Archive for June, 2022

Obesity and the Elusive Goal of Diabetes Remission

June 20, 2022 — Seeking remission from type 2 diabetes is an elusive goal for people who are facing this diagnosis. The very human wish is to banish this disease forever, but that’s not what remission really is. In fact, remission means a respite from an illness – not the promise of a cure. Physician Anne Peters describes the […]

Obesity: My Model’s Better Than Your Model

June 19, 2022 — All models are wrong, but some are useful. Quite a distinguished collection of obesity researchers are working hard to prove that these words of a great statistician – George Box – were precisely correct. One group, led by David Ludwig, suggests that their carbohydrate-insulin model (CIM) for obesity “better reflects knowledge on the biology of […]

Looking for “Culprits” in Fast and Take-Out Food

June 18, 2022 — Two new studies in AJCN provide observations on the relationship between health outcomes and fast food, take-out, café, or home-cooked meals. These studies find an association of worse outcomes with fast food and take out. But the real question is, why? What are the causal relationships behind these observations? In an editorial, Barry Popkin suggests […]

Everyone Else Eats a Crummy Diet

June 17, 2022 — Objectively, the healthfulness of our diets is poor. This is true for youth and older adults alike. But more people than ever – 52 percent of U.S. adults – say they are following a healthy diet or eating pattern. Yet, new research from the Nutrition 2022 conference tells us that they vastly overestimate the healthfulness […]

Genes and Dietary Destiny

June 16, 2022 — Genes are not destiny. We tire of people who cling to this one side of the false nature versus nurture dichotomy. They’re stuck on the fallacy of thinking that genetic and environmental influences on health must sum to 100 percent. One or the other must be dominant, they seemingly assume. But the truth is that […]

Can “Ultra-Processed” Tell Us What’s Unhealthy to Eat?

June 15, 2022 — The ASN Nutrition Live 2022 virtual meeting started with a feisty debate yesterday. The architect of the NOVA system for identifying ultra-processed foods – Carlos Monteiro – made the case for his magnum opus. Then, in this debate he faced off with nutrition professor Arne Astrup, who made the case that relying on the NOVA […]

UK Food Policy: Volume First, Not the Planet or Health

June 14, 2022 — Boris Johnson has come to a new view on food, health, and obesity. “The best way to lose weight, believe me, is to eat less,” he said yesterday. And thus, he seems to justify dropping any pretense of interest in addressing obesity. In line with this, his UK government released a new food policy document […]

The Puzzle of Food Insecurity, Diet Quality, and Obesity

June 13, 2022 — Though we hate to say it, we are entering into a time of increased food insecurity. Of course that will bring a toll of death from hunger. It also likely means a further rise will come in non-communicable diseases such as obesity. But why? Why is it that food insecurity has such a link to […]

Whip Obesity Now – Or Maybe Not

June 12, 2022 — Talk is cheap. But history tells us that cheap talk doesn’t solve wicked problems. That’s true whether the problem is the relentlessly rising health harms of obesity or the current hot topic – inflation. The notoriously hollow Whip Inflation Now campaign of Gerald Ford seems like a model for equally ineffective campaigns aspiring to overcome […]

Words That Betray Implicit Bias About Obesity

June 11, 2022 — “This is a cane that’s going to help you walk. But you’re going to have to do the walk yourself.” This is how Dr. Zhaoping Li explains why she prescribes anti-obesity medicines to patients only after lifestyle changes have failed. But words like failure betray an implicit bias about obesity. They contradict the understanding of […]