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ConscienHealth’s Greatest Hits of 2017

This has been a year like no other. As 2017 winds down, we’re grateful that more and more of you have been reading the mix of science and consumer insights we report and interpret here every day. So far this year, more than 90,000 users have spent time reading what we offer on the ConscienHealth website. Our greatest hits of 2017 offer clues about what caught your attention. Here are the top ten, most read posts of the year. (Click on the headers if you want to read them again.)

1. OK, Hate Sweeteners, But Don’t Call It Science

Our number one post by a wide margin dealt with low-calorie sweeteners. Many people dislike them and try to wrap their feelings in science. But the truth is that this is simply a matter of personal preference.

2. The Indestructible Myth of the Sugar High

Nope. Sugar won’t make you high. But that doesn’t stop people from talking about sugar highs. This myth seems impervious to facts.

3. Big Breakfast Strikes Again

The notion that skipping breakfast will wreck your health is another myth that won’t disappear. Meal timing probably matters. But some people aren’t hungry for breakfast. It’s just fine for them to skip it.

4. George Blackburn

George Blackburn’s death this year brought an outpouring of admiration for this man of tremendous energy, enthusiasm, and goodwill. Many regarded him as the father of nutrition and obesity research.

5. What the Health

This vegan manifesto masquerades as a documentary, but is sorely lacking in actual facts. A vegan diet can be perfectly healthy. But propaganda doesn’t help the cause.

6. Clean Eating

Clean eating is a pop nutrition concept firmly rooted in superstition about bad foods. Thankfully, it’s fading fast.

7. Faking Answers to Obesity

Otherwise intelligent people frequently leave us shaking our heads. They tell us they know exactly what it will take to reverse unhealthy trends in obesity. We need more curiosity and better research to solve this one.

8. Doing the Math to Understand the Disease of Obesity

David Allison, Diana Thomas, Kevin Hall, and Keisuke Ejima presented sophisticated analyses of obesity to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They left simplistic thinking in the dust.

9. Ten Reflections on ObesityWeek 2017

This blockbuster meeting captured attention from the world’s best scientists, clinicians, and policymakers. It’s little wonder that you kept sharing our distillation of highlights so widely.

10. TMI Instead of BMI for Youth

BMI is an imperfect but useful screening tool for adults. But for youth, it may be fatally flawed. TMI is a better measure for them, says Courtney Peterson and colleagues, with solid facts on their side.

Enduring Classics

We offer our posts in the moment. Nonetheless, you kept coming back to three posts from prior years so much that they landed in our top ten. Those posts dealt with the battleground between personal choice and regulationsthe impact of homework on childhood obesity, and the pros and cons of taxing obesity.

Thank you for reading and making it worthwhile to write this stuff every day that rolls the globe. If you like it, please share it.

Still, photograph © Ted Kyle / flickr

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December 18, 2017

One Response to “ConscienHealth’s Greatest Hits of 2017”

  1. December 18, 2017 at 8:34 am, Allen Browne said:

    Go Ted!!!!!!!!