Follow the accumulating evidence and observations that shape our view of health policy and obesity
September 24, 2021 — Julia Child may have had it right. Way back in 1990, she had serious questions about dietary guidance to avoid saturated fat. At a food event in 1990, she described the response to her renowned cooking: “I hear them saying, ‘Here comes Julia, with all the cream and butter.’ “Everybody is overreacting. If fear of […]
September 23, 2021 — It’s amazing how strong the biases about dairy foods can be. In the process of developing the 2020 dietary guidelines, it came up over and over again. Negative sentiment about dairy was one of the top themes in public comments. One bias is a visceral disdain for dairy foods in any form. Some people cannot […]
September 22, 2021 — We have an opportunity before us, say Thiago Gagliano-Jucá and Caroline Apovian. They are writing in Annals of Internal Medicine to reflect on the implications of words we use in healthcare. Specifically, they are talking about the words providers attach to obesity – words like morbid. These are words that leave patients feeling judged. Such […]
September 21, 2021 — To say that our culture obsesses about weight and body image is possibly an understatement. Athleisure togs serve to emphasize it. People dress to look like they’re going for a run, to the gym, or a yoga class. And yet, this obsession divides us. Two new publications today offer a sharp contrast on this subject. […]
September 20, 2021 — The concept of food addiction holds strong sway in popular culture. You can find tips for overcoming it. WebMD will tell you how to diagnose and treat it. Psychiatrist Anna Lembke has a book to sell you. In Dopamine Nation, she describes the source of addictive behaviors linked to food, phones, and sex. It was […]
September 19, 2021 — The Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) is out with its annual report on obesity. The headline? It’s bad and getting worse. But any mention of the lived experience for real persons with obesity is absent. Empathy doesn’t fit with a strategy focused on catastrophizing the problem of too many people living with obesity. The implicit […]
September 18, 2021 — In our weight-obsessed culture, the talk about weight gain during the pandemic has been incessant. So the presumption is that obesity has risen in the pandemic. But the data to tell us if this is true is slow to emerge. And like everything else about this pandemic, it’s very likely that the effects have been […]
September 17, 2021 — For some time, it’s been clear to mental health professionals that social media could be a problem for teens. Facebook, which owns Instagram, has long minimized the issue. But reporting this week from the Wall Street Journal tells suggests that Facebook knows from its own research that Instagram promotes self-stigma for teenage girls. Slides from […]
September 16, 2021 — Much energy these days seems to go into navigating between extreme views of important subjects. COVID-19 is a paralyzing threat or nothing to worry about. Vaccines are all we need to keep us safe from the pandemic or they’re lacking in safety and effectiveness. Having obesity will utterly destroy a person’s health, or it’s just […]
September 15, 2021 — New data on poverty came out this week and oddly enough, the news was pretty good. Though many aspects of 2020 were really stinky, this data on poverty is pretty sweet. In fact, after accounting for government relief payments, the U.S. poverty rate fell to its lowest rate ever – 9.1 percent. This good news […]
