June 7, 2023 — Overheated rhetoric in nutrition is nothing new. But the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) set a high bar yesterday. In a press release, the organization rang alarm bells, saying that “big dairy” is on its way to “making school meals less healthy by allowing whole milk.” Oh my. Is the persistent fear of […]
June 5, 2023 — One of the neat tricks of semaglutide and tirzepatide is their unexpected ability to shift the frames of bias through which we look at obesity and human behavior. Neuroscience and behavioral psychology have long told us the human desire for food is not purely a matter of choice. Yet in addressing obesity, weight bias and […]
May 29, 2023 — Expert opinion holds that ultra-processed food is not a good thing. So it’s quite natural to expect that helping people resist the convenience and taste of this ubiquitous type of food will help with dietary health outcomes. So natural that it’s quite easy to dismiss inconvenient, unexpected findings. A little ultra-processing of study results in […]
April 26, 2023 — Tamar Haspel is angry. She notes that many of the people expressing righteous concerns about advanced obesity medicines are also folks who have a book to sell you. Or a diet or a supplement or an exercise program. Personal convictions, money, and the conflicts that go with all of that are a jumbled mess when […]
April 19, 2023 — Breathtaking. That’s the only word we can find to describe the claims coming from a cost effectiveness study of calorie labeling on restaurant menus for preventing cancer deaths. Published yesterday in BMJ Open, this study is already generating headlines like this one: “Thanks to calorie-counting menus, fewer Americans are dying of obesity-related cancers” Making an […]
April 17, 2023 — Writing about The Whale in Psychology Today, counselor Kari Anderson tells us the movie brings a story into view that we look away from too often. “Real people with real stories are suffering, feeling trapped in their own bodies and unable to leave their homes,” she writes. This is uncomfortable viewing for many people because, […]
April 10, 2023 — Writing in the Guardian, Jon Ungoed-Thomas tells us he’s stumbled upon a simple solution for diabetes and obesity. A low-carb diet will cure them both! In an observational study of patients in a general practice who volunteered to religiously follow a low-carb diet, they found that patients could lose weight and put diabetes in remission. […]
April 4, 2023 — Clickbait headlines are running wild on the subject of advanced obesity medicines – even in formerly responsible news sources. Over the weekend, for example, USA Today warned us that there’s dark magic in these medicines. It seems the mere availability of new and more effective obesity meds can cause people to lose their minds. They […]
April 2, 2023 — We are living in an age of low trust. Trust in scientists declined through the pandemic and around the world, trust in elected officials registers at very low levels. Because of this, we are absolutely not surprised with the frequent finger-pointing and stories about conflicts of interest in nutrition and obesity. These are subjects that […]
March 31, 2023 — “Exercise with a buddy, your brain will thank you,” says the Washington Post. “Improve Your Memory, Problem-Solving, and Mental Processing Speeds in Just 6 Minutes,” promises Inc. This is just a small sample of the exuberant claims about exercise and brain health coming at us from news media. There’s only one problem. Some of it […]
