June 26, 2019 — Risk-benefit ratio is a term of art that most anyone in healthcare will know. It answers a very basic question. Does this thing offer more benefits than risks? The thing might be a drug, it might be a device, or it might be an operation. But what about some of the beliefs that drive health […]
June 17, 2019 — Everything is effective. Give somebody a potent drug and it will surely do something to them. Enact a health policy and it will surely have an effect. In fact, the effects will certainly be many – both desired and undesired. But for both drugs and health policies, the target is health. So we’d best be […]
June 15, 2019 — It’s an awesome responsibility, saving the planet. But apparently, it’s also simple. And many people have an answer. Opt for eating chicken instead of beef. We can go vegan, vegetarian, or to a warmer, fuzzier “plant-based” diet. Beyond Meat is doing quite well by serving up pea protein in Beyond Burgers. Without a doubt, we […]
June 12, 2019 — Ultra-processed food is such an ugly phrase. Could this friendly little goldfish cracker really be such a threat to health? Defining that threat was the subject of a very collegial, but intense discussion on the closing day of Nutrition 2019 between Kevin Hall and Mike Gibney. But it was hardly confined to that one session. […]
June 11, 2019 — It was quite a splash. Near simultaneous presentations in Baltimore and San Francisco. For the last two days, Tim Spector and colleagues have been busy presenting data from an ambitious study of personalized nutrition. They had a late breaking poster at the American Diabetes Association meeting. Also, they made two presentations at American Society of […]
June 7, 2019 — It’s been a wild ride. Almost 40 years ago, David Jenkins published the first paper to propose that the glycemic index of foods might be an important measure of nutrition quality. Back then, dietary guidance pointed to a low-fat panacea. Research continued quietly on the glycemic index. The pendulum swung from fear of fats to […]
June 3, 2019 — Disclosing how much added sugar is in a food product is a good idea. Claiming it “will save millions of lives and billions of dollars” is not. Wandering away from the truth never is. But in Circulation last month, Yue Huang et al are bold to say they only have one worry about the precision […]
May 27, 2019 — Can we please retire the mantra of making the healthy choice the easy choice? It’s a great concept. Maybe it’s even a good marketing tagline…if you’re a food marketer. But for reducing obesity, it seems more and more like Eat-Less-Move-More version 2.0. Rather than pointing fingers at people for making “unhealthy choices,” we’ve moved to […]
May 26, 2019 — Does less toast and more avocado make for a more satisfying breakfast? Does that mean that we’d all lose a little weight if we made this swap? Thanks to the Hass Avocado Board, we have some actual data to tell us that the answers are yes and maybe not. So feel free to go easy […]
May 23, 2019 — Objectivity is tough. For a case in point, let’s look at how people are processing new data from Kevin Hall and colleagues on ultra-processed foods. It’s important. For the first time, we have good data to say that these foods can cause weight gain. Before we had speculation. Now we have good, experimental evidence. Some […]
