February 26, 2023 — Quietly and systematically, Tera Fazzino has been working with colleagues to define a concept of hyper-palatable foods that might explain the apparent effect of ultra-processed foods on body composition and thus, obesity. The latest chapter in this quest appeared recently in Nature Food. In short, a narrative is taking shape that we may have a […]
June 26, 2019 — Risk-benefit ratio is a term of art that most anyone in healthcare will know. It answers a very basic question. Does this thing offer more benefits than risks? The thing might be a drug, it might be a device, or it might be an operation. But what about some of the beliefs that drive health […]
May 17, 2019 — Kevin Hall is a bit of a myth buster. In a number of studies, he has put popular ideas about obesity and nutrition under the microscope of objective data. And by doing so, he proved them wrong. But in a new study published yesterday, he proved himself wrong about ultra-processed food. In a carefully controlled […]
October 2, 2018 — France has one of the lowest obesity rates in the world. But it’s growing and the French parliament knows why. Le Big Mac. Burgers outsold baguettes for the first time ever in 2017. Burgers are on the menus in 85 percent of French restaurants. They sold 1.5 billion of them last year. So naturally, when the parliament […]
September 2, 2018 — The bigs are out to get us. Really. Big food, big government, big agriculture, big medicine, big marketing, big academia, and more. We could go on, but no need. When all these bigs align, some big, bad, and unfortunate mistakes can fall out. A self-professed angry old man – George Lundberg – outlines a case study in […]
December 16, 2017 — Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. For a couple of decades, fat was banished from our diets. Food makers took out fat and compensated by adding sugar and other carbs to processed foods. Now sugar is out of fashion and fat is in. So big food is dutifully doing what the nutrition gurus […]
December 11, 2017 — Maybe it’s progress. Five years ago social media was full of explicitly hateful fat-shaming content. More often than not, complaints fell on deaf ears. But Friday, we learned that Google now considers merely asking about the word fat to be distasteful and offensive. Google Surveys will no longer ask people what they think about the […]
September 14, 2017 — It’s an odd balance. Icebergs are melting. But the biggest fatberg ever recorded has congealed in London’s sewer. It’s 130 tons and 250 yards of cooking fat, wipes, diapers and other stuff folks should never have flushed down the drain. Breaking it up and removing it will take three weeks of hard, smelly work. An […]
June 4, 2017 — A new commentary by Dean Schillinger and James Kahn warns us. We should be “mobilizing for a war on the home front against sugar-related morbidity and mortality.” But do we really need this battle for better health? Winding Down the War on Fat One battle we didn’t need, apparently, was the war on fat. The world mobilized […]
August 7, 2016 — When consumers define healthy food, they look for the absence of junk. Is the food nutritious? That’s just about the last thing consumers think of, according to new research from the International Food Information Council (IFIC) Foundation. When asked, how do you define a healthy food, the top answer consumers give by far is that it “does […]
