July 16, 2022 — On the first full day of YWM Engage, it was plain that this was a different sort of convention for OAC. It was smaller. The group was being very cautious because this rotten pandemic, though it’s less of a threat, isn’t over. So the agenda got right down to the business of bringing everyone up […]
March 27, 2022 — Weight bias is a moving target. It is moving from a shout to a quiet murmur, from explicit shaming to implicit insults. In 2015, a peer-reviewed medical journal would publish advice to tell patients bluntly that obesity is their fault. With an AJM editorial then, Robert Doroghazi wrote that he thought it best to confront […]
June 1, 2021 — Weight stigma is not just a U.S. problem. A whole series of new studies – two of them coming out just today – tell us that weight stigma is common across six countries. Not only do people find it in personal relationships, but they even find it common in healthcare. In fact, two thirds of […]
March 3, 2021 — Today for Obesity Care Week (OCW2021), the focus is access to care. But access to care is not such a tidy, self-contained subject. That’s because the problems we have with access to obesity care often actually start with weigh bias – the OCW2021 theme for Monday. Let us explain with the experience of a good […]
October 31, 2020 — Lifestyle Medicine is a new open access journal from John Wiley & Sons. The journal claims to set a high standard, with rigorous peer review. But we are not so sure about its ethical standards. Because the journal is promoting a stereotype about people with obesity. A low IQ is a risk factor for obesity, […]
October 18, 2020 — At FNCE yesterday, weight bias was very much on the minds of 1,401 participants. That’s how many nutrition professionals tuned into the hour-long session we moderated. Colleen Tewksbury, Kellene Isom, and Rebecca Pearl offered impressive insights on challenging weight bias. Clearly, weight bias is all around us. In fact, a new study finds that 57 […]
October 5, 2020 — A new paper from the Rudd Center reminds us how noxious the weight talk in popular media is right now. Rebecca Puhl and colleagues found that weight stigma during the COVID-19 pandemic is toxic. In young adults, past experience of stigma predict problems in coping now. The risk of binge eating triples. Symptoms of depression […]
September 16, 2020 — Bad obesity policies can be worse than nothing at all. You might ask, how can this be? The U.K. obesity strategy provides a case in point. No doubt, the intentions are good. High rates of obesity make the population of the U.K. vulnerable to especially bad outcomes from COVID-19. But flashing danger signs without giving […]
September 7, 2020 — A new review in JAMA is unequivocal. The choice to have bariatric surgery is something that every patient with severe obesity should be considering: All patients with severe obesity – and especially those with type 2 diabetes – should be engaged in a shared decision-making conversation about the risks and benefits of surgery compared with […]
November 26, 2019 — Let’s be clear. Anti-fat bias is everywhere we turn. It’s less explicit these days. But implicit anti-fat bias is stronger than ever. And you can find it in people who are thin and people who are not. There’s actually research on that. However, that same research tells us that thinner people tend to have stronger […]
