September 10, 2020 — Back in February we complained about “a near complete failure of transparency in drug safety decision making” by FDA. Our complaint had to do with taking lorcaserin (Belviq) off the market. Today, FDA took a step toward a bit more transparency. In the New England Journal of Medicine, senior FDA officials explained their thinking about […]
September 9, 2020 — Eight years of change packed into one month. COVID-19 has changed food shopping. All of a sudden, everything about the ways we hunt and gather our meals is different. For one thing, we’re making fewer trips and more clicks. But we’re buying more and buying in new ways. Professor Anna Nagurney tells the New York […]
September 8, 2020 — When you read news feeds about obesity day after day, one thread is unmistakable. It’s a problem. A huge problem. The cost runs into trillions of dollars in the U.S. It’s making whole countries more vulnerable to COVID-19. Stories about this big, bad, terrible problem never end. But solutions are not getting so much play. […]
September 7, 2020 — A new review in JAMA is unequivocal. The choice to have bariatric surgery is something that every patient with severe obesity should be considering: All patients with severe obesity – and especially those with type 2 diabetes – should be engaged in a shared decision-making conversation about the risks and benefits of surgery compared with […]
September 6, 2020 — Are we anxious? Judging by a huge leap in people filling prescriptions for anti-anxiety meds, the answer is clearly yes. Before COVID-19 was on our minds, those prescriptions were growing by a by a few percentage points, year over year. Once COVID-19 grabbed our attention, they jumped by 34 percent right away. Likewise, Rxs for […]
September 5, 2020 — ECOICO 2020 is now one more milestone in our COVID diary of virtual meetings. It has been a week that quickly became a blur of many new findings and insights from diverse cultures around the world all grappling with the wicked problem of obesity. But one of the most memorable is an analysis of health […]
September 4, 2020 — A powerful new study in the New England Journal of Medicine tell us it’s possible. Health coaches can deliver effective obesity care in mostly Black and underserved populations. In this randomized study, patients achieved and maintained a healthier weight status after two years. But without the intervention of health coaches, the control group did not. […]
September 3, 2020 — The government has recently announced a strategy aimed at reducing obesity in the UK. It will introduce a ban on unhealthy food advertisements on TV before a certain hour, end “buy one, get one free” junk food deals, and create more comprehensive calorie contents on food and drinks. The government has also launched the Better […]
September 2, 2020 — At ECOICO 2020 today, we’re releasing new research on weight bias. Specifically, we surveyed adults in the U.S. and U.K. about their beliefs regarding obesity and the people who have it. We looked for indications that these beliefs might have changed between 2017 and 2020. In fact, we did find some indications of progress toward […]
September 1, 2020 — The opening of ECOICO 2020 today brought us a sharp focus on two pandemics – obesity and COVID-19 – unfolding around the world. But these two pandemics are moving on very different timelines. The global pandemic of obesity has developed very gradually. First, and most notably, it took root in the U.S. Now after four […]
