Posts Tagged ‘diet’

Sweeteners: Different Effects in Different People?

August 23, 2022 — To start an impassioned discussion on nutrition is easy. Bring up non-nutritive sweeteners. Some people see them as a plague in the food supply. Others insist upon evidence to back up such dire claims and can see only fragments propping up presumptions about harms that are yet to be documented. But once again, a study […]

Diverse Thinking About the Complexity of Obesity

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 […]

Are Consumers Looking for Health in Weight Concerns?

May 27, 2022 — The Mayo Clinic has surveyed a large number of consumers in their online diet assessment. From more than 200,000 individuals completing this survey of mindset and motivation, they’ve come to a simple and unsurprising conclusion. It’s all about health. In fact, 83 percent of people in this survey are motivated by health in seeking to […]

Centuries of Diet Fashions and Nutrition Fads

December 2, 2021 — The word diet originates from the Greek dieta meaning to live normally. However, nowadays it mostly refers to restricting food to help weight loss rather than a way to enjoy food and health. Throughout history diets have come and gone. Celebrity diets are popular and often bizarre, but are not a new thing. The Daniel […]

Scorn for Scoring Foods for Health

November 9, 2021 — A few weeks ago, nutrition researchers at Tufts released Food Compass. It is a complex algorithm for scoring the healthfulness of foods on a scale of 1 to 100. I’ve not yet heard a positive assessment from RDN colleagues. The tool has generated anger and rage on Twitter, which is to be expected. Personally I […]

Ultra-Processed Foods: More Today Than Yesterday

October 27, 2021 — Clearly, the public has a very mixed-up approach to ultra-processed foods. On one hand, nutrition experts and foodies will solemnly nod and agree that we all need to eat less of them. But on the other hand, ultra-processed plant-based foods that might induce people to eat less meat are a hot trend of 2021. On […]

Decades of Hype for Protein-Rich Diets and “Superfoods”

October 26, 2021 — Do you ever blend up a protein smoothie for breakfast, or grab a protein bar following an afternoon workout? If so, you are likely among the millions of people in search of more protein-rich diets. Protein-enriched products are ubiquitous, and these days it seems protein can be infused into anything – even water. But the […]

Moderate Diet, Moderate Exercise, Real Heart Health

August 3, 2021 — People are fond of saying you can’t outrun a bad diet. Taking that catchphrase to a more positive track, a new study in Circulation tells us that running to a better diet can deliver better heart health. The study showed the effects a healthy diet with a modest calorie reduction combined with moderate exercise. This […]

Damaged: Perfect Becomes the Enemy of Good

May 23, 2021 — Only 27 percent of adults in the U.S. have a BMI in the range that CDC labels as “healthy or normal.” Most people think that diet and exercise is the best answer for obesity. They think this even though just about everyone with obesity has tried that prescription and most find that it doesn’t fix […]

Working to Remake Food Systems – Into What?

March 15, 2021 — The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a broken food system, writes Miriam Nelson in the Boston Globe. But she is hardly the only one. A UN Study last week told us that food systems account for a full third of global carbon emissions. The Lancet Commission on Obesity in 2019 morphed into a Global Syndemic commission […]