Top 10 Most Read Obesity & Nutrition Stories in 2013
Our top 10 most read obesity and nutrition stories in 2013 have two things in common. Many of them deal with distinction between evidence-based findings and suppositions presented as facts. And many of them provide a concise distillation of observations. Here are the stories that more people read than any others on ConscienHealth in 2013.
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Hot mom or bully? This story sparked by a fitness blogger far outpaced the readership of anything else we published in 2013. She saw nothing wrong with her rant against people with obesity feeling good about themselves, but it got her temporarily banned from Facebook. It’s nice to see some pushback to rants against people with obesity. Click here to read more.
- Your brain after obesity surgery. The intersection of neuroscience with obesity surgery in two recent studies provided fascinating insight into how obesity surgery affects far more than just gastrointestinal “plumbing.” After obesity surgery, your brain responds differently to food. Click here to read more.
- Aspartame: safe, sweet, no calories. False conspiracy theories about the dangers of artificial sweeteners, aspartame in particular, keep a perverse cottage industry going. An exhaustive evidence analysis by the European Food Safety Authority found aspartame to be safe. It’s time to put the junk science to rest. Click here to read more.
- Skipping breakfast: no proof, plenty of conviction. The belief that skipping breakfast causes weight gain is held by healthcare professionals and the public alike. Though there’s no proof that this presumption is either true or false, healthcare professionals are much more likely to be sure of their on views on this subject than they should be. The public is not so sure. Click here to read more.
- What bugs you: top 5 flawed obesity thinking. ConscienHealth readers identified the false assumptions about obesity that trouble them most. “Obesity is a choice, not a disease” topped the list. Click here to read more.
- Seven closing takeaways from Obesity Week 2013. Obesity Week was a big milestone event, packed with great information. Reports from the meeting commanded a lot of attention. Click here to read more.
- Eight invisible facts of obesity. Some fundamental understandings that obesity professionals have about this disease are invisible to most of the world. Here are eight of them that attracted wide readership.
- A top 10 list of wishful thinking in obesity. Wishing does not make it so in obesity and nutrition research, but wishful thinking has a way of creeping into the literature and public awareness. Click here to read more.
- Past time to stop mocking obesity. Chris Christie kept obesity and its treatment in the spotlight because of intense public interest in his weight and his gastric band surgery. Time thought it would be clever to put him on their cover with a headline declaring that he’s “The Elephant in the Room.” Wrong. Click here to read more.
- Forecasting the end of the obesity epidemic. This year brought a lot of premature declarations of a turnaround in obesity trends. A distinguished team of obesity researchers published a quantitative model of the epidemic that provides a good reference point and attracted many readers. Click here to read more.
These stories provide a good idea of what engendered broad interest to complement Saturday’s accounting (here) of the stories that have been deeply interesting to people who follow closely.
Happy New Year!
ICT Discovery, photograph © itupictures / flickr
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