August 20, 2021 — Between 2011 and 2019, the rate of gestational diabetes rose from 48 to 64 cases per 1,000. The rate rose across all racial and ethnic subgroups. But the risk is highest for Asian Indian individuals – twice the risk in the non-Hispanic White population. These data, published in JAMA this week, raise a note of […]
August 19, 2021 — It’s hard to deny that yoga has put an imprint on popular culture – especially popular concepts about fitness and wellbeing. It had an outsized role in defining a now dominant fashion trend – athleisure. Prior to the pandemic, yoga was a roughly ten billion dollar industry. But of course, the pandemic put a dent […]
August 18, 2021 — The lived experience of obesity has many dimensions, but one of the most troubling is being invisible. Melanie Bahlke, a remarkable patient advocate from Frankfurt, Germany, explains it beautifully: “I am used to being talked about more than having people talk to me. For everyone I am something different and I am rarely what I […]
August 17, 2021 — Nothing rankles quite so much as exploiting kids living with obesity for raw political purposes. Right now, a conservative group is using images of kids with obesity in a campaign against companies that speak out on voting rights. In this case, they are targeting Coca-Cola with political attack ads, calling the company Woka-Cola. But to […]
August 16, 2021 — A century ago, the iconic image of hunger was the bread line. Today, it is the line at a food bank, swamped by demand because of the pandemic. And for more than a decade now, the SNAP program has been inadequate for providing healthy nutrition to families facing food insecurity. But today, that will change. […]
August 15, 2021 — Angry nonsense in denial of factual reality seems to be a growing presence. A school board facing difficult decisions to keep children safe in the new school year faces angry threats from people who want to get their way. “We will find you,” say people who are in a frenzy, thinking that wearing a mask […]
August 14, 2021 — A new study in JAMA this week tells us that American youth get two thirds of their calories from ultra-processed foods. Is the response to this moral panic? Or does this observation document a serious threat to public health? It is easy to find responses on both ends of this spectrum and everything in between. […]
August 13, 2021 — A decade has passed since President Barack Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act into law. In this time of great polarization, any big policy decision can generate controversy and this one is no exception. The purpose was to improve the quality of nutrition provided in school lunch and breakfast program, But some want to […]
August 13, 2021 — An impressive new study published today in Science has researchers feeling a bit giddy. “Blown away” was the sentiment Rozalyn Anderson expressed to the New York Times about the study. “A pivotal paper,” said Leanne Redman, adding that it will shape textbooks for years to come. Herman Pontzer and a remarkable array of collaborators analyzed […]
August 12, 2021 — Who would have guessed that makeup might contribute to making us fat? A new report in Environmental Science and Technology Letters gives us pause. The authors find that chemicals known as PFAS are present in more than half of a sample of 231 cosmetics they tested. PFAS is short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They’ve […]
