Archive for October, 2018

Weight Bias and Stigma Have Power to Unite and Divide

October 11, 2018 — Weight bias and stigma hold power over us. It can poison just about everything we might do about obesity. And yet today, it unites us. As we observe National Obesity Care Week, our focus today is squarely upon weight bias. Two Ways to Express Bias Two distinct types of bias work against us. First and […]

Traveling for Bariatric Surgery – Why?

October 10, 2018 — In 2017, about 1.4 million Americans left the U.S. to obtain medical care. And that number will grow by double digits this year. The reasons are many, but mostly it comes down to money. And a significant number of people are traveling for bariatric surgery. A Shameful History of Discrimination Health plans have long history […]

More Options & Better Outcomes for Obesity Medicine?

October 9, 2018 — Tuesday is obesity medicine day for National Obesity Care Week. And it just so happens that we have two new studies on the subject in the Lancet. They point to a trend. Day by day, we see evidence of more options and better outcomes for medical obesity care. A New Dual-Receptor Agonist Juan Frias and […]

Dieting Doesn’t Work. So Who Cares What You Eat?

October 8, 2018 — Diet is a four letter word. People who hate the word like to point out that it starts with die. So it is that more or less everyone agrees dieting does not work for the long term. But this is where the confusion starts. Because sustainable changes to long-term patterns of diet can make a […]

Suddenly Taking the Disease of Addiction Seriously

October 7, 2018 — Just a few years ago, the debate was still going strong. “This is not a disease. People have the capacity to take control of their lives. It’s a disorder of choice.” Sound familiar? In 2010, Harvard’s Gene Heyman made these arguments against dealing with addiction as a disease in a popular book from the Harvard […]

Nature, Nurture, and Willpower in Obesity

October 6, 2018 — The eternal debate grinds on. What determines our destiny more? Nature or nurture? And where does that leave the important matter of free will? When the subject is obesity, this debate is especially contentious. The most common – but incorrect – understanding of obesity holds that it is a failure of willpower. Nature and nurture take a […]

Registering a Grievance About Grievance Studies

October 5, 2018 — Who are they to judge? Overcoming anthropometry through fat bodybuilding. The journal Fat Studies published and has now retracted that hoax study. But this was not a one-off hoax. It was part of a series, concocted to make a point. Academic grievance studies are corrupting scholarship, say Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay, and Peter Boghossian. Harvard lecturer Yascha Mounk […]

Which Matters Most: Calories, Carbs, or Consumption Patterns?

October 4, 2018 — It’s a familiar debate. Is energy balance governed by physiology, thermodynamics, and calories? Or does dietary quality – perhaps an excess of refined carbs – tell you more? It’s possible that this tired debate is missing an important point. Recent research suggests that consumption patterns might be at least equally important. When you eat and […]

Thinking Through the Ethics of Meat

October 3, 2018 — The fairy tale farm evokes images of pigs rolling in muddy pig pens, cows grazing in green pastures, and hens happily sitting on eggs in wooden hen houses. While this may have been the scene in the 1890s, the reality today is not so pretty. Increasing demand, corporatisation of agriculture, and the expectation of low […]

Quoi?! More Burgers Than Baguettes in France?

October 2, 2018 — France has one of the lowest obesity rates in the world. But it’s growing and the French parliament knows why. Le Big Mac. Burgers outsold baguettes for the first time ever in 2017. Burgers are on the menus in 85 percent of French restaurants. They sold 1.5 billion of them last year. So naturally, when the parliament […]