February 18, 2022 — Alcohol can have some seriously bad effects on health and life. So a century ago, zealous advocates worked to ban alcoholic beverages altogether and they briefly succeeded in a number of countries, including the U.S. But the impulses for prohibition faded away because of popular resistance and unintended consequences. Today, the harm that stems from […]
February 17, 2022 — If a patient is Black, health providers are more than twice as likely to put negative words in that patient’s health history. These are descriptors like hysterical, noncompliant, unpleasant, or uncooperative. Those word choices don’t suggest a good relationship with a patient. This conclusion comes from an analysis of records for 18,459 patients, published recently […]
February 16, 2022 — Should we have better signposts in dietary guidelines to help people avoid ultra-processed foods? Or should we lean into processed foods with bio-active ingredients to treat high cholesterol in people who don’t want to take statins? Admittedly, this dichotomy is a bit extreme. But it does illustrate the confusing mix of information coming at us […]
February 15, 2022 — In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a hot mess out there. And the mess is messing with our bodies and our food systems – bringing global problems with obesity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Bill Dietz and Sydney Pryor tell us we need to get comfortable with the concept of syndemics. But for now, let’s just […]
February 14, 2022 — People have both love and loathing for this day, say consumer researchers. Given those mixed feelings, this might be a good time to reflect upon the love, grace, and self-compassion we direct inwardly. In this age of mindfulness, pop psychology tells us that we need self-compassion to function well in a challenging environment. How seriously […]
February 13, 2022 — Are we bored yet? Many signs make it evident that the public attention span for COVID-19 is running short. Governments all over the world are looking to reasons to say that the pandemic has become endemic and we’re moving on. Mask requirements are beginning to fade. Denmark has lifted all of its pandemic restrictions. But […]
February 12, 2022 — To each his own – because truly, one size will never fit all. We can find no better illustration for this than the idea that perfectly healthy people might want to wear a continuous glucose monitors. And yet we have a crop of new tech startups that want to put these glucose monitors on all […]
February 11, 2022 — “Whether you like it or not, processed food is here to stay,” says professor Ciarán Forde. But wait, Barry Popkin writes that we must “reverse the rapid shift to diets dominated by a stage of high ultra-processed food intake” if we want to stem the global tide of non-communicable diseases arising from obesity. The dominant […]
February 10, 2022 — What is it about body weight and obesity that activates so many people in so many different ways? As people weigh the rituals of body weight, the reactions may be very different, but they are often just as intense as they are diverse. In the Washington Post today, Fortesa Latifi writes with intensity about telling […]
February 9, 2022 — There’s a race heating up. It is a race to open the way for better obesity care and deliver better options. In this race, semaglutide (Wegovy™) has a head start. But a pack of other options are on the way. Yesterday in JAMA, results in a study of tirzepatide for treating type 2 diabetes tell […]
