March 11, 2022 — Though people may pretend otherwise, aging is a great equalizer. Hubris finds humility as age encroaches on presumptions of invincibility. So with varying degrees of success, we chase the goal of healthy aging. But over the last three decades, obesity has become a major stumbling block to healthy aging, for two reasons. First, the prevalence […]
March 10, 2022 — In the realm of health halos, almonds shine brightly. Meanwhile, French fries are at the other end of the scale – lumped with iconic junk food. But the good food versus bad food paradigm has some serious limitations. A new RCT comparing the health outcomes from consuming almonds or fries illustrates this quite well. Researchers […]
March 9, 2022 — The stupid, senseless war in Ukraine is causing massive suffering. For anyone who is paying attention, that much is perfectly clear. Stepping back from the dire, immediate humanitarian crisis, economists are fretting about the shocks coming from oil prices. But the shock to the global food supply will also be huge. Food security will almost […]
March 8, 2022 — From the perspective of public health, we have a tremendous burden of obesity – and it’s growing all over the world. Decades of work to bend the curve of rising prevalence has had no discernable effect. Large and persistent disparities in diet quality mirror disparities in obesity prevalence. We might be good at nudging the […]
March 7, 2022 — A glass of wine is a fine complement to a good meal, but could it also be a tool for preventing type 2 diabetes? A sampling of recent headlines prompted by the American Heart Association might certainly lead you to think so. Like this one from Martha Stewart Living: Science Says Drinking a Glass of […]
March 6, 2022 — The law of the instrument suggests that the tool at hand when a problem presents itself seems like the right one to use. When all we have is a hammer, everything looks a bit more like a nail. So we pound it. And in the healthy living industry (aka wellness) we have quite a hammer. […]
March 5, 2022 — As we come to the end of OCW2022, we come to face a basic question: why does it matter? Why do we care about obesity care? The answer is quite simple, really. Science tells us that obesity is a complex, chronic condition driven by our physiology. Yet our culture and even our healthcare systems do […]
March 4, 2022 — For OCW2022 today, the focus is equity in obesity care – specifically for people who rely upon Medicare. Right now, for these people, Medicare has a huge gap in coverage. At one end of the spectrum, it does a fair job of covering bariatric surgery. At the other end of the spectrum, it’s doing a […]
March 3, 2022 — For decades now, lots of talk about preventing obesity has been easy to find in public health circles. For the most part, that talk has focused on educating, urging, nudging, or taxing people to adopt healthy eating and active living as a pattern for their lives. But despite all that talk, the prevalence and the […]
March 2, 2022 — For OCW2022 today, Rebecca Puhl and Ted Kyle take on a tough question: can we put an end to weight bias? In answer to that question, there’s both good news and bad news, highlighted in a new video release today. First the Good News Without a doubt, awareness of weight bias has grown over the […]
