December 30, 2019 — We’re launching a whole new decade on Wednesday. So it makes sense to step back for a moment and think about what the coming year will bring in obesity, nutrition, and health. We’ll be ready for surprises. Those are unpredictable. But we’re pretty sure that these big stories – already in play – will grab […]
November 14, 2019 — Are we ready for another round on carbs, fat, and protein? It sure seems like it. Popular interest in low-carb diets keeps growing steadily. A more extreme version – keto – generates a lot of buzz right now. And yet, research keeps telling us that playing around with these macronutrients doesn’t make a huge difference. […]
October 10, 2019 — Debunking the sacred cows of nutrition makes for fabulous clickbait. But we wonder if it’s helping. Right now, two different examples are generating a lot of heat, but not much enlightenment. One is the never ending debate about the role of carbohydrates and insulin in obesity. The other is a recent review of the evidence […]
December 7, 2018 — We have not heard the last of an intense and seemingly bitter debate about the role carbs and insulin play in promoting obesity. At ObesityWeek, David Ludwig and Kevin Hall sparred about a new publication by Ludwig and colleagues. Letters to the editor of the BMJ are keeping that hot debate going. At the core […]
September 16, 2018 — Perhaps the backlash against decades of faulty low-fat dietary guidelines is peaking. It’s now popular to suggest that bad dietary advice in the 1980s sparked the epidemic of obesity that’s still booming today. But like so many other glib proclamations on the subject, this one is probably wrong. Or at the very least, it glosses […]
February 21, 2018 — JAMA is out with a big, important study of low fat versus low carb dietary strategies. And the study has a null result on three hypotheses the researchers were testing. The results showed no differences in outcomes between the study groups. Low fat was no better than low carb. Also, neither genetic nor insulin secreting […]
September 12, 2016 — As the epidemic of type 2 diabetes has grown in parallel with unprecedented rates of obesity, physicians have long prioritized controlling blood glucose over helping a patient manage his weight. Type 2 diabetes care typically takes priority over obesity care in a primary care setting. In some ways, this has been a perfectly rational choice for […]
August 18, 2015 — The intense popular fascination with low carb diets and speculation that they are metabolically superior to low fat diets has long been a little tired. Admittedly, low fat everything in the 1980s — with a little sugar thrown in to make up for lousy flavor — was probably not such a good idea. But a hamburger […]
