November 28, 2023 — Up front, we want to say that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans are incredibly important and we are very grateful for the diverse and talented experts who are working on scientific input for the 2025 edition. They offer a framework for healthy nutrition that guides U.S. (sometimes even global) food policy in ways that are […]
September 13, 2023 — The 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee just finished an afternoon of taking public comments at its third meeting. They are well on their way to producing a scientific report that might guide the guidance when it emerges in time for the dawn of 2025. Right now, it does seem like everyone is ultra-worried about what […]
September 6, 2023 — A sure way to make a good program look bad is to offer up flawed evidence for its benefits. Then call it the biggest and best evaluation ever. So it is with a study of Food Is Medicine, impaired by a problem with regression to the mean. That little problem does not stop some pretty […]
July 24, 2023 — We’re hearing quite a buzz at Nutrition 2023 about ultra-processed foods. Presenting in a session on scientific questions regarding ultra-processed foods, Distinguished Professor Rick Mattes offered one statement that perhaps everyone concerned with this subject can agree upon: “An abundance of epidemiologic evidence shows, very convincingly, that there is an association between consumption of ultra-processed […]
July 13, 2023 — A new study in the Journal of Nutrition reports that people can eat 91 per cent of their calories from ultra-processed foods and still be eating a pretty healthy diet. Hold Onto Your Socks This is not opposites day. Rather, it might be that the we are living in a time of peak demonization of […]
July 2, 2023 — The impulse to attach health claims to food is growing stronger among many advocates and agencies for food and health policy. The FDA is moving to put nutrition information on the front of food packages. This news comes in addition to the agency’s seven-year quest to define healthy for food marketing claims. The Food Is […]
May 7, 2023 — One of the fundamental assumptions we make about the origins of the rise in obesity is that the food supply has changed in ways that trigger more obesity in more people. You might say it is the foundation upon which most public health experts and policy makers build their thinking about this problem. But what […]
May 6, 2023 — Nope. We are not done with fighting obesity by selling water, fruits, and veggies. Former First Lady Michelle Obama is starting a healthy food and beverage company with the help of private equity. Ordinarily, we’re supposed to think of private equity as the bad guys – helping the rich get richer and driving wider disparities. […]
March 24, 2023 — You might have thought the U.S. government was busy with other stuff. Like writing new dietary guidelines. Or defining what food is naughty or nice. Or perhaps even sorting out problems with bank regulation. Maybe so, but these folks can multitask, so now we have the final word on peanut butter – it’s definitely, certifiably […]
March 23, 2023 — We face a pivot point for public health strategies to prevent obesity. The advent of advanced medicines for obesity treatment brings critical questions. Can we find better strategies for preventing obesity at the entrance to causal pathways for it? Or will we instead depend solely on medical interventions to reduce the harm it causes? These […]
