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By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #107: The U.S. government's uncoordinated diet and health initiatives

Find all previously published facts here.

In 2018, diet-related chronic health conditions accounted for more than half of all deaths each year in the United States. And just three diet-related chronic health conditions— cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and diabetes—accounted for about 25 percent of the $1.5 trillion in total health care spending. Yet the U.S. government lacks a coordinated strategy to address these diet-related conditions.

That’s the conclusion reached by the Government Accountability Office – a federal watchdog agency – in a report released last week. The report’s authors identified 200 federal initiatives related to diet, spread across 21 agencies, but with little or no coordination. The fragmented approach, write the authors, “has impacted the agencies’ ability to achieve outcomes and accountability, leverage resources, and sustain leadership.” According to the report, “When asked whether the federal government had a strategy for directing diet-related efforts, officials from the 16 agencies we interviewed either said there is not a strategy or were not able to identify one.”