September 19, 2020 — It’s hard to doubt that we’re living in challenging times. If you need evidence, take a look at data on happiness. Since 1972, the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago has been tracking the happiness of Americans. This year, in the midst of a pandemic, we’ve hit an all-time low. In […]
September 15, 2020 — Outrage is a hot commodity these days. Cable news networks are serving up all we can take. Social media amplifies it. Advertisers reward it. And all over the world, it seems that people can’t get enough. The old advertising maxim was that sex sells. But now, outrage is giving sex a run for its money. […]
September 13, 2020 — In nutrition, we encounter a fair amount of dietary dogma. But dogma is not confined to nutrition. Obesity prevention, obesity treatment, and health promotion are all teeming with it. Asking questions and paying attention to inconvenient facts can be most unwelcome. However, if the goal is better health, it’s essential. Both public and individual health […]
September 9, 2020 — Eight years of change packed into one month. COVID-19 has changed food shopping. All of a sudden, everything about the ways we hunt and gather our meals is different. For one thing, we’re making fewer trips and more clicks. But we’re buying more and buying in new ways. Professor Anna Nagurney tells the New York […]
September 2, 2020 — At ECOICO 2020 today, we’re releasing new research on weight bias. Specifically, we surveyed adults in the U.S. and U.K. about their beliefs regarding obesity and the people who have it. We looked for indications that these beliefs might have changed between 2017 and 2020. In fact, we did find some indications of progress toward […]
August 28, 2020 — Are we ready for our Alexa smart speaker to tell us exactly how much body fat we have? Just in case we are, Amazon has some new technology to take us in that direction. It’s called Halo. Now for only $65 (discounted from a list price $99.99) we can get a smart band, an app, […]
August 12, 2020 — Who wants to eat healthy? Roughly nine out of ten of American adults. And at the top of their list for what’s healthy is fiber and whole grains. But somehow, we feel no surprise learning that food labels about healthy whole grains are leaving consumers confused. Because the point of health claims on food labels […]
August 2, 2020 — Football has a few problems. For one thing, there’s the brain injury kerfuffle. But fewer kids are getting hurt now because fewer are playing football. So that’s a plus. But on the negative side of the ledger, we have the strong desire to get back to football this fall crashing into a tiny little virus […]
July 30, 2020 — Obesity? No problem! Obesity? OMG, you better lose weight or COVID will get you! Remember the information age? It’s been canceled. We are living in the misinformation age. And there’s nothing like a pandemic to fuel the market for misinformation. The intersection of obesity risks and COVID-19 risks is adding to it. Two opposite but […]
July 29, 2020 — Presumably, when people choose a career in healthcare, at least one of the motivations is to care for other people. So we might expect that along with caring comes respect in healthcare. But that is not a guarantee, apparently. For some providers, respecting diversity in race, ethnicity, gender, and size seems to be a challenge. […]
