December 17, 2019 — All right. Who broke the global food supply? With a press event and seven new articles in Lancet yesterday, the World Health Organization put a spotlight on the double burden of malnutrition. Yes, it’s true. More than one in three low and middle-income countries now face health threats from both undernutrition and obesity. Babies and […]
December 16, 2019 — So far this year, about 130,000 of you have read our posts. It boggles our mind. But of course, nobody reads all of the daily posts we offer up. So as this year closes out, we think it makes sense to take stock of the stories that most commanded your attention this year. Thus we […]
December 14, 2019 — We simply have to say this is cool. We say this because folks from the Treasury Department and Stanford have published the first experimental evidence that health insurance prevents premature deaths. In fact, by following the causal chain, we can say that an IRS letter can save lives. Who knew that the IRS was conducting […]
December 13, 2019 — Food labeling is quite an attractive tool for preventing obesity. Let’s help people make good, informed choices! That’s the commendable thinking behind this approach. This week, a special variant on food labeling is getting a lot of attention in the media. It’s called PACE – physical activity calorie equivalent – labeling. England’s Royal Society of […]
December 10, 2019 — Entrenched habits die hard. So it is with treating bariatric surgery as a last resort. In case you had any doubt, a new study in PLOS Medicine provides more reason to rethink this is a false premise for bariatric surgery. Jans Anders and colleagues found that when more time passes between the onset of diabetes […]
December 9, 2019 — We’re just about done with this decade that started in 2010. And if you look back over these ten years, it’s plain to see that we’ve marked some big milestones in obesity and health. Here are ten that stand out. No doubt, others will seem big to you. So please, use the comment function below […]
December 5, 2019 — Just in time for Christmas, the Trump administration has new rules for food assistance. They’ll tighten work requirements for single adults getting food stamps. The effect? Most likely, says USDA, they’ll be cutting SNAP benefits for 688,000 adults. According to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, however, this is not about cutting benefits. Rather, it’s about promoting […]
December 3, 2019 — How do people with obesity – or any other health condition – become stigmatized? It turns out that words are very important for weight stigma. In Communication Theory, Professor Rachel Smith offers us powerful insight with a classic paper. Four elements are critical. Thus, we should be careful about letting those elements creep into the […]
December 2, 2019 — We have a chronic disease problem. It started in America. It’s spreading all around the world. And already in the U.S. it’s playing a major role in reversing long-term gains in life expectancy. Yet, the response has been tepid, says William Dietz with two commentaries published in the last month. Dietz is Director of the […]
November 30, 2019 — Human history is full of bloody conflicts to claim moral high ground. The Thirty Years’ War pitted the Holy Roman Empire against Protestant states. But we can find nothing holy in the carnage that resulted. Now we wage our wars on twitter. And true believers go at it to claim the moral high ground of […]
