February 9, 2016 — “Give a boy a hammer and everything he meets has to be pounded.” Abraham Kaplan’s Law of the Instrument has some wisdom to offer for some of the contentious arguments ongoing about self-reported, observational dietary data. The latest round in this argument was published by Steven Nissen and Nina Teicholz in the Wall Street Journal. […]
February 8, 2016 — Novelist Sarai Walker proclaimed in the New York Times this weekend: “Yes, I’m fat. It’s OK. I said it.” Her commentary immediately started trending and it made us wonder, is “fat” losing its sting as an offensive insult? Fat acceptance activists, after all, have accomplished much. As we’ve written before, many signs can be found […]
February 7, 2016 — First it was employers. Now universities are joining the trend. Folks who want to enforce physical activity goals are increasingly looking to Fitbit and other activity trackers to serve as electronic leashes. Oral Roberts University now requires all freshmen to wear a Fitbit to prove they are meeting the school’s requirements for 10,000 daily steps […]
February 6, 2016 — Big soda is rapidly becoming small soda, without the help of soda taxes. Sales of the three largest soft drink makers — Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper Snapple — are stabilizing as measured in dollars while the number of ounces sold is continuing a long-term decline. Those clever marketers are repositioning their brands as a […]
February 5, 2016 — A month has passed since the federal government released the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Headlines are still flowing about them at an impressive rate. And yet, for all the ranting, most observers are missing the real changes in dietary guidelines that have come with this edition. Most of the headlines address rising concern about […]
February 4, 2016 — It’s inevitable. Mistakes get published in scientific journals. But the real test is whether scientific journals can correct these mistakes. Writing in Nature today, David Allison and colleagues report that many journals may be failing this test. They identify and provide evidence of an urgent need for fixing the process for post publication review. The issue is […]
February 3, 2016 — A pair of new studies are nudging us to stop and think how sex, gender, and obesity interact to influence health. Both the expression of gender and differences in neurological function between the sexes may have important implications for the risks and management of obesity. In Obesity, Bryn Austin and colleagues report finding a significant relationship […]
February 2, 2016 — Poor Barbie. Every move she makes is critiqued for its cultural significance. Being under a microscope like that must be stressful. But we can’t ignore the emergence of 33 flavors of body positive Barbie. If you had any doubts about the body positive movement taking hold, this moment should dispel them. Barbie is now tall, […]
February 1, 2016 — In the past week, headlines have been full of claims that flavonoids in fruit such as strawberries and blueberries are “the secret to losing weight.” They stop just short of announcing the discovery of magic weight loss fruit. The root of this nonsense is a Harvard study that proves no such thing. In fact, what […]
