Posts Tagged ‘nutrition policy’

This has been quite a year that we are closing out on this New Year’s Eve. As we start another new year, we will be leaving behind an ample collection of curses we suffered and blessings we enjoyed in 2025. No doubt, you have your list. So here is our own brief list of the […]

The campaign to Make America Healthy Again is cranking up with some eye-opening messaging. An early leader in this campaign turns out to be a burger chain, Steak ’n Shake. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praised the chain last week for making french fries healthy again: “Congratulations @SteaknShake for being the […]

The most pervasive way of thinking about obesity is to simply regard it as “a diet-related disease.” But a new paper in Nature Food suggests we may be misleading ourselves. That’s because of a fundamental problem in the data that links patterns of diet to obesity and health. An impressive collection of scientists examined the […]

In recent years, a troubling trend has emerged – a growing distrust in health science, particularly in fields like nutrition and obesity. This skepticism isn’t just about healthy debate or constructive criticism. It’s about an erosion of confidence in scientific expertise. In the age of social media and viral misinformation, unreasonable doubts have real consequences […]

The soft drinks industry levy came into effect in the UK in early 2018. The first study to investigate the effect of this “sugar tax” on individual-level consumption has just been published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The headline finding is that adults reduced their daily added sugar intake by about two […]

The Nutrition Facts label, that black and white information box found on nearly every packaged food product in the U.S. since 1994, has recently become an icon for consumer transparency. From Apple’s “Privacy Nutrition Labels” that disclose how smartphone apps handle user data, to a “Garment Facts” label that standardizes ethical disclosures on clothing, policy […]

Narratives are powerful because humanity has a natural inclination to tell stories. We seek to understand our world through the stories we tell. But this sets up a problem for nutrition and obesity science. Appealing narratives untethered from the truth can take decades to recognize as misleading. All too often, this happens only after policymakers […]

Remember when grains were good? Judging by the nutrition red alert arising from the possibility that potatoes might be classified as a grain instead of a vegetable, maybe grains are on the naughty list now. Brave potato defenders in the U.S. Senate are rising up to keep this from happening. They want to save us […]

Food as medicine programs can yield a fantastic medical benefit, say the promoters of this currently trendy concept in nutrition policy. If implemented broadly, they “would save lives and billions of dollars.” That’s the word from Tufts, where Dariush Mozaffarian is selling this concept with great enthusiasm. The whole idea behind these claims is that […]

Overheated rhetoric in nutrition is nothing new. But the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) set a high bar yesterday. In a press release, the organization rang alarm bells, saying that “big dairy” is on its way to “making school meals less healthy by allowing whole milk.” Oh my. Is the persistent fear of […]