November 21, 2022 — Macronutrient explanations for obesity have had a rough ride. Too much fat was supposed to be the culprit. Then the focus turned to refined carbs and sugar. By themselves, those were not especially enlightening tangents for the public. Some people still push back on excessively fatty foods. Sugar still counts as a dietary bad actor. […]
November 14, 2022 — Two patients. This fits our definition of a small pilot study and Nature Medicine published it recently. In this study, Rajat Shivacharan and colleagues treated binge eating disorder and severe obesity in two patients, using responsive deep brain stimulation. It involves the placement of tiny electrodes in the brain, connected to a pulse generator implanted […]
November 12, 2022 — It’s interesting to trace the slow evolution of thinking about the food environment and efforts to understand why it seems to be triggering ever more obesity. Food policy advocates have shifted from worrying about too much fat, to a focus on sugar, and now toward thinking that the problem must be ultra-processed foods with too […]
October 22, 2022 — Perhaps the most basic question behind this week’s extraordinary meeting at the Royal Society is how did we wind up with so much obesity? John Speakman addressed this on the final day, explaining that the thrifty genotype hypothesis has been popular ever since James Neel proposed it 60 years ago. But it turns out that […]
October 21, 2022 — Among the many interesting presentations from three days of focus on causes of obesity, a just-so story stands out. We heard a number of just-so stories this week – untested fables to explain how we came to have so much obesity. They fit neatly with with an agenda that calls for a discussion of conjectures. […]
October 20, 2022 — Frustration or amazement. Take your pick. John Speakman brought a close to three days of some of the best presentations ever on the causes of obesity and summed things up nicely: “The causes of obesity turn out to be exceedingly complex. Although I’ve learned a lot, we’ve not reached any sort of conclusion about what […]
October 19, 2022 — The second day of the epic meeting on obesity causes at the Royal Society in London came round to the subject that preoccupies almost everyone – food and physical activity. One thing is certain. This is a pair of subjects that evokes strong passions, but the strength of the data often does not match the […]
October 18, 2022 — Yesterday was the first of three days exploring the best scientific thinking in the world on the causes of obesity. From the start, it was plain that obesity presents a puzzle. Physiology, genes, and signals regulate the storage of energy in adipose tissue and thus obesity. But one thing was clear after 12 scientists through […]
October 17, 2022 — “This [obesity] is an important problem and we really still don’t know what causes it,” said John Speakman this morning to open a meeting of the Royal Society in London. Three days of presentations and discussion with some of the most brilliant scientists in the world lie ahead. It”s unfolding on YouTube and a dedicated […]
October 11, 2022 — The toughest question about obesity is also the simplest and most basic. Why do we have so much more of it now? In the spirit of H.L. Mencken, most people presume the answer is also simple. People are just eating too much, moving too little, and they should change their ways. Problem solved. But in […]
