October 11, 2021 — As rationalizations go, imagining huge health benefits from eating more plant-based diets is not terrible. Trisha Pasricha writes in the Washington Post that pneumonia, diverticulitis, diabetes, and cancers are linked to regularly eating meat. She even points to a study of COVID and plant-based diets to illustrate how beneficial such diets might be: “In a […]
October 10, 2021 — The numbers make it crystal clear. One of the long-term effects of the COVID pandemic will be a jump in child obesity. And it’s not hard to trace that back to the mental health of children and families. Late last week a new report in Pediatrics provided a stark reminder about the impact of COVID […]
October 9, 2021 — Reporting on non-caloric sweeteners has more in common with reporting on religion than science reporting. We see a constant churn of reporting about studies by people who are looking for evidence to support a belief that sweeteners must be bad for you. The latest headline from NPR on this subject tells us these sweeteners “may […]
October 8, 2021 — With great gifts come great responsibilities. It doesn’t really matter whether you get this message from biblical sources or Spiderman. The imperative is there. If you have a big platform, you better use it to serve a purpose bigger than yourself. It looks like Queen Latifah and Novo Nordisk might be using their platforms to […]
October 7, 2021 — Well-controlled data for surgical procedures is hard to come by. This is especially true for bariatric surgery, where strong feelings come into play and thus, people aren’t willing to accept random assignments to a surgical procedure. So a new study in JAMA Surgery that gives us clarity about the safety of gastric sleeve operations is […]
October 6, 2021 — Understanding the chronic disease of obesity is growing clearer. As this understanding grows, we’re seeing the tie between obesity and type 2 diabetes grow closer. Of course, the overlap of these two diseases is not 100 percent, but it is considerable. Two notable papers this week serve to illustrate. One explains more fully how fat […]
October 5, 2021 — Bariatric surgery is a relatively safe surgical procedure. Overall, people with obesity who undergo bariatric surgery tend to live longer than those who don’t. Nonetheless, just as with any surgery, complications can occur. Recent data from the MBSAQIP database document a 30-day mortality rate between one and two deaths per thousand patients. New data, presented […]
October 4, 2021 — My great grandmother would be flabbergasted if she could see what I had for dinner last night. She was born in Maine, ate cod fish cakes, baked beans, meat, and potatoes. Mexican food (like the enchilada below) was as foreign to her as salt cod is to me. Moreover my great great grandmother might actually […]
October 3, 2021 — “Child abuse.” When we wrote earlier this week about new data on bariatric surgery in children with severe obesity, that was one visceral response. Ten years ago, Lindsey Murtagh and David Ludwig trotted out the child abuse label with precisely opposite reasoning. They suggested that parents of children with obesity might be guilty of abuse […]
October 2, 2021 — Healthy eating patterns improve health. Right? So when a new study in Clinical Pediatrics tells us that kids with obesity who follow any of three healthy eating patterns will improve their cardiovascular health, should we believe it? Unfortunately not. Because in fact, the statistical significance of their findings about healthy eating reflects an error. Not […]
