April 8, 2019 — Many folks working on childhood obesity prevention love the numbers for toddlers between 2010 and 2014. That’s because they found a temporary dip in obesity at that specific time for that specific group. The latest chapter in this story appeared in Pediatrics last week. Madeleine Daepp and colleagues published a very detailed analysis of obesity […]
April 7, 2019 — Is it mere coincidence that the rise of digital screen time has moved in parallel with the rise in obesity? A new paper points to a possible explanation. Researchers studied the effects of multitasking on digital screens by college students. They found a close relationship between heavy multitasking and and a stronger brain response to […]
April 2, 2019 — The Partnership for a Healthier American (PHA) came from a desire by First Lady Michelle Obama to do something about the ever rising levels of childhood obesity. It was the private complement to her Let’s Move! campaign. But here’s the thing. The word obesity was absent from the vocabulary of PHA. It’s been all about […]
March 27, 2019 — Victory is right around the corner. It’s not easy, but the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Heart Association (AHA) have finally figured out how to win the war on childhood obesity. They’ve published a joint position paper that calls for taxing sugar-sweetened beverages and curbing advertising for such products. Benjamin Winig of […]
March 12, 2019 — Crisis. It’s a time of intense difficulty. Or it’s a time when a difficult, important decision must be made. And finally, it can be a turning point toward either failure or recovery. For decades now, all the talk about childhood obesity has been about crisis. That crisis talk is spreading around the world as childhood […]
March 11, 2019 — An old and reliable bit of clickbait has just surfaced from a rather obscure journal. In SSM – Population Health, Emla Fitzsimons and Benedetta Pongiglione claim to have “causal evidence” that a mother’s employment effects a child’s BMI. Naturally, British headline writers went nuts. So now we have another round of the obesity blame game […]
February 16, 2019 — As the prevalence of obesity has grown, so has our fixation on programmed physical activity. If you’ve got the money and the time, odds are your kids are participating in youth sports. But are organized sports enough to ensure childhood fitness? A Study in Homeschooled Youth A new study of homeschooled youth suggests that organized […]
November 28, 2018 — It sounds pretty easy. A pediatrics professor at the University of Gothenburg says primary care can do a fine job treating childhood obesity. In a press release to promote his new publication, Staffan Mårild says: There’s an attitude that obesity is so terribly difficult to get rid of that you have to send the child to […]
November 24, 2018 — “Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game.” Thus wrote Karl Popper in 1934. But these lofty words don’t protect us from the hazard of confirmation bias. It really hurts when a big, expensive trial does not confirm an important […]
November 17, 2018 — It’s all over, but the music is still playing. ObesityWeek 2018 came to a close and people dodged snow and plane delays to return home on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. So we’ll leave you with a few arbitrary thoughts about some of the highlights. 1. Blackburn Symposium It was the latest installment in the seemingly endless […]
