Archive for March, 2016

A Thin Line Between Frustration and Progress in Obesity Care

March 31, 2016 — A thin line between frustration and progress in obesity care is apparent in the reaction to a new analysis of obesity care patterns published this week by MedScape. On one hand, you can see that even in patients with clear medical needs, 35% of primary care physicians say that they never prescribe obesity medications. Sam […]

Salami-Slicing in Obesity Research

March 30, 2016 — Four new publications in Obesity tackle salami-slicing and other issues of scientific integrity in obesity research with stunning clarity. John Ioannidis provides an overview of the issues in a commentary and calls out the increasingly common practice of salami-slicing data from both observational and randomized trials of nutrition and obesity. Some observational datasets have been mined for hundreds […]

Sneaky Bias in the Realm of Obesity

March 29, 2016 — Sneaky bias has an annoyingly persistent way of creeping into obesity research. A case in point appears in Mayo Clinic Proceedings in a study that we reported last week. Though we mocked the proposition that only 3% of Americans have a healthy lifestyle, we did not call out the flaw in the study that led to this […]

Britain’s Soda Tax: Potent Symbolism?

March 28, 2016 — Will Britain’s soda tax turn out to be potent symbolism or just another leaky sandbag on the anti-obesity levee? We are well past the point of changing anyone’s mind on this polarized issue. It’s become an article of faith for some — they’ve discarded any doubts it will work. For others, it’s evidence for the […]

The Athleisure Bandwagon

March 27, 2016 — While talk about health, fitness, and obesity have not done much to stem the rise in obesity rates, it seems that it has created a buoyant fashion trend: athleisure. Katie Smith at Edited sums up the situation pretty well: Consumers are prioritising health and wellbeing, with the internet aiding the knowledge share. We may not […]

Storks Feasting on Junk Food

March 26, 2016 — It’s an unlikely meet-up. Storks, food security, climate change, and obesity are coming together in the garbage dumps of Spain and Portugal. A new study published in Movement Ecology finds that European white storks are abandoning their usual migration patterns to feast on abundant junk food in landfills of the Iberian peninsula. Nathalie Gilbert and colleagues […]

Fitness Trackers: High Tech Placebos or Coaches?

March 25, 2016 — It’s hard to tell whether fitness trackers will turn out to be high tech placebos or coaches. Everything you read talks about promise and short-term outcomes — along with tech companies jostling for a competitive advantage. It’s pretty clear that physical activity monitoring technology offers plenty of promise and plenty of unfinished business. A research letter published […]

Medicare Inches Toward Better Obesity Care

March 24, 2016 — With much fanfare Wednesday, CMS announced that Medicare will begin paying the YMCA and other providers to deliver lifestyle coaching known as the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) to people at risk for developing diabetes. The program is for people with excess body weight and prediabetes – high blood sugar that has not yet progressed to diabetes. This […]

We’re Toast: 97% Don’t Have Healthy Lifestyles

March 23, 2016 — File it under news you can use: apparently we’re all toast. Well, maybe 3% of us who actually have healthy lifestyles will be OK. But the rest of us can forget it. In a new study published by Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Paul Loprinzi and colleagues found that 97% of Americans cannot meet four simple criteria for […]

Intuitive Eating Sounds Great

March 22, 2016 — Intuitive eating is a concept that sounds great. It has enthusiastic fans. And a new study published in Obesity finds that people who score high on a scale of intuitive eating were less likely to have excess weight or obesity. Géraldine Camilleri and her colleagues conclude: Although no causality can be inferred from the reported associations, […]