News Archive for June, 2014

Food marketing is alternately held up as the problem behind the obesity epidemic or the source of a solution to it. In a study just published in Appetite, Bettina Cornwell and colleagues found among preschool children that their knowledge of junk food brands and logos did a very good job of predicting a child’s BMI. The […]

Unhelpful would be a gentle description of unsolicited advice about simple solutions for young girls with excess weight. Carol Weston, an advice columnist for Girls’ Life, sparked some strong reactions on the subject in the New York Times this week. She took exception to the notion that girls might benefit from a break in exposure […]

Just about anywhere you look, people are pushing superfood as the answer to your dietary woes. It’s a great way to sell food. And it’s nothing particularly new. A case in point is välling, the cornerstone of a Swedish baby’s diet. Pediatric nurses and parents in Sweden swear by this milk cereal drink as perhaps the most […]

While Apple is promising to make your chicken fat go away, some really smart researchers at Brown University have shown that their B-MOBILE smartphone app can work to reduce sedentary time. The current study is the first of its kind to show that a phone application can be an effective intervention to reduce sedentary time. […]

“Eat more fruits and veggies if you want to get your weight under control” is a standard piece of advice that you will find everywhere. It’s an article of faith with a shaky foundation. A study just published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concludes that simply advising people to eat more fruits and […]

Props to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Obesity Solutions Roundtable for honoring the principle of “nothing about us without us” yesterday. While much obesity policy is made without input from people directly affected, the IOM Roundtable devoted the entire day Tuesday to considering severe obesity, weight bias, and the impact upon people affected. Maria Caprigno […]

What would you think of a doctor who gave everyone with heart disease a stent for their coronary arteries? Or surgery for every cancer? But when it comes to obesity, possibly most doctors follow a similar strategy. The common refrain: “You need to balance the calories you consume with the calories you burn. Let’s work […]

Taxing obesity is an idea that has been bouncing around in health policy forums for more than a decade. When fat was seen as the villain, a “fat tax” was the catchphrase of the day. Then Denmark implemented a tax on fatty foods that went down in flames after less than a year. The “fat tax” catchphrase faded […]

Much work remains to understand what happens when we just sit for extended periods of time. The association between sitting time and health risk has been studied and published many times. A new study published in Obesity provides a reminder that we know little about causality. Pedisic et al analyzed a cohort of more than 30,000 Australians to sort […]

Yogurt has long been associated with a broad range of health benefits, including a healthier weight. A new study published in Nutrition, Metabolism, and Cardiovascular Diseases again found yogurt associated with a lower risk of overweight and obesity, especially in combination with higher fruit consumption. The authors conclude that “Yogurt should not replace fruit as […]