November 21, 2023 — Men are coming up short in life expectancy. In fact, the gap in lifespan between men and women is now the widest it has been in three decades. Why? The short answer is COVID. But the truth is that it is more than just COVID. The pandemic took more lives from men because their underlying […]
September 24, 2023 — A good friend often reminds us about the importance of kindness, and of course, she is right. The world offers us too little kindness too often and we make it better when we add the warmth of kindness to the corner of the world we share. But our friend Gary Foster took it a bit […]
August 21, 2023 — If you are paying attention to the disparities in wealth, poverty, health, and obesity, you might note that there’s good news and bad news to be found right now. On the good news side of things, the global inequality of wealth shrank in 2022. That happened for two reasons. People in some of the poorest […]
March 26, 2023 — Food is medicine, say folks in certain food policy circles, and we have an abundant supply of it – especially in the U.S. So why is it true in this country that we have more food, find less joy in it, and live shorter lives? Eating More, Enjoying It Less, Losing Years of Life American […]
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, […]
