist others in accelerating change in food and health.
News Items
→ Medically Tailored Nutrition can help make America healthy: The Hill shared an article that made the case not just for food but for “nutritious, locally sourced, medically tailored meals - food-based interventions designed by registered dietitian nutritionists specifically for chronically ill Americans”. This may seem like a subtle nuance but it’s actually critical to future of the Food Is Medicine / Food Is Health movement. The message is finally shifting away from food being used primarily for food insecurity to food being seen as a clinical intervention. The article goes on to say “These meals are not only about nourishment. They are about addressing the root causes of chronic diseases while offering real cost savings.”
→ Subcommittee on Health Hearing About Digital Tools: Not only was there a full House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, which we summarized on Thursday, but there was a separate Ways & Means Health Subcommittee Hearing on Wednesday on “Health at Your Fingertips: Harnessing the Power of Digital Health Data”. Picking up on a theme yet?
At the meeting in the same conversation, were WHOOP, CoachCare, Epic (yes the EHR company), Winchester Metals, and GW Policy Expert. we plan to create a summary of the transcript in a future piece for the Substack. Dr. Kristen Holmes PhD, Global Head of Human Performance, Principal Scientist at WHOOP, posted about her testimony.
→ 2025 ACC Scientific Statement on the Management of Obesity in Adults With Heart Failure: A Report of the American College of Cardiology: This study shows how next-generation anti-obesity drugs like semaglutide and tirzepatide are changing heart failure treatment, especially for the 64% of heart failure patients who live with obesity. Based on major trials, including STEP-HFpEF and SUMMIT, these GLP-1 and dual GLP-1/GIP receptor agonists show notable improvements in symptoms, functional ability, and quality of life for patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. They achieve 8-12% weight loss while lowering hospital stays and possibly extending lifespan. This marks a major shift in cardiovascular care, moving beyond traditional BMI-based obesity diagnosis toward precision medicine approaches that evaluate body composition and metabolic health, while developing comprehensive management strategies that include lifestyle changes, medications, and surgery. This merging of metabolic medicine and cardiology opens new opportunities for innovation in the food-as-health field, as clinicians increasingly understand that treating obesity is not just about weight loss but about fundamentally rewiring the underlying causes of heart disease through targeted nutritional and pharmaceutical strategies that could change how we prevent and treat cardiovascular issues. (Link)
→ Investigating the impact of trial retractions on the healthcare evidence ecosystem (VITALITY Study I): retrospective cohort study: A new study reveals a devastating "contamination chain" where 1,330 retracted clinical trials, many involving outright research fraud and "factory-made fake trials" from “paper mills”, have systematically corrupted the healthcare evidence ecosystem that guides medical decision-making. The research shows that each fraudulent trial contaminated an average of three systematic reviews and three clinical guidelines, with nearly 25% of retracted studies continuing to be cited in medical literature even after retraction notices were issued. When researchers removed these contaminated trials from meta-analyses, the results were shocking: nearly 10% of studies completely reversed their conclusions, 20% lost statistical significance, and 20% saw effect sizes swing by more than 50%, ultimately corrupting 157 clinical practice guidelines that doctors use to treat patients. This exposé of systematic evidence corruption presents a massive opportunity for the food-as-health industry to establish new gold standards for research integrity, as traditional pharmaceutical and medical research credibility crumbles under the weight of fraud. Companies developing food-based therapeutics and precision nutrition interventions can now position themselves as trusted alternatives by implementing blockchain-verified clinical trials, open-source data sharing, and transparent research methodologies that could restore faith in evidence-based medicine while capturing market share from an increasingly discredited traditional healthcare research establishment. (Link)
Data for the Weekend
Ten novel ways other countries address prevention
Finland: Every new parent receives a government "baby box" containing essential items and health guidance, which has contributed to one of the world's lowest infant mortality rates. (link)
