Kevin Hall

there's perhaps a misconception that many of these things that seem to be targeted towards the consumer don't have upstream consequences when they actually do.

And one of the things, we have historical precedents for this.

Once the Nutrition Facts Panel mandated that trans fats be labeled, the amount of trans fats on products be labeled,

food industry rapidly reformulated their products to remove trans fats.

And it was only many years later that they were actually banned from the food supply, in other words, removed from the list of things that you could put in food.

And so these things do have dramatic upstream consequences in terms of the food industry and what foods are grown.

I mean, if there was a demand and the FDA made it

mandatory that all products that met the FDA definition of healthy had to have those on the front of the package as opposed to right now it's really a voluntary program and the food industry doesn't even like the voluntary program if they mandated that all foods that met the FDA definition of healthy were on the front of the package then

The food manufacturers are going to start looking for ingredients that are going to allow for them to advertise, to have that formulation so that they will do that.

And that will create upstream pressure on the kinds of inputs that are going to be required in order to meet the FDA definition of healthy.

And so in similar ways, you can use these sort of economic incentives and policies to kind of create pressure both downstream on the consumers by changing prices and changing labels.

But those labels and prices and incentives that you can put in place by clever taxation and subsidies will influence upstream what foods are grown, how they're grown, and what are the inputs to the foods that end up on our dinner plates.

And right now, those products are actually available to folks.

They end up in a specific aisle of the grocery store that has a premium price associated with it, right?

So they are, you know, the healthier-for-you versions of many of these products that you can get.

Like, you can get a really crummy, microwavable frozen meal for lunch, or you can pay, you know,

40% more for a relatively healthy version.

I tend to choose the healthier version because I have the privilege of doing so, but most folks don't have that privilege.

And so how do you flip that?

What kinds of policies do you put in place to make it the incentive for the food industry to make more of these healthier for you?