Posts Tagged ‘hyperbole’

An unfortunate idea is gaining traction in food policy circles: to equate food – specifically ultra-processed food – with tobacco. Borrowing the rhetoric, litigation strategies, and moral framing of the anti-smoking movement, activists, influencers, and even policymakers now speak of “Big Food” as the new “Big Tobacco.” Last night, this idea even reached into the […]

Toxic is one of those clickbait words that ironically fuels poisonous rhetoric on the very nuanced subject of food and health. Insert “toxic” into a conversation and nuance will disappear. Robert Lustig famously used the word “toxic” to inject hyperbole into food policy when he proclaimed that sugar is toxic. Now we have a demagogue […]

Please. We don’t need fake controversies and false comparative claims. But in reporting on an excellent new study of the effects of cutting salt on blood pressure, we’re getting a little bit of both. The study that is generating this frenzy simply doesn’t line up with the headlines that reporters are spinning out of it. […]

With the onset of fall, we are staring at the prospect of a good bit of travel. So this story indeed grabbed our attention. “A hearty breakfast could reduce jet lag in older adults, study finds” was the headline in the Washington Post. We like breakfast, so this seems like a win-win proposition. There’s just […]

“Time-restricted feeding could be key to combat obesity,” says the headline. The press release from the University of California at San Diego is a little more restrained, though. “A rhythmic small intestinal microbiome prevents obesity and type 2 diabetes,” it says. Then finally we get down to reality in the paper. There we find that […]

Is trauma losing its meaning? It seems that accounts of trauma are filling the news. Death and suffering in more than two years of a global pandemic has certainly been traumatic. So too is the toll of gun violence. With the return to more normal school operations, school shootings are once again popping up in […]

“The way that fat people and thin people experience this conversation is worlds apart,” says Michael Hobbes on a recent episode of his Maintenance Phase podcast with Aubrey Gordon. He’s describing a heated debate about catastrophizing obesity that has been smoldering for almost two decades. This is a conflict between two views of obesity. One […]