November 27, 2022 — A new systematic review prompts us to wonder once again, what is the point of public health interventions targeting obesity? Is it to nudge people toward desired behavior or is it health improvement? Sandrine Lioret and colleagues recently published a systematic review of efforts to improve behaviors or prevent obesity in children during their first […]
January 25, 2022 — The pandemic rearranged the landscape for many industries, and it certainly did that for the fitness industry. In 2019, it was a $97 billion industry. Then it shrank to $54 billion in 2021. Facilities closed and suddenly the big trends were fitness apps, home fitness, and outdoor workouts. Proving that luck matters, Peloton soared in […]
December 22, 2021 — It’s an odd intersection. On one hand, people are totally done with diets right now. And yet, here comes the news that people are reading about weight loss more than any other health topic online. More than COVID, which came in second. How can it be that anti-diet sentiment is so strong at the same […]
September 12, 2021 — The failure of experts unfolding around us right now is spectacular. In health and public policy, experts have stumbled in very visible ways. Thus, public confidence in expertise is shaky and people are doing some absolutely wacky things, harming themselves and others. But why? No doubt, the reasons are many. However, part of the pattern […]
October 24, 2020 — A tidy narrative attracts the human mind. When they ring true, generalizations are seductive. They wipe away the complex mess of real life. For example, the untidy reality of living through the pandemic lockdown leaves us eager to make sense of it. So a new paper describing a global survey of health behaviors in the […]
October 18, 2020 — New research from Rand and the Indiana University School of Public Health at Bloomington offers a vivid picture of two major health risks colliding. Alcohol use is growing more frequent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, it’s growing heavier. This is not what we need, because alcohol use is already the number one global health risk […]
October 7, 2020 — In 1826, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote: Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are. Those words appeared in The Physiology of Taste, a work of seven volumes. Now we’ve boiled it down to you are what you eat. A new study in PLOS Medicine suggests there’s real wisdom in that […]
August 28, 2020 — Are we ready for our Alexa smart speaker to tell us exactly how much body fat we have? Just in case we are, Amazon has some new technology to take us in that direction. It’s called Halo. Now for only $65 (discounted from a list price $99.99) we can get a smart band, an app, […]
August 25, 2020 — Having obesity is not a lifestyle. Obesity is a chronic disease. But not having obesity is a lifestyle. In fact, it’s a lifestyle that sets a person free from years of having major chronic diseases. Like obesity. This is the logic Solja Nyberg, Archana Singh-Manoux, and Mika Kivimäki offer us in JAMA Internal Medicine this […]
May 28, 2020 — It’s an odd irony. New data, released yesterday from the Kaiser Family Foundation, tells us that people are skipping healthcare because of the COVID-19 health crisis. In fact, roughly half (48 percent) of Americans say they or someone in their household have postponed healthcare due to the pandemic. One in five (23 percent) of those […]
