Archive for February, 2014

Not So Fast: Only One Hour of Exercise Per Year?

February 28, 2014 — Women with obesity only get one hour of exercise per year! That’s the sensational headline that some ordinarily respectable media outlets plucked from an obscure statistic in a methods study this week. Examiner.com gets credit for calling the foul. In fact, the study at the center of these sensational headlines was designed to validate a […]

3 Big Changes in Food Labels Announced Today

February 27, 2014 — Three proposed big changes in food labels are coming out into public view today — the first significant changes in over 20 years to the nutrition facts label. Nutrition advocates are generally thrilled. The food industry is reacting with polite restraint. Calories go big. The calories per serving number leaps off the proposed label. It’s […]

Any Clues? Preschool Obesity Nudging Down

February 26, 2014 — Preschool obesity rates — in yet another study, published today — are edging down. Are we doing anything to cause this? Or are we just celebrating events we don’t yet fully understand while we do our obesity prevention rituals? Cynthia Ogden, a CDC epidemiologist and lead author on the study, says “there’s a glimmer of […]

Chris Christie: Obesity Treatment Success?

February 25, 2014 — New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has not been celebrating a lot of success in his professional life just recently. But one year after his gastric banding surgery, experts in the field are describing his results as successful. “With everything the man is dealing with, it is a wonder he has done so well,” said Thomas […]

Your Brain on a Diet vs Your Brain on a Band

February 24, 2014 — Your brain on a diet works differently than it does after bariatric surgery, like a gastric band. This finding from a study published in the February issue of Obesity adds to our understanding of how diet, exercise, obesity, and its treatment interacts with your brain. Amanda Bruce and colleagues examined brain function both before and […]

Hungry Babies

February 23, 2014 — Hungry babies, the media is telling us this week, become fat babies and adults with obesity. Looking at the studies that prompted these reports, the reporting strikes us as a bit of overreach by health journalists. JAMA Pediatrics published two studies and a companion editorial that together paint a clear picture of some infants who […]

No More Name-Calling

February 22, 2014 — Name-calling is something that civility puts out of bounds, especially when the subject is someone with a chronic disease or a disability. Decades have passed since it was permissible to demean people by labeling them with a disability or a chronic condition. Labels like “cripples,” “autistics,” and “epileptics” have — thankfully — passed out of […]

Sitting Out of Life

February 21, 2014 — Sitting and other sedentary behaviors are becoming more and more clearly associated with serious health risks. A new study published this week found that the odds of a disability in adults 60 and older goes up by almost half for each hour spent daily in sedentary activities. Dorothy Dunlop and colleagues used data from 2286 […]

Coke & Weight Watchers: Profits Sink as People Adapt

February 20, 2014 — Coke and Weight Watchers are two iconic brands with profits sinking while the order of things changes around them. Warren Buffet, known as the Oracle of Omaha, warns that complacency is the greatest danger to a successful company. In Coke and Weight Watchers, we have two very different icons struggling stay relevant as people adapt […]

In Search of a Righteous Diet

February 19, 2014 — Eating healthy can easily morph into a quest for a righteous diet that goes well beyond evidence-based nutrition. You can find quite a spectrum in the significance that people attach to the concept of a healthy diet. In the extreme, a quest for a righteous diet can take to the form of what some have […]