December 26, 2022 — This has been a good year in so many ways. COVID has moved into the background and people have been reconnecting. We’ve seen remarkable progress in understanding and care for obesity. Of course, we’ve hit some low points that help us to appreciate highlights even more. So here for your consideration is our short list […]
October 13, 2022 — Weight continues to be a subject for hot debate in popular culture. Most people live somewhere between the extremes of fat shaming and fat activism, just navigating life and sometimes feeling judged because of implicit ideas that people have about the normal human diversity of body size and shape. For population health, it’s indeed a […]
August 23, 2022 — To start an impassioned discussion on nutrition is easy. Bring up non-nutritive sweeteners. Some people see them as a plague in the food supply. Others insist upon evidence to back up such dire claims and can see only fragments propping up presumptions about harms that are yet to be documented. But once again, a study […]
May 28, 2022 — Worldwide sales of fitness trackers increased from US$14 billion in 2017 to over $36 billion in 2020. The skyrocketing success of these gadgets suggests that more people than ever see some value in keeping tabs on the number of steps they take, flights of stairs they climb, time they spend sitting, and calories they burn. […]
March 24, 2022 — The economy of shame and pride is at work in human cultures everywhere. Public shaming can take aim at whole countries and companies or at random individuals. In The Shame Machine, Cathy O’Neil describes shame as the foundation for an industry that can destroy people: “Humiliation lingers in the mind, the heart, the veins, the […]
December 17, 2021 — We can’t believe it either. This weird, messy year is winding down and it’s time to figure out what just happened as we prepare to go into an new year of promise and uncertainty. In obesity and health, 2021 was full of change, confusion, and new insights. We started the year with a raging pandemic, […]
December 12, 2021 — Rudeness is on the rise, says Jennifer Finney Boylan. It’s hard to miss, and few of us can claim to be innocent. Certainly, it’s easy to see in others, when they are taken off a plane because they refuse to wear a face mask. We also see it very clearly in the rudeness of healthcare […]
December 6, 2021 — “Normal” has a very succinct definition: usual, typical, or expected. So a recent publication in JAMA reminds us that the definition of “normal” weight is seriously broken. A weight in the range of a “normal” BMI (18.5 – 24.9) is no longer normal for young adults. The normal, typical, or average weight for an American […]
November 14, 2021 — It’s hard to miss the zeal that people bring to matters of health, wellness, and fitness. We’re part of it. Believing that health systems should, can, and will do better in helping folks with obesity, we devote silly amounts of time to writing about it daily. The motivation is simply to share information that might […]
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 […]
