March 12, 2015 — Dangerous crosscurrents remain in the regulatory environment for obesity medicines, even though progress has been considerable over the last five years. You need look no further than headlines of the last week. In just one news cycle Orexigen — the originators of Contrave — made both good and bad news for themselves when they disclosed […]
March 11, 2015 — He had a cute face, but we won’t miss him. After a change.org petition gathered more than 16,000 signatures, Facebook has reversed itself and removed the feeling fat emoji. Now, if you search through the drop down box to describe how you’re feeling when you post something on Facebook, “feeling fat” is no longer an option. […]
March 10, 2015 — No, this is not about data that’s garbage, or for that matter, sewage. It’s about looking for meaningful insight about patterns of obesity in an expected place. It’s about scientists finding new evidence about obesity in the sewer. Ryan Newton and colleagues took the unusual approach of examining evidence of differences in the microbiomes of sewage […]
March 9, 2015 — At a time when consensus has formed that fixation on one nutrient (dietary fat) led us astray for the last 30 years, obsession with another nutrient (sugar) is proving to be just as distracting. But the truth is that whole diets matter more than single nutrients. The focus on healthy dietary patterns in the report of […]
March 8, 2015 — Everybody knows the behaviors that cause obesity, right? Wrong. It turns out that we’re a couple of steps away from that knowledge. A new study in the Journal of Public Health points out that we’re not even particularly good at measuring behaviors thought to contribute to obesity. Without good measurements, we can’t even be confident of […]
March 7, 2015 — It’s no secret that McDonald’s had a terrible year in 2014. Sales are sputtering and they fired their CEO after less than three years on the job. Some observers attribute their troubles to losing relevance with millennials who are more conscious about healthy eating. Fast casual restaurants like Chipotle and Panera seem to be prospering at McDonald’s […]
March 6, 2015 — New research published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience describes the mechanisms that link obesity to addiction pathways in the brain. Researchers from the University of Aalto in Finland used PET (positron emission tomography) scanning to map the density of opioid and dopamine receptors in the brains of women with severe obesity and women […]
March 5, 2015 — Perhaps it had to happen. CEOs are mad at the EEOC for challenging features of wellness programs that could have the effect of discriminating against people with a chronic disease. So they have persuaded a small group of legislators to introduce a bill in the Senate and the House to prevent EEOC from acting on such complaints. Simply […]
March 4, 2015 — One key article of faith for many people in nutrition, obesity, and health is that Americans are consuming too much added sugar for optimal health. The 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recommends in their recent report that “added sugars should be reduced in the diet and not replaced with low-calorie sweeteners.” But today in the […]
March 3, 2015 — Things have changed to the point that we’re beginning to wonder, who cares about weight loss anymore? Consumer marketers are coming to understand this fact as they watch trends in consumer attitudes. Supermodel Kate Moss declared in 2009 that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Now, that phrase evokes such backlash from the public […]
