September 30, 2023 — We hate to be the bearer of bad news. But those pumpkin spice lattes that define the pleasure of fall are both ultra-processed and hyper-palatable. In other words, they spell doom for our dietary health. That is, they do if we accept the current presumption that UPF and HPF explain all that is increasingly unhealthy […]
June 3, 2023 — In case you missed it, the framework for obesity care is in the midst of great change. The availability of medicines that actually work to an extent never seen before is causing everyone to question presumptions that researchers and specialists have known to be false for some time. But these great changes are giving rise […]
May 27, 2023 — Fame is fleeting. Just a few years ago, fake meat was a hot item with great prospects for transforming the future of food. In 2019 in the New York Times, Timothy Egan wrote “Fake Meat Will Save Us.” Other experts suggested burgers were headed for extinction. No wonder the capitalization of Beyond Meat soared to […]
December 28, 2022 — If there’s no greater burden than high expectations, then food labels have a big load to carry. We keep expecting them to solve problems of unhealthy diets, obesity, and now perhaps climate change, too. A new study in JAMA Open Networks suggests fast food food menu labels might be an effective tool to help with […]
December 2, 2022 — It doesn’t take a genius to understand the futility of sprinting in a marathon. But it does seem to take some knowledge and insight to differentiate between the sprint of short-term weight loss and the marathon of obesity treatment. Right now that distinction matters because of a short supply of drugs that are medically necessary […]
November 8, 2022 — It was lovely speculation while it lasted. Ultra-processed fake meat was going to save the planet and our health. Pat Brown, the founder and former CEO of Impossible Foods, claimed he could conjure up plant-based meat that’s “vastly better” than real meat. Even McDonald’s took the bait and began testing the McPlant™ burger. But unsurprisingly […]
July 10, 2022 — “You oughta wanna do better.” That sums up the feelings evoked by a disturbing number of guidelines for health and wellness. This feeling comes when the guidelines conflict jarringly with the lived reality of many or most people. When guidelines become a prompt for finger wagging, they won’t move the needle on population health in […]
May 19, 2022 — It’s always interesting to see what surfaces in the annual Food Insight survey on food and health. The latest edition came out yesterday. For years now, the whole idea of following diets has been at a low ebb. Diets were supposed to be dead and buried years ago. Anti-diet dietitians are still dancing on that […]
April 15, 2022 — The drumbeat is growing louder. “Ultra-processed foods are trashing our health – and the planet,” say four nutrition scientists from Deakin University. It would be hard to find a clearer definition of these products as our enemy. Yet another set of distinguished nutrition scientists argue that ultra-processed alternatives to meat and dairy can offer valuable […]
March 15, 2022 — The pandemic isn’t done with us yet. Cases are rising a bit in Europe and it’s anyone’s guess where this is heading. But certainly, it appears that many of us are done with the pandemic. Does this mean the boom in meal kits will fade? Will it turn out that they were just a pandemic […]
