January 29, 2023 — Reading about the heated and not terribly well-reasoned arguments people are having about obesity prompts a sad conclusion. A history of ineffective and, at times, harmful anti-obesity campaigns may have poisoned the well of public sentiment about obesity. People have such strong feelings that facts and reason become irrelevant. Aggrieved Advocates for People with Eating […]
July 27, 2022 — It’s a lot. Writing for USA Today, Karen Weintraub has produced a deep dive into diverse thinking about the complexity of obesity. If you thought USA Today was a place for McNuggets* of superficial reporting, think again. In six parts, with more than 18,000 words, Weintraub has done quite well in painting a picture of […]
July 11, 2022 — It seems like an endless struggle. On one hand we face strident voices from some corners of public health who want to catastrophize obesity. These are the voices of moral panic. But on the other hand, we have to contend with voices who seemingly deny that obesity is a health problem. That the only problems […]
May 10, 2022 — Cancer is not just exuberant cell growth. Nor is depression simply a matter of feeling sad. Likewise obesity is not a simple matter of living in a larger body. But cancer, depression, and obesity are medical words that can be daunting and also misused. And each of them can bring stigma to complicate any efforts […]
February 6, 2022 — Is trauma losing its meaning? It seems that accounts of trauma are filling the news. Death and suffering in more than two years of a global pandemic has certainly been traumatic. So too is the toll of gun violence. With the return to more normal school operations, school shootings are once again popping up in […]
March 4, 2021 — Today is World Obesity Day and this day of global attention presents a basic question. Are we all about the problem? Or in the spirit of OCW2021, can we turn up the volume on solutions? Preferably solutions that are actually helpful. Because frankly, the world’s attention span is short. For too long, the world has […]
