August 20, 2022 — Fast food and junk food are slippery and pejorative terms that many people equate with a risk of obesity. Most people – even people who routinely consume it – presume that fast food is not good for health. With the release of Super Size Me in 2004, we seemed to hit a peak in the […]
August 18, 2022 — The tension between science and policy at CDC is inevitable. But that tension has never been in plain view more than during the COVID-19 pandemic. And so, citing a “botched” response to the pandemic, CDC director Rochelle Walensky says that she will launch a sweeping reorganization of the agency. Her announcement was thin on specifics. […]
August 6, 2022 — Can we find an intervention to reduce the prevalence of obesity across the population? Marion Nestle tells us one-size-fits-all obesity prevention doesn’t have much promise in her view: “My interpretation of the current status of obesity prevention research is that any single policy intervention is unlikely to show anything but small improvements. Pessimists will say […]
August 3, 2022 — According to a press release from the University of Sheffield, it sounds like the city of London pretty much has obesity prevention figured out. All they had to do is ban adverts for junk food from public transport. Voilà! With that simple act, says the press release, London has prevented nearly 100,000 cases of obesity, […]
July 24, 2022 — Institutions of public health are in a tough spot right now. COVID has so battered public trust in the CDC that it has put us into the figure-it-out-yourself phase of this pandemic. Likewise, the public health response to obesity has long been one of both moral panic and ineffective policy prescriptions. Decades of exhortations to […]
July 12, 2022 — It seemed like a good idea at the time. Back in 2008, there was a headlong rush to require restaurant menu calorie labeling by decree. New York City tried it first. Other cities and states followed quickly. Tired of fighting it in a dizzying array of local venues, the restaurant industry came on board with […]
June 12, 2022 — Talk is cheap. But history tells us that cheap talk doesn’t solve wicked problems. That’s true whether the problem is the relentlessly rising health harms of obesity or the current hot topic – inflation. The notoriously hollow Whip Inflation Now campaign of Gerald Ford seems like a model for equally ineffective campaigns aspiring to overcome […]
April 8, 2022 — We are in the midst of a great reformulation of food products. A little more than a decade ago, Robert Lustig stirred everyone up with his bold claim that sugar is toxic. So added sugar took over the role of dietary bad boy in place of fat. In 2015, U.S. dietary guidelines started recommending a […]
April 3, 2022 — Policies to address obesity across the whole population often make perfect sense to the people who are promoting them. But often, they run into resistance from people looking at obesity from a very different place. Writing in the Guardian, Clare Finney offers a case in point: “For the 1.25 million men and women with eating […]
March 29, 2022 — For decades now, health policy advocates have been pursuing a solution to the growing effects of obesity on public health. The banners shift over time, but the goal is pretty consistent. It’s better diets and more physical activity across the population to reverse the trend in obesity prevalence. Low fat everything! Let’s Move! Tax and […]
