September 30, 2022 — With the benefit of a few days to reflect, we can find value in the big White House Conference on Nutrition, Hunger, and Health. Admittedly, it was nice to see obesity clearly identified as one of the diseases – just like hypertension and diabetes – that can result from poor nutrition. But this was never […]
September 29, 2022 — What constitutes “healthy” for a packaged food? FDA, prompted by wrangling seven years ago, is out today with a new definition that everyone can fight about. Who cares? Well, just about everyone has an opinion. But the real passion for this subject comes from people who want to sell you more units of their food, […]
September 28, 2022 — The news is full of sound bites about obesity today. The White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health is front and center. And the 44-page report that will guide today’s meeting has plenty of good stuff in it. Most notably, it reflects a better, albeit only partial, understanding that obesity is a complex chronic […]
September 27, 2022 — We’re not quite done with COVID-19 – roughly 400 people are still dying daily from it in the U.S. But some of our leaders are saying the pandemic is over. Well, we’ll leave that debate to the poli-med pundits. However it’s worth noting that it looks like we’re not on track to go back to […]
September 26, 2022 — Something is up with our food supply that’s helping to drive the ever-rising prevalence of obesity. But the precise nature of the problem with the food supply is open for debate. People have many strong opinions. We’re too dependent on factory-farmed meat, say some people. Others are pushing for a food supply that promotes more […]
September 25, 2022 — An impressive amount of thought and effort goes into messaging about health. Honorable people work diligently to move the population toward healthier lives. They craft messages for leading people to stop smoking, get their vaccinations, eat healthy, stay active and fit. The creativity and strategic skill are impressive. But one dimension of effective and sustainable […]
September 24, 2022 — “There is more to obesity than meets the eye,” write James René Jolin and Fatima Cody Stanford in the Postgraduate Medical Journal. But too often, visible behaviors and appearances guide our responses to this disease. So we end up wondering why the result of earnest efforts to reduce it in both individuals and the population […]
September 23, 2022 — Two recent studies make it clear that a brighter view is emerging for obesity surgery in teens. First, in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, Nestor de la Cruz-Muñoz and colleagues document good outcomes from bariatric surgery for adolescents over more than a decade. Second, Fereshteh Salimi-Jazi and colleagues provide a 15-year analysis […]
September 22, 2022 — Problems are messy, so to solve them, humans quite naturally move to make them tidy. We sort them, label them, and get to work on resolving them. But news this week reminds us that health issues often resist our efforts to sort them out and find tidy solutions. The USPSTF this week published a draft […]
September 21, 2022 — According to Anahad O’Connor in the Washington Post, your microbiome can do amazing things for you. “These vast communities of microbes are the gateway to your health and well-being – and one of the simplest and most powerful ways to shape and nurture them is through your diet.” Because research sez so. So maybe feeding […]