Japan: Companies are legally required to measure employees' waistlines annually, with penalties for businesses whose workers exceed government-set limits. (link)
Singapore: The government mandates color-coded nutritional labels on packaged foods and is expanding the Nutri-Grade system to include sodium and saturated fat warnings. (link)
Netherlands: The government treats cycling infrastructure as a core public health intervention, with dedicated bike lanes and traffic laws prioritizing cyclists over cars. (link)
South Korea: Citizens receive mandatory biennial health screenings paid for by the government, with follow-up interventions based on risk profiles. (link)
France: Labor laws mandate that employees cannot be required to check emails outside work hours, protecting mental health through "right to disconnect" legislation. (link)
Bhutan: The government measures "Gross National Happiness" as an official policy metric, prioritizing mental wellbeing over pure economic growth. (link)
Iceland: The government implemented strict alcohol purchasing hours and high taxes as a population-wide intervention to reduce alcohol-related disease. (link)
Australia: Plain cigarette packaging laws require all tobacco products to be sold in identical, graphic warning-covered packages. (link)
Costa Rica: The country abolished its military and redirected defense spending toward universal healthcare and environmental protection as preventive health measures. (link)
Social Posts that Caught our Attention
→ AI Primary Care is Coming…: Ellen wrote about Lumeris’ new AI Primary Care tool named Tom back in February when it was first announced and stated that it was a big deal. It got even more interesting recently when Google Cloud announced a partnership with Lumeris and Tom. It’s a good time to lean in. We plan to record with John Fryer, Chief Growth & Corp Development Officer at Lumeris soon.
→ Back to Basics: Rak Jotwani, MD, a favorite Lifestyle Medicine board-certified doctor, shared a succinct thought about Longevity that resonated deeply.
→ Redesigning Food Insecurity: There is significant debate and scrutiny surrounding the current Food Bank and School lunch programs and their sourcing. The recent cancelation of the LFPA and LFS grants announced back in March (link to our summary) has caused chaos and sent a message that change is needed. One of the “good guys” announced an exciting effort to redesign the system in a way that pays farmers, reduces waste, and improves food access.
→ Italian Gyms Require More Paperwork Than Prescriptions: Italy has strict sports medicine laws requiring medical certificates for most physical activities, stemming from a preventive approach after high-profile athlete cardiac events in the 1970s and 80s. Non-competitive activities need a basic certificate with blood pressure checks and ECG. Competitive sports require more thorough evaluations by sports medicine physicians. This contrasts with countries like the US, where physical activity is less regulated. Italy emphasizes preventive healthcare and early risk detection, though critics see barriers to fitness. The difference in regulatory approaches highlights potential for nutrition companies to develop evidence-based health screening that bridges medical oversight and wellness. (link)
→ Gene-Editing on Offense: Antonio Grasso's insight captures a revolutionary shift from defensive to proactive agriculture, where gene editing and biotechnology not only solve problems but also prevent them entirely. Rather than the simplistic approach of banning glyphosate outright, the future lies in engineering crops with enhanced natural resistance mechanisms and developing next-generation herbicides that are both more effective and inherently safer. Using CRISPR and advanced gene editing, we can create crops with built-in pest resistance, drought tolerance, and enhanced nutritional profiles while simultaneously engineering biological herbicides derived from naturally occurring compounds that target weeds without the persistence and potential toxicity of synthetic chemicals.
This "all-above strategy" recognizes that sustainable agriculture requires multiple complementary technologies working in concert: gene-edited crops that need fewer chemical inputs, precision biologics that replace broad-spectrum herbicides, soil microbiome enhancement that naturally suppresses weeds, and AI-driven application systems that minimize chemical usage. The key insight is moving beyond the binary thinking of "chemical bad, organic good" toward sophisticated bioengineering that makes agriculture both more productive and fundamentally safer—creating herbicides that degrade quickly in soil, target specific plant pathways that don't exist in beneficial insects or humans, and work synergistically with enhanced crop genetics to create resilient farming ecosystems that protect both farmer health and environmental integrity. (link)
