Archive for July, 2014

Five a Day Fruits & Veggies Is Enough, More ≠ Better

July 31, 2014 — A new analysis of five a day fruits and veggies in BMJ reminds us that more is not always better. The meta analysis of 16 prospective cohort studies found an incremental benefit of reduced mortality for every serving of fruits and veggies, up to five a day. The benefit they found was a reduction in […]

The Obesity Appliance

July 30, 2014 — Gawker has uncovered the American obesity appliance for us this week: our super-sized refrigerators. It turns out that Americans have the biggest refrigerators in the world — approximately 22 cubic feet on average. By comparison, refrigerators in Europe are less than half the size of ours, measuring up to only an average of about 10 cubic […]

Junk Food: Trash or Treasure?

July 29, 2014 — Junk food brings life to the thought that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. In fact, the origin of that idiomatic phrase — from Chamber’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Arts in 1879 —  relates it back to food: Truly, as one man’s meat is another man’s poison, so one man’s rubbish is another man’s […]

Clean Up the “Healthy Obesity” Talk, Please

July 28, 2014 — Healthy obesity is the subject of yet another pair of new publications, this time in Obesity Reviews. So far, in this year alone, you can find 160 scholarly publications on the specific subject of “healthy obesity.” Rey-López and colleagues completed a systematic review of the prevalence of metabolically healthy obesity. They found prevalence estimates ranging from […]

Pragmatic Revolutionaries Needed in Public Health

July 27, 2014 — Pragmatic revolutionaries are needed to solve two of the most vexing problems in public health: tobacco dependence and obesity. David Sweanor is making this case in tobacco policy and Hank Cardello is making the parallel case in food policy. So what do pragmatic revolutionaries look like in action? The textbook case would be the AIDS […]

Three Clues for Treating Obesity in the Brain

July 26, 2014 — Brain function appears to be linked with obesity in a number of ways that neurosicientists are only beginning to understand. In Physiology & Behavior, Ashley Martin and Terry Davidson recently published a detailed review of clues that link cognitive function to obesity in a vicious cycle where the distinction between cause and effect are blurred. […]

Him Bad, Me Good, Listen to Me

July 25, 2014 — “Him bad, me good, listen to me” is a crude form of argument that surfaces with distressing frequency. Theological discussions about good and evil are hard enough. But when this sort of argumentation creeps into science, nutrition, and obesity, the quality of decision making plummets. To our great disappointment, this is the type of argument […]

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July 24, 2014 — You will be first in line if you subscribe for free to the latest news from ConscienHealth about health, obesity, and policy. The subscription is free and we never share your email address with anyone. Just enter your address below and click subscribe. Get in Line, photograph © Rennett Stowe / flickr

Fool’s Errand: Arguing about Weight

July 24, 2014 — Arguing about weight is a fool’s errand. But the impulse to tell someone else how much they should weigh lies under the surface of a new analysis published by CDC. Neda Sarafrazi and colleagues from the National Center for Health Statistics found that nearly 48% of boys and 36% of girls with obesity between the […]

Data v Dogma: Low-Calorie Sweetened Beverages

July 23, 2014 — Nutrition and dietary advice is a realm where a contest of data v dogma plays out repeatedly. Low-calorie sweetened beverages lie at the center of one such contest. A new study just published in Obesity provides further evidence that low-calorie sweetened beverages can be useful for people who want to achieve and maintain a lower weight. […]