July 24, 2021 — America has some of the cheapest food in the world. Out of pocket, we spend less for food than people in any other country in the world. Food beckons us to eat everywhere we turn. But the actual cost of cheap food can be quite high. A new report from the Rockefeller Foundation tells us […]
July 23, 2021 — The UK has a proposal for a new national food strategy, but it seems to be sailing in some very choppy waters. The most noted feature of this plan is its proposal to tax the sugar and salt that goes into processed, restaurant, and catered food to help overcome obesity. In addition, there’s a proposal […]
July 18, 2021 — What is the meaning of this? Two trends in food are on a collision course. On one hand, faith is strong in the idea that minimally processed and whole natural foods are best. But at the same time, food substitutes are rising like rockets. Sales are soaring for meatless meat. Milkless milk is a 2.2 […]
July 13, 2021 — Weight stigma is a global problem. The World Obesity Federation gets high marks for launching a global working group to develop a common understanding of this problem across diverse cultures around the world. Whenever a person encounters stigma due to size and weight, their health and wellbeing diminishes. But context matters. In some cultures, thinness […]
July 11, 2021 — We depend upon food for both life and pleasure. But that dependence can go awry in many different ways. One way is captured by the popular concept of food addiction. Though it is controversial, some consensus holds that addictive eating behaviors are very real. People who are living with this problem will tell you just […]
July 7, 2021 — The best thing to demonize is sugar-sweetened beverages, says Harvard’s Mary Bassett. She pointed this out at the Roundtable on Obesity Solutions last month. Thus, yet another paper from Harvard about yet another danger of drinking something sweet is no surprise. This time, it’s about a link between SSBs and colon cancer. In fact, to […]
July 5, 2021 — “Eating chocolate for breakfast can supercharge your weight loss!” This headline and many more came from a new paper in the FASEB Journal. In fact, Altmetric tells us this paper has so far generated 113 stories from 93 news outlets. In less than two weeks since publication, it has grabbed attention that puts it in […]
June 27, 2021 — “I had a student this year when I was trying to explain the disincentive effects of unemployment insurance – and I was being a good economist and explaining moral hazard, and how this is going to discourage people from working. Student raised his hand and said, is it really moral to use the threat of […]
June 25, 2021 — In the realm of obesity and public health, the role of sugar-sweetened drinks in obesity is an article of faith. Questioning it will get you a tongue-lashing at best, but more likely, shunned. Likewise, the cool kids in public health expect you to agree that SSB taxes work. Yet again, we have a new study […]
June 18, 2021 — What happens when a careful consideration of science collides with strong sentiment in 38,368 dietary guideline comments? The short answer is public policy. Without a doubt, it’s messy. Simply wading through all those comments is a huge task. A new paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition tries to make sense of them, using […]
