September 6, 2023 — A sure way to make a good program look bad is to offer up flawed evidence for its benefits. Then call it the biggest and best evaluation ever. So it is with a study of Food Is Medicine, impaired by a problem with regression to the mean. That little problem does not stop some pretty […]
September 5, 2023 — When an idea captures the imagination, it can become something like an ink stain. Tough to alter. One such idea that captured our imagination is the idea that gut microbiota might be a causal factor in obesity. But a new review in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B suggests rethinking this idea. Matthew Dalby […]
September 2, 2023 — Ask any parent. They can tell you that “Why?” can be the most wonderful question a child can bring them. It can also be the most annoying. And so it is with the question of why the population has so much obesity. But it just won’t go away, and in fact the question seems to […]
July 27, 2023 — Five years ago, Faith Ann Heeren brought her life experiences to YWM2018 in Denver. Now, as a PhD candidate at the University of Florida College of Medicine, she is the lead author on one in a collection of papers from last summer’s outstanding program on causes of obesity at the Royal Society in London. Life […]
July 24, 2023 — We’re hearing quite a buzz at Nutrition 2023 about ultra-processed foods. Presenting in a session on scientific questions regarding ultra-processed foods, Distinguished Professor Rick Mattes offered one statement that perhaps everyone concerned with this subject can agree upon: “An abundance of epidemiologic evidence shows, very convincingly, that there is an association between consumption of ultra-processed […]
July 21, 2023 — The President of Stanford University, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, announced his resignation this week, following a review of his research that concluded some of it “fell below customary standards of scientific rigor and process.” If you entertain any doubt about the importance of attention to scientific rigor and integrity, this should resolve it. Retractions and Corrections After […]
July 19, 2023 — New research today in the New England Journal of Medicine offers an important lesson – for anyone with an open mind. Finding an association of a dietary pattern with a better health outcome is not the same as showing that a dietary pattern has that effect. Eight years ago, Martha Clare Morris and colleagues told […]
June 23, 2023 — Since January, when the American Academy of Pediatrics released a guideline for treating the disordered physiology of children and youth with obesity, we’ve been inundated with popular psychology influencers concerned about the impact on young persons with disordered eating. Their arguments are quite passionate. “Obesity guidelines for kids terrify me,” says one person with a […]
June 20, 2023 — Two researchers from the Harvard Medical School tell us we cannot have confidence in findings the World Health Organization gleaned from nutrition science related to sweeteners. But the problem is not limited to sweeteners. Writing in the New York Times, Anupam Jena and Christopher Worsham say the problem afflicts much of nutrition research: “This is […]
June 19, 2023 — An appealing narrative is seductive. Recently, we tripped over a case study in this basic fact when a new study in Nature Metabolism stirred up considerable attention from health reporters with claims about “severely impaired” brain responses to nutrients in humans with obesity. But in retrospect, there’s an plausible argument that the analyses were impaired […]
