October 25, 2023 — It’s a popular cause. Red meat production is a problem for the climate. Add that to ethical concerns some people have about consuming meat, and the push to reduce red meat consumption makes total sense. But when people start spinning misleading narratives about observational research and using them to promote this otherwise worthy idea, they’re […]
March 14, 2022 — “Yes, not all types of food processing are bad and not all UPF are equally bad,” writes Carlos Monteiro. He’s commenting on a new study of ultra-processed foods in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Because he is the author and a big promoter of the NOVA UPF classification scheme, his comments are notable. But the […]
October 30, 2021 — The Nutrition Source at Harvard makes one thing clear enough. Potatoes are a problem. They can give you obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Skip across town and you’ll get a very different story from Boston University. “Nutrient-rich potatoes can be part of a healthy diet in young girls.” This kind of whiplash tells us that, […]
September 10, 2021 — A new study in the September issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition asks an important question. Are Americans eating more junk food? Cutting right to the chase, the answer is no. Adults actually report eating less in 2018 than they did in 2011. Children haven’t changed their habits. Adults are getting 13 percent […]
February 23, 2021 — SF Eater tells us that 13 bakeries in San Francisco have “killer croissants.” The Atlanta Journal Constitution tells us that croissants, along with white bread, tie us to an early death. Their source for this epidemiological wisdom is the BMJ. That treasure trove of epidemiology – the PURE study – has yielded another publication. This […]
October 30, 2020 — One of the biggest surprises in this COVID-19 pandemic has been intense interest in vitamin D. Earlier this month, readers swarmed around an item we wrote about it. Now, a month later, the interest persists. Some people seem to be looking for magic for COVID from vitamin D. Others are finding issues. We advise sensible […]
July 25, 2020 — Is nutritional epidemiology suffering from overexposure? A study of veggies and COVID-19 mortality prompts this question. This exercise in nutrition correlation comes from a pre-print. So we can’t blame lax peer reviewers for this one. But the manuscript does make some remarkable claims: For each g/day increase in the average national consumption of some of […]
February 4, 2020 — A red meat issue is inflammatory and political. This particular definition doesn’t have a separate entry in Merriam-Webster yet, though they are thinking about it. But on the subject of red meat, medical journals just can’t let it go. So today we have a new paper in JAMA Internal Medicine to revisit the question – […]
January 29, 2020 — It seems we can’t quit bickering about dietary recommendations. Especially about red meat. The squabbling continues this week as Frank Hu and colleagues fire back on the subject, publishing a new commentary in Diabetes Care. With appreciation to the Fred Hutch News Service for sharing, we offer the following perspective on where we’ve gone wrong, […]
January 25, 2020 — Some people call it the macronutrient wars. We call it a relentless pursuit of macronutrient magic. Consumers want to eat healthy, whatever that is. In the 1980s and 90s, it was low fat. In this millennium, that’s shifted to low-carb and keto approaches. But a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine offers a clue that […]
