News Archive for September, 2020

Somehow we find ourselves now in a puzzling situation with bariatric surgery. On one hand, we have Jane Brody, an icon of healthy nutrition for a healthy weight, telling us that bariatric surgery is underutilized. On the other, we’re hearing that demand for bariatric surgery is robust – despite or perhaps because of COVID-19. So […]

The headlines paint a stark picture. Time-Restricted Eating Doesn’t Work for Weight Loss says the UCSF news story. Based solely on the the conclusions of this one study, we should get over it. Time-restricted eating offers no advantages for weight loss. This new, well-controlled study in JAMA Internal Medicine says so. Suddenly the benefits of […]

The CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, is offering up wisdom for the world on obesity in the New York Times. The whole world is getting fat, he says. But according to him, it’s definitely not a problem of access to healthful foods: “People have got to become wiser about their food choices. And if […]

Preliminary results from a fascinating study has us wondering. How often is it that Twitter makes research noteworthy? Ricardo Ladeiras-Lopes and colleagues randomized 534 research papers in journals of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) to receive promotion on Twitter or not. In this analysis, Twitter produced a 43 percent bump in citations for articles […]

The coronavirus pandemic has brought many surprising developments. Who knew that face masks could become a weird type of political brand? But even odder is the intersection of wellness, conspiracy theories, and new age spirituality – or conspirituality. You thought QAnon was a alt-right thing? Well, it’s time to catch up with current events. QAnon […]

We are in a season where identity is right out front. Everywhere you turn, people are declaring what they stand for and who they’ll vote for. We see banners, little garden flags, even a pickup-sized flag tacked on to a bike by a scrappy old man pedaling furiously down the street. We humans seem driven […]

Lots of words are swirling about obesity and COVID-19. Some are helpful. Like this new PSA from the Creative Coalition. That’s a nonprofit advocacy group promoting arts and education. The group wants you to know: COVID-19 is a real problem for people living with obesity. But if that’s you, you’re not alone. You can act […]

Fall has arrived and that means we have a new State of Obesity Report from the Trust for America’s Health. The report offers a good inventory of the available data to describe the extent of the challenge we face from obesity. And perhaps more than anything, we agree with this assessment up front in the […]

The scientific literature on childhood obesity is a bit dodgy in places. Lots of well-meaning people do studies to prove a point rather than discover hard truths. Obesity evokes emotion and stigma, especially for children. Because stigma is in play, scientific rigor can take second place. In scientific journals, papers about childhood obesity can appear […]

The pandemic has left some businesses hurting while giving others a boost. For example, restaurants are hurting, but the business of selling alcohol is having a boom time. People are drinking up during this pandemic. Sooner or later, though, we’ll have to pay the tab. And the real cost may be to our health, warns […]