August 18, 2023 — Health disrupting chemicals are spreading to the farthest reaches of the planet. Even on the remote Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic, they’re showing up. Through carcinogenicity or obesogenicity, they can wreak havoc with our health. But as we follow the public discourse about the bad actors, one thing becomes quite clear. Carcinogenicity prompts alarm […]
May 19, 2023 — One question that holds us captive in obesity is the question of its origins. Why has its prevalence been rising so relentlessly now for decades? At ECO2023, this question inserted itself into one of the major themes of the meeting – a pursuit of the determinants of obesity. Commercial Determinants Emma Boyland and Aileen McGloin […]
April 21, 2023 — Could it be that exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals such as PFAS has more of an effect on body weight and adiposity than diet? Philippe Grandjean and colleagues this week published a new study in Obesity that points to this possibility. Grandjean tells us: “We’ve previously shown that children with increased PFAS concentrations tend to […]
August 5, 2022 — This news snippet definitely caught our eye. All over the world – even on the mountains of Tibet and Antarctica – it’s raining PFAS. In fact, there’s so much PFAS in rainwater all over the world that rainwater is no longer safe to drink. This news comes from an analysis published by the American Chemical […]
April 25, 2022 — Why? This is the basic question that remains unanswered after four decades of rising obesity. Why do we see such a persistent rise in obesity prevalence – all over the world? Broadly, we can lump the suspects into four groups: food, stress, physical environment, and chemicals. Of course, the most common presumption is that it’s […]
January 29, 2022 — For decades now, public health figures have been talking about an urgent need to prevent and reverse the rise of obesity. A number of U.S. presidents – notably George W. Bush and Barack Obama – have embraced this goal. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a whole division devoted to this goal. […]
November 10, 2021 — A preliminary analysis by a team of scientists at four major research institutions finds disturbing levels of phthalates in a sample of fast food. Lead author Lariah Edwards told WebMD that she wasn’t especially surprised to find this, because the food sold by fast food chains is so highly processed, packaged, and handled. Every step along […]
September 2, 2021 — Better living through chemistry is a catchphrase that takes us back to a time before obesity was really taking off in America. DuPont dropped that phrase in 1982. But the chemistry that may help bring us more adiposity is starting to get some serious attention. Writing in Obesity Reviews, Kelly Brownell and Tim Lobstein are […]
August 12, 2021 — Who would have guessed that makeup might contribute to making us fat? A new report in Environmental Science and Technology Letters gives us pause. The authors find that chemicals known as PFAS are present in more than half of a sample of 231 cosmetics they tested. PFAS is short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They’ve […]
August 23, 2020 — Sage advice from an attorney about making safety claims for any product: safe is a four-letter word. In other words, an absolute assurance of safety is almost always a lie. So the challenge is to figure out if something is safe enough. For example,consider the “everywhere chemical” known as BPA (bisphenol-A). A new study in […]
