August 24, 2023 — Let’s start with a few simple facts. Obesity causes cancer. Not every kind of cancer, but for at least a dozen types of cancer, obesity can clearly play a causal role. Scientists attribute between four and eight percent of all cancers to obesity. It is also true that, for now, the most effective single treatment […]
July 14, 2023 — The WHO has taken its skill for exquisitely confusing messages on public health to new heights. One of its agencies, the IARC, declared yesterday that aspartame is “possibly carcinogenic.” At the same time, a separate committee of WHO, the JECFA, reaffirmed that it’s no problem if a person consumes up to 40 mg per kg […]
March 25, 2022 — Sweet drinks never cease to activate controversies. For millennia, people have enjoyed them. But that enjoyment has also long sparked a reaction from folks who find fault with enjoying them. So often, people turn to science to justify their beliefs that these sweet beverages are either a good source of refreshment or a hazard to […]
March 29, 2021 — Cancer is one of the risks of obesity that many people do not appreciate. Diabetes and heart disease have links to obesity that many people understand. But cancer as a complication of obesity has not made the charts. Nonetheless, obesity clearly raises the risks of 13 different kinds of cancer. A new study in Gastroenterology […]
July 28, 2019 — We all love to beat up on BMI. That measure may be good for epidemiologists who need a way to define obesity in a population. But it’s not so good for defining obesity in an individual. For that matter, it’s not the definition for obesity itself. Obesity is excess adiposity that harms health. And a […]
