December 24, 2023 — Oprah Winfrey says “Obesity is a disease. It’s not about willpower – it’s about the brain.” This tidbit from a recent interview with People magazine is great. It’s accurate and it corrects a common misconception. No doubt, it will bring a shift away from flawed thinking about this condition that many people have been hanging […]
September 20, 2023 — Apparently big food is not scary enough. The Washington Post wants you to know that it’s really big tobacco that is selling you those noxious and addictive Teddy Grahams to destroy the health of your children. For this report, they rely on a paper by Tera Fazzino and colleagues. This continues a tradition of using […]
August 7, 2023 — The headlines are great. “Pecans: the surprising superfood for obesity prevention and wellness” says one. “Pecans pack a punch in fighting obesity, diabetes and inflammation” according to another. All this magical thinking about pecans comes from a study of mice on a high-fat diet. What does this mean for humans? Mainly it means that the […]
July 24, 2023 — Sloganeering inevitably plays a role in advocating for policy changes. But it can be a very blunt tool. Food Is Medicine is one of these blunt tools, currently popular with some nutrition policy advocates and it got a good hearing at Nutrition 2023 in Boston yesterday. Underneath the problematic umbrella of this slogan, enthusiastic advocates are […]
July 14, 2023 — The WHO has taken its skill for exquisitely confusing messages on public health to new heights. One of its agencies, the IARC, declared yesterday that aspartame is “possibly carcinogenic.” At the same time, a separate committee of WHO, the JECFA, reaffirmed that it’s no problem if a person consumes up to 40 mg per kg […]
July 5, 2023 — IARC, the agency of the World Health Organization (WHO) responsible for research on causes of cancer, is preparing to issue a determination that aspartame is “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” It will have lots of company on their lists of definite, probable, or possible carcinogens. Cell phones, sunlight, red meat, and hot dogs all enjoy this […]
December 17, 2022 — Do angels dancing on the head of a pin get good exercise? We’ll have to get back to you on that one. But we can say that thinking about the value of exercise for overcoming obesity is worthwhile. In the International Journal of Obesity over the last few weeks an excellent conversation about this has […]
September 25, 2022 — An impressive amount of thought and effort goes into messaging about health. Honorable people work diligently to move the population toward healthier lives. They craft messages for leading people to stop smoking, get their vaccinations, eat healthy, stay active and fit. The creativity and strategic skill are impressive. But one dimension of effective and sustainable […]
September 7, 2022 — In some circles, food addiction is a wildly popular idea. It’s useful for painting ultra-processed food and the food industry as villains in a narrative about obesity and why we have so much of it. Some people think that promoting narratives about food addiction might help to reduce the stigma attached to obesity. In fact, […]
August 18, 2022 — The tension between science and policy at CDC is inevitable. But that tension has never been in plain view more than during the COVID-19 pandemic. And so, citing a “botched” response to the pandemic, CDC director Rochelle Walensky says that she will launch a sweeping reorganization of the agency. Her announcement was thin on specifics. […]
