News Archive for April, 2020

The final straw came from the New York Times. Yesterday, Gretchen Reynolds wrote that she had found the perfect study on fitness for our times. It’s all about sprinkling intense four-second workouts throughout your day – miraculous quarantine fitness. Put it together with articles warning us about the “Quarantine-15” and what do you have? Fuel […]

We have the meats! So says Arby’s in its advertising. Likewise, the U.S. government is stepping up to make sure we can all say this. Last night, President Trump signed an executive order for meat packing plants to stay open during the pandemic. Some have been closing because of rising deaths among workers due to […]

The world is just three months into letting go of an old definition of what is normal. We’ve endured tremendous losses. The loss of life is staggering. It’s so great that we’re having trouble tallying it. It now looks like death statistics from all over the world may be off by 60 percent. Excess deaths […]

What is the line that separates critical thinking from unreasonable doubt? A contrarian can save us from making grievous errors by failing to question false assumptions. But sometimes a contrarian view and insistent bias are nearly impossible to distinguish. COVID-19 is offering us many such examples. One of them comes at intersection of COVID-19 with […]

When reality is filled with pesky problems, people need an escape. With a new paper in Pediatric Obesity Rossana Torres‐Álvarez et al offer us such an escape. They describe a model for the effectiveness of beverage taxes to reduce childhood obesity in Mexico. Based on assumptions that these taxes will work, they built their model. […]

It’s startling to see a medical journal and a major university promote magical thinking. But there it is. A press release from Oregon State University offers this headline: Dietary Supplements an Important Weapon for Fighting Off COVID-19 We’ve said it before. Beware of such poppycock. Using a Marginal Journal to Promote Nonsense This particular example […]

Through her Nourished Child podcast, Jill Castle brings whole-child nutrition insights to families all over the world. U.S. News recently named The Nourished Child as one of the top ten podcasts for nutrition – the only one on its list for childhood nutrition. The latest edition of her podcast features an interview with ConscienHealth founder […]

The pleasure of food is an important part of what drives us to eat and thus maintain our health. Much of that pleasure comes from food’s flavor, and our sense of smell is crucial for experiencing flavor. But it turns out that one of the early signs of infection with the new coronavirus is the […]

“I was never involved in a model. At least this kind of a model,” said our President at a recent press briefing. But now it seems that all of us are getting a crash course in modeling and model assumptions for making health policy. Perhaps we will learn to think more critically about the output […]

People are getting the message – #StayHome. But unfortunately hashtag communication is a blunt instrument. This message is having an unintended effect in the form of extreme healthcare avoidance. People are not seeking care, even in emergencies. And thus we see a huge potential for lost lives. Strokes, Heart Attacks, and Appendicitis So far, the […]