February 12, 2024 — Forget the Kansas City Chiefs and Taylor Swift. Well before the game ever started, it was very clear who would win the Super Bowl – the snack industry. The snacking industrial complex has been locked into hyperdrive for weeks, if not months, in preparation for last night’s event. The enticements were everywhere. The clickbait was […]
January 6, 2024 — We are hearing a cacophony lately – lots of noise about food noise. Part of what we hear is a celebration. Some people are finding blessed relief from it when they take advanced medicines for obesity like semaglutide or tirzepatide. Others see a threat in the relief that those people are finding. They deny that […]
March 11, 2023 — Belief in the power of food stores and markets to shape outcomes in obesity runs deep. Perhaps it’s unshakable. But still, recent PR spin claiming that food stores “drive” bariatric surgery outcomes takes confusion of correlation with causality to new heights. In a press release from Ohio State University, the lead author of two new […]
January 23, 2023 — In plain view, we have an interesting study of contrasts in cultural concepts for healthy eating. Americans have our Food and Drug Administration looking for criteria it can use to award a claim of “healthy” to some foods and not to others. For example, a freshly baked French baguette won’t qualify. Not enough whole grain. […]
November 21, 2022 — Macronutrient explanations for obesity have had a rough ride. Too much fat was supposed to be the culprit. Then the focus turned to refined carbs and sugar. By themselves, those were not especially enlightening tangents for the public. Some people still push back on excessively fatty foods. Sugar still counts as a dietary bad actor. […]
November 12, 2022 — It’s interesting to trace the slow evolution of thinking about the food environment and efforts to understand why it seems to be triggering ever more obesity. Food policy advocates have shifted from worrying about too much fat, to a focus on sugar, and now toward thinking that the problem must be ultra-processed foods with too […]
October 29, 2022 — We totally understand. ObesityWeek is coming up in San Diego and it’s a little overwhelming. For lots of us, this will be the first time in quite a while to connect with colleagues who share a hunger for insights into the complex chronic disease of obesity. Plus, a lot is happening in the field. Both […]
May 22, 2022 — Our food environment has changed to contribute to the rise in obesity over the last half century. People disagree about many things in the effort to find policies to reduce obesity. But this presumption is one that most of us can agree upon. The real question, though, is how to define these changes. Are ultra-processed […]
February 22, 2022 — For insight into the notion that something is wrong with our food environment, consider the case of Hank the Tank. Hank is a bear of size in South Lake Tahoe, California. Living large with obesity in a posh gated community, this bear is wreaking havoc. All because he found an ample supply of food. California’s […]
