January 14, 2023 — Defining healthy eating is somewhat like trying to define art. Everyone thinks they know it when they see it, but actually pinning it down in specific terms is not so easy. Nonetheless, we keep on trying and much of the focus from thoughtful people is on healthy patterns of eating, not individual foods. The exemplar […]
November 13, 2022 — Analogies are a powerful tool to build a story and persuade people to adopt a preferred course of action. When it comes to policies to reduce obesity, one of the most frequent analogies employed is tobacco policy. Earlier this year, Sarah Hill and colleagues made the case for health policy to align the regulation of […]
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 30, 2022 — An apple a day keeps the doctor away. This 19th-century Welsh aphorism is a few steps behind the current zeal for medicalizing food. Food is medicine advocates are eager to see doctors prescribe produce, medically tailored groceries, or meals. It’s a big-tent concept that feels a little bit like a faith healing revival. Certainly, nutrition […]
October 27, 2022 — Most of us who think about food systems have a vague sense that our diet has a meaningful impact on the health of the planet. Beef is typically thought to be a bad actor. Eating more plant based foods should help. But an ambitious new study in Nature Sustainability aims to assign specific numbers to […]
October 21, 2022 — Among the many interesting presentations from three days of focus on causes of obesity, a just-so story stands out. We heard a number of just-so stories this week – untested fables to explain how we came to have so much obesity. They fit neatly with with an agenda that calls for a discussion of conjectures. […]
September 29, 2022 — What constitutes “healthy” for a packaged food? FDA, prompted by wrangling seven years ago, is out today with a new definition that everyone can fight about. Who cares? Well, just about everyone has an opinion. But the real passion for this subject comes from people who want to sell you more units of their food, […]
September 28, 2022 — The news is full of sound bites about obesity today. The White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health is front and center. And the 44-page report that will guide today’s meeting has plenty of good stuff in it. Most notably, it reflects a better, albeit only partial, understanding that obesity is a complex chronic […]
September 26, 2022 — Something is up with our food supply that’s helping to drive the ever-rising prevalence of obesity. But the precise nature of the problem with the food supply is open for debate. People have many strong opinions. We’re too dependent on factory-farmed meat, say some people. Others are pushing for a food supply that promotes more […]
September 18, 2022 — One of the hottest concepts right now in dietary fashion is plant-based diets. It’s on the way to surpassing the dominant theme of the last two decades – low-carb diets. Thus, some really exceptional claims for the benefits of plant-based diets are popping up in scientific literature. Apart from the fanciful nature of some of […]
