September 16, 2023 — The question that fuels much curiosity about obesity seems simple enough. What is it that sparked an increase in the prevalence of obesity beginning in the 1980s? But a new paper in Science Advances suggests this may altogether be the wrong question. That’s because Mads Møller Pedersen, Claus Thorn Ekstrøm, and Thorkild I.A. Sørensen have […]
June 1, 2023 — New research provides impressive evidence for the contribution of obesity to the risk of a range of mental health disorders. These include depression, psychosis, eating and personality disorders. The added risk is apparent at all ages, in both men and women. Furthermore, these data suggest that the mental health burden of obesity is greater in […]
April 7, 2022 — An appealing narrative is hard to resist. When it’s grounded in facts, it can be a powerful way to inform people. But it can just as easily be a tool for misinformation. All too often, a storyline forms around an anecdote or mere speculation. Such is the case with the one about a spike in […]
October 30, 2021 — The Nutrition Source at Harvard makes one thing clear enough. Potatoes are a problem. They can give you obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Skip across town and you’ll get a very different story from Boston University. “Nutrient-rich potatoes can be part of a healthy diet in young girls.” This kind of whiplash tells us that, […]
September 18, 2021 — In our weight-obsessed culture, the talk about weight gain during the pandemic has been incessant. So the presumption is that obesity has risen in the pandemic. But the data to tell us if this is true is slow to emerge. And like everything else about this pandemic, it’s very likely that the effects have been […]
May 16, 2021 — Stroke is generally a problem for older persons. Nonetheless, as much as 15 percent of all strokes happen to people between the ages of 18 and 50. What’s more, incidence is rising for younger people. A new study in Stroke offers good reasons to believe that rising obesity in young persons may account for some […]
February 24, 2021 — Good news seems a bit rare these days. So reading that a robust new analysis says type 2 diabetes incidence is dropping in high-income countries prompts more questions. Is this trend real? Or is it an artifact of this one, very large dataset? Does this represent progress? Or merely a shift in the global patterns […]
October 22, 2020 — We’re just about done with the obesitization of America. But around the world, promoting obesity is very much a work in progress. The Turkana people, for example, are going through this process quite rapidly in Northwest Kenya. Likewise in China, rural populations have begun to see a striking rise in obesity. Is it all about […]
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 […]
February 28, 2020 — Here we go again. New data from CDC on obesity prevalence gives us more of the same bad news we’ve been getting for decades. More rising prevalence. The rate of adult obesity in the U.S. rose above 40 percent for the first time ever, reaching 42.4 percent in 2018. For severe obesity, the prevalence is […]
