October 10, 2024 — After a recent cascade of diverse studies yielding seemingly different answers about time-restricted eating, FNCE this week provided an excellent opportunity to gain perspective from researchers who are serious about this subject. Krista Varady, Shuhao Lin, and Vicky Pavlou brought a much needed focus on the science behind this pop nutrition phenomenon. A Helpful Alternative […]
March 22, 2024 — A profound shift in the understanding of medicines that help with excessive or abnormal fat is underway. A few years ago, everybody thought of these in only one frame of reference – weight loss drugs. But that is changing now. Discourse about them is moving from weight loss to obesity treatment and even further, to […]
February 22, 2024 — “Is the Atlantic diet the new Mediterranean miracle?” This headline (and a host of others like it) says a lot about the ultra-processing of nutrition research by consumer media. It takes a fascinating study about the health effects of a traditional pattern for eating called the Atlantic diet and removes all the nuance. The product […]
May 25, 2023 — Are we ready for a re-think of obesity and metabolic health? Ready to change the conversation about obesity medicines and bariatric surgery? Sergio Santoro, Scott Shikora, and Ricardo Cohen certainly think so. Writing in Obesity Surgery, they say it’s time to say goodbye to bariatric surgery and move on to the framework of metabolic surgery. […]
May 3, 2023 — We have received enough lectures for a lifetime from people who know just what the root cause of obesity is. The lecturers know the cause and they know the solution: tax, nudge, cajole, and educate people to follow a healthier diet. Eat less of that awful ultra-processed food. But the presumption that it’s all about […]
December 24, 2022 — For some of us, gaining weight (especially at this time of year) is a metabolic curse. But there are individuals for whom gaining weight is a metabolic gift and, in fact, essential for surviving in good health. In this case, we are thinking about grizzly bears. These animals gain tremendous amounts of weight every year […]
August 9, 2022 — We are not done with the notion of time-restricted eating. Two new studies tell us that it might be helpful. One is specifically about weight loss with early time restricted eating. The other is a simple test of the metabolic effects of limiting the window for eating to ten hours in the day – all […]
January 25, 2022 — Some people really don’t like low calorie sweeteners. So once again we have a wave of fear-mongering headlines. This time, they’re suggesting that pregnant women who consume these sweeteners may harm their babies. The proposed harm is a change in the baby’s microbiome and a higher risk of obesity. The evidence? A study of rats […]
August 20, 2021 — Between 2011 and 2019, the rate of gestational diabetes rose from 48 to 64 cases per 1,000. The rate rose across all racial and ethnic subgroups. But the risk is highest for Asian Indian individuals – twice the risk in the non-Hispanic White population. These data, published in JAMA this week, raise a note of […]
September 18, 2020 — More experience with COVID-19 tells us that the relationship between COVID-19 and cardiometabolic health is more than a passing thing. It starts with the risk that obesity confers for worse outcomes with COVID-19. That was the first clue. But that’s not the end of it. Because people are learning that the effects of COVID-19 can […]
