February 21, 2019 — The Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend we eat 30g of nuts – a small handful – each day. But many of us know nuts are high in calories and fat. So should we be eating nuts or will they make us gain weight? In short, the answer is yes, we should eat them. And no, they […]
February 20, 2019 — Objectivity is tedious. When survival is at stake, snap decisions can confer an advantage. Friend or foe? Fight or flee? We might not have time to collect and analyze data. And thus, humans brains are wired with shortcuts for making instant judgments. But those shortcuts come at a cost when we live in a modern […]
February 18, 2019 — How many times have we documented a correlation between diet sodas and cardiovascular disease? Who cares, say the editors of Stroke. Apparently, the click bait is irresistable. Thus, we have the upteenth correlation study, unsupported suggestions of causality, and a tidal wave of sensational headlines about diet soda, strokes, heart attacks, and death. We have […]
February 14, 2019 — Last year, the New England Journal of Medicine retracted and then published a revised analysis of the landmark PREDIMED study. With that action, it shook the world of nutrition science. Even now, there’s still a whole lot of shakin going on. What About 267 Secondary Publications? Just last week in the BMJ, Arnav Agarwal and John […]
February 12, 2019 — Will ultra-processed food kill you? Probably not, but two new studies provide some real evidence for caution about this dietary boogeyman. First, a large observational study in France finds a 14 percent higher risk of death in a people who eat more of the stuff. And then, an RCT from NIH shows that ultra-processed foods […]
February 11, 2019 — If there’s one assumption about what’s causing the global pandemic of obesity that is nearly universal, it’s the food supply. Some people describe it cautiously. Others not so much. For instance, the recent Lancet Commission report was pretty blunt. “Ultra-processed foods are a key driving force in the global obesity pandemic,” says the Commission. A Simple […]
February 8, 2019 — Give us our porridge bowl of steel cut oats. It may be “key to living longer,” the BBC tells us. WebMD reports “an abundance of data” to show a link between skipping breakfast and excess weight. But there’s one teensie problem with that assertion – it simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Better Weight Outcomes from […]
January 30, 2019 — We have some surprising days ahead in the war on sugar. We now have a decade of it behind us. So people all over the world are responding. Canada offers us a new snapshot that tells us how it’s going there. If you believe the self reports, sugar in Canada is down. But the picture is […]
January 26, 2019 — The language of cause cause and effect is slippery. That’s what we’ve learned this week from the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. “The Impact of U.S. Free Trade Agreements on Calorie Availability and Obesity: A Natural Experiment in Canada” appeared last May in that journal. This week, the authors of that article explained that “impact” is […]
January 25, 2019 — JAMA grabbed some headlines this week on a popular subject – cutting sugar consumption for kids. Fatty liver disease is a serious problem and the headlines point to a simple solution. “To fight fatty liver, avoid sugary foods and drinks,” said the New York Times. How did researchers prove that? All it took was a randomized […]
