December 21, 2019 — The future is in the toilet. Fitbits are passé. Smart watches have hit their peak. But real health tech innovation is coming to your toilet. Are you ready? Toilet Bowl Metabolomics This is no joke. In NPJ Digital Medicine, Ian Miller and colleagues describe the technology to bring metabolomics to your toilet. They propose a […]
December 20, 2019 — One and done is a lovely turn of phrase. It’s also one of those sweet little lies about dealing with obesity. “You can lose the weight and keep it off for good.” That’s the seductive promise of a currently trendy weight loss app. It’s also implicit in the false positioning of bariatric surgery as a […]
December 19, 2019 — Just in time for the holidays, the New England Journal of Medicine has a hot news flash for us. Obesity is rising. Soon – by the end of the coming decade – the prevalence will be 50 percent in the U.S. Moreover, severe obesity will have risen to affect 25 percent of the U.S. population. […]
December 18, 2019 — Apparently, “excellence” in scientific research is a male thing. So, too, is novelty. And let’s not forget uniqueness or promise either. A new study published in the BMJ tells us that male authors are much more likely to use these superlatives in the research papers they author. Female authors, not so much. “Supportive” was the […]
December 17, 2019 — All right. Who broke the global food supply? With a press event and seven new articles in Lancet yesterday, the World Health Organization put a spotlight on the double burden of malnutrition. Yes, it’s true. More than one in three low and middle-income countries now face health threats from both undernutrition and obesity. Babies and […]
December 16, 2019 — So far this year, about 130,000 of you have read our posts. It boggles our mind. But of course, nobody reads all of the daily posts we offer up. So as this year closes out, we think it makes sense to take stock of the stories that most commanded your attention this year. Thus we […]
December 15, 2019 — Why is it so hard to get simple, unbiased information about nutrition and health? A story this week in the Washington Post should give you a clue. It’s all about eggs and the bias that people bring to the subject. When it comes to what we should eat, it seems that everyone has an ax […]
December 14, 2019 — We simply have to say this is cool. We say this because folks from the Treasury Department and Stanford have published the first experimental evidence that health insurance prevents premature deaths. In fact, by following the causal chain, we can say that an IRS letter can save lives. Who knew that the IRS was conducting […]
December 13, 2019 — Food labeling is quite an attractive tool for preventing obesity. Let’s help people make good, informed choices! That’s the commendable thinking behind this approach. This week, a special variant on food labeling is getting a lot of attention in the media. It’s called PACE – physical activity calorie equivalent – labeling. England’s Royal Society of […]
December 12, 2019 — Correlations can be fun. For example, from Tyler Vigen, we can learn that the divorce rate in Maine correlates beautifully with per capita margarine consumption. In a more serious analysis this week, we learned that thick brains in children might correlate with thin bodies. But what does this mean? If you read closely, the answer […]
