June 30, 2022 — Okay, this is hardly a final victory, but it sure does feel good. The U.S. House Appropriations Committee released its legislative report on funding for Health and Human Services. It’s a beastly 623 page document that goes over all the spending priorities for the department. However, if you dig deep into it, there’s a paragraph […]
May 29, 2022 — Public health should stop talking about obesity, says a policy brief from University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health. “Replace assignments connecting ‘obesity’ and health,” suggests the brief. Cancel the word obesity and weight stigma will fade. That seems to be the thinking there. At the other extreme, we have folks who love to […]
October 29, 2021 — Who would have thought that two years could change so many things? But here we are on the cusp of our second virtual ObesityWeek® since we were all together in Las Vegas in 2019. We’ve seen a lot since then and we have a lot to look forward to in the week ahead, starting Monday. […]
May 11, 2021 — In one intense week, the European Congress on Obesity and the Canadian Obesity Summit are setting the bar high for translating research and guidelines into policies and action. A year ago, new Canadian guidelines emerged. The driving concept was simple – health first, before weight. Then in March, the European Commission redefined obesity. It’s a […]
April 28, 2021 — Let’s start with a basic fact. More than five million youth and children in the U.S. have severe obesity. This is not about chubby cheeks or appearance. This is about young bodies with biological patterns of fat tissue setting them up for lifetimes of poor health. These are lives that untreated obesity will cut short. […]
November 30, 2020 — Free vitamin D supplements will be sent to over two million clinically vulnerable people in the UK this winter. Over 80% of patients hospitalised with COVID-19 are vitamin D deficient compared with the general population. In a small study, a high dose of vitamin D appeared to reduce the severity of COVID-19. While some scientists […]
November 18, 2020 — We don’t mean to pick on this lovely ad campaign by the NHS. Because there’s nothing wrong with promoting healthy lifestyles. But unfortunately, it isn’t going to do a thing to reverse the obesity trends in the UK. It reflects a mentality about confronting obesity that fails over and over. Just do better and make […]
October 23, 2020 — October is National Bullying Prevention Month because bullying should never be a part of childhood. So we find ourselves wondering. Can we find the mute button for bullying? Are parents, teachers, and coaches giving bullies an open mic for weight-based bullying? Complicity with Weight-Based Bullying Adults are supposedly in charge. But when it comes to […]
August 18, 2020 — For the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, this was a relatively easy question. Americans typically consume too much added sugar. So the committee recommends a lower limit. In the 2015, the limit was ten percent of total calories from added sugars. But now the committee says that limit should come down to six. Not so fast, […]
July 28, 2020 — For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. Henry Louis Mencken wrote this in 1920, well before the the health challenge of obesity flummoxed us. But he described our systematic failures with obesity almost perfectly. Obesity is a problem of complex systems that conspire to harm our health. Simple, […]
