April 6, 2023 — The agendas people have for food and eating behaviors can make us dizzy. One rallying cry is that food is medicine. Presumably, that makes eating therapeutic. But not if we do it in a problematic way. Then we have an eating disorder. In fact, recent analyses of data from the Global Burden of Disease say […]
February 14, 2023 — It’s official. Food Is Medicine can now take chocolate under its wings. It only took five years, but the FDA has rendered regulatory judgment to officially permit the following claim for the health benefits of chocolate: “Cocoa flavanols in high flavanol cocoa powder may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, although FDA has concluded that […]
September 22, 2022 — Problems are messy, so to solve them, humans quite naturally move to make them tidy. We sort them, label them, and get to work on resolving them. But news this week reminds us that health issues often resist our efforts to sort them out and find tidy solutions. The USPSTF this week published a draft […]
October 10, 2016 — Medicalizing chocolate really isn’t necessary. It’s a simple, harmless, and pleasurable treat. Even a small bit of it is enough to bring a smile. In fact, a new study published in Appetite demonstrates that very fact. Researchers from Gettysburg College conducted a randomized, controlled trial of eating chocolate (the comparison was crackers) and found: Chocolate […]
August 23, 2016 — The fear of “medicalizing obesity” repeatedly surfaces in writing about obesity and never fails to impress. It surfaces in discussions with health plans worried about about “opening the floodgates” to evidence-based access to care for obesity. It surfaces even in scholarly publications. The latest example is a remarkably naive publication in health: an interdisciplinary journal. In a […]
