March 12, 2021 — Let them choose is a seductive maxim for guiding health policy. In one sense, it seems perfectly reasonable. You get to choose. We respect personal agency. But it can also be quite punitive. You made your choices, now you have a chronic disease. You’re on your own. Sorry. A new paper in the Future Healthcare […]
February 20, 2021 — Let’s say you’re a brilliant economist. Does it matter how attractive you are? Perhaps it should not. But according to a new study, it most certainly does. Attractive economists get to study and work at more prestigious universities. They get better jobs in the private sector. They even get more more citations for the papers […]
November 21, 2020 — Make no mistake about it. The times are changing. A new order is coming and old ways of doing things will not suffice. We are not merely talking about a change of leadership in Washington. We are talking about bigger changes. These changes come from people fed up with an old order of things that […]
November 17, 2020 — RT-Mart is a hypermarket chain in Taiwan, having a measure of success in mainland China. But last week it set off a furor about fat shaming. For reasons unknowable, the chain replaced the usual S-M-L-XL-XXL clothing sizes with a shaming scheme. Slim, beautiful, rotten, extra rotten, and rotten to the core was the chain’s not […]
November 4, 2020 — Many of us are struggling to hold onto a quaint belief in facts. But we’re also learning to deal with ambiguity. Simply because we don’t have all the facts. So we all, to varying degrees, rely on feelings to guide us. Welcome to the world of obesity, where we cope with an imperfect knowledge of […]
October 9, 2020 — “I don’t know how everyone else is coping but I’ve been up and down like a rollercoaster,” says Ricki Frost of Middlesbrough, England. His comments point to the mental health challenges brought by the coronavirus pandemic. Depression and anxiety are high on that list. What’s more, weight discrimination can make it worse. New research in […]
September 20, 2020 — A new perspective in Obesity reminds us that weight discrimination at work is stubborn. Worse yet, it’s perfectly legal. Shreya Sabharwal and colleagues from Harvard describe the situation: Even though weight discrimination has a negative impact on people’s health and wellness and results in unequal academic and job opportunities, there is only one state in […]
September 12, 2020 — Obesity has emerged as a significant risk factor for poor outcomes in patients infected with COVID-19. Based on how doctors and others in health care have previously treated patients with obesity or overweight conditions, my guess is that many will respond by declaring: “Well, it’s their own fault for being overweight!” In the spirit of […]
July 4, 2020 — “I’m tired of people suggesting I should feel guilty about racism,” someone told us recently. That sentiment is a near-perfect expression of white fragility. Many people enjoy the unearned privileges of being white in a racist society. But they don’t like to think about it. Likewise, many people who are fit, able, and thin enjoy […]
July 4, 2020 — Change comes in increments. Because humans are wired for bias, the bias against people at higher weights is especially hard to escape. But we take heart from explicit signs of such bias erased. Small victories count, too. This week, one such victory came when Bing took down an appalling entry for childhood obesity, filled with […]
