August 4, 2024 — Warning: this is a bit of a rant, albeit a good-natured one. The persistent irritant of implicit ignorance about obesity confronts us in virtually every dialogue we have about obesity. Sometimes it gets to be too much. Specifically, it is the presumption woven into almost every conversation about obesity, that obesity is all about bad […]
May 16, 2023 — For decades, faith that healthy eating and active living would be sufficient to prevent obesity has motivated an impressive array of obesity prevention programs and research. But it has yielded very little in terms of measurable progress for reversing unhealthy trends. In the face of treatment options with dramatic efficacy gains, a crisis of faith […]
February 12, 2023 — Strategies for obesity prevention are in the midst of a great shift in emphasis – from healthy choices to healthy systems. For decades now, public health efforts, in one way or another, have had their roots in promoting better choices. It started with efforts to educate the public to eat in more healthful ways and […]
January 3, 2023 — Every Friday, we get a little bundle of joy in our inbox from the Obesity and Energetics Offerings. It’s a thought-provoking compilation of a week’s worth of new publications related to obesity and biological energy regulation. One feature of it that seldom fails to bring a smile is the Headline vs Study. This week was […]
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 […]
June 21, 2022 — While many researchers are having scholarly debates about their competing models for obesity, they focus primarily upon how food is doing it to us. Is it the excessive supply of hyper-palatable, ultra-processed food? Or is it all about carbs and insulin? But nowhere in these lovely models is there any focus on factors that go […]
February 15, 2022 — In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a hot mess out there. And the mess is messing with our bodies and our food systems – bringing global problems with obesity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Bill Dietz and Sydney Pryor tell us we need to get comfortable with the concept of syndemics. But for now, let’s just […]
June 17, 2021 — It is a vast machine that produces the excess of obesity afflicting public health. Yet over and over again, we see a very narrow vision for reversing it. It’s the high fat foods! No, it’s the sugar! Tax soda! Sugar, salt, and fat in ultra-processed foods make the problem! But following these rallying cries yields […]
October 4, 2020 — The talk about obesity in the UK is drifting away from a full and constructive view. Instead, it has moved toward a more narrow view of personal responsibility. These findings come from a new analysis by Paul Baker and colleagues. Over ten years following the landmark Foresight Report, reporting about obesity in the British press […]
August 16, 2020 — Who knew that Boris Johnson was a secret fan of Michelle Obama? If imitation is sincere flattery, we see some flattery of her in the new Better Health campaign coming from the NHS. Let’s Move! has become Let’s Do This! So the UK is on a crash course of self-directed weight loss, with a little […]
