October 17, 2019 — On the occasion of World Food Day, Pope Francis had a message for the world about food and health and social justice. Food for profit at any cost has led to a world of hunger, obesity, and waste. Indeed, he said, food has cultural, social, and symbolic importance we are neglecting. The logic of the […]
July 26, 2019 — It’s no guarantee. But with all else being equal, you may find that you have a certain metabolic edge if most of the food you eat comes earlier in the day. New research published by Eric Ravussin and colleagues in Obesity tells us why. Eating early in the day seems to help with hunger. In […]
January 28, 2019 — Bummer. The Lancet Obesity Commission report is out today and if you thought that obesity might be a tough problem to solve, you really have no clue. It’s bigger than you ever thought. It’s not just an epidemic. Not even calling it a pandemic is big enough. It’s a syndemic. A huge, impossible problem. It’s […]
January 20, 2019 — Civilization is in crisis, the Earth is at risk, and it’s time to put the planet on a better diet. So say Lancet editors Tamara Lucas and Richard Horton as they sum up findings of the EAT-Lancet Commission healthy and sustainable diets. They write: The dominant diets that the world has been producing and eating for the […]
September 17, 2018 — How can it be that both obesity and hunger are rising in Africa? President Rajiv Shah of the Rockefeller Foundation tells us that it’s the inevitable result of a broken global food system. Famines still ravage this continent. But incomes are also rising in the growing urban centers. And that’s precisely where obesity taking off. […]
January 27, 2018 — We eat for many reasons, and one of those reasons is pleasure. Beautiful, appetizing food beckons us, even when we’re not physically hungry. Researchers label those qualities of food as hedonics. Food marketers know that these are the qualities that sell their products. And now, neuroscience suggests that women may be more sensitive than men […]
March 21, 2017 — Gratefully, we can report progress on the next generation of obesity treatment. For starters, John Blundell and colleagues have just published a controlled clinical trial of semaglutide in obesity. The study is a tightly controlled experiment to explain how the drug works. And beyond semaglutide, more options for treating obesity are moving into development. The […]
January 24, 2017 — SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) is the backbone of government efforts to fight hunger. So, naturally, everybody has ideas about ways to make it work smarter. And in a large supplement to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, a diverse group of nutrition activists put forward their ideas and analyses. The central idea is […]
October 28, 2016 — In the complex jungle of systems that influence the development and prevalence of obesity, two physiologic mechanisms stand out: metabolic rate and appetite. In new research from NIH to be presented at ObesityWeek 2016, Kevin Hall and colleagues have put a number on the role of appetite in making sure that people regain most of the […]
August 31, 2015 — In case you haven’t noticed, most people who try to lose significant amounts of weight through sheer force of will inevitably gain it back. Weight loss fails not because of a failure of willpower. It fails because your brain works so well to regulate your weight and protect you from the existential threat of weight […]
