July 13, 2021 — Weight stigma is a global problem. The World Obesity Federation gets high marks for launching a global working group to develop a common understanding of this problem across diverse cultures around the world. Whenever a person encounters stigma due to size and weight, their health and wellbeing diminishes. But context matters. In some cultures, thinness […]
March 17, 2021 — It might seem surprising, but rising food insecurity may make public health issues with obesity even worse. Even before the pandemic, declines in food security seemed to be a factor in rising obesity prevalence. But now research is emerging to suggest that food insecurity might make obesity harder to shake. A new analysis in Annals […]
February 24, 2021 — Good news seems a bit rare these days. So reading that a robust new analysis says type 2 diabetes incidence is dropping in high-income countries prompts more questions. Is this trend real? Or is it an artifact of this one, very large dataset? Does this represent progress? Or merely a shift in the global patterns […]
October 22, 2020 — We’re just about done with the obesitization of America. But around the world, promoting obesity is very much a work in progress. The Turkana people, for example, are going through this process quite rapidly in Northwest Kenya. Likewise in China, rural populations have begun to see a striking rise in obesity. Is it all about […]
September 1, 2020 — The opening of ECOICO 2020 today brought us a sharp focus on two pandemics – obesity and COVID-19 – unfolding around the world. But these two pandemics are moving on very different timelines. The global pandemic of obesity has developed very gradually. First, and most notably, it took root in the U.S. Now after four […]
August 12, 2019 — A new trend, anticipated by many, seems to be gaining momentum. For decades, deaths due to heart disease have declined in wealthy countries. But now, that decline is slowing. In fact, it’s going in the opposite direction now for several countries – including the U.S. These observations come from a new study in the International […]
April 4, 2019 — It’s a impressive factoid. According to a new study in Lancet, poor diets are a factor in one fifth of the world’s deaths every year. The biggest culprits are too much salt, along with too little fruit and whole grains. All of this comes from the Global Burden of Disease project at the University of […]
