September 20, 2021 — The concept of food addiction holds strong sway in popular culture. You can find tips for overcoming it. WebMD will tell you how to diagnose and treat it. Psychiatrist Anna Lembke has a book to sell you. In Dopamine Nation, she describes the source of addictive behaviors linked to food, phones, and sex. It was […]
September 14, 2021 — Simplicity sells while complexity crashes. So for years, a simple idea has dominated our thinking about obesity. It is merely a matter of letting the balance of calories in and out – energy balance – get out of hand. For decades, scientists have known that the story is more complex, but simplicity has staying power. […]
September 2, 2021 — Better living through chemistry is a catchphrase that takes us back to a time before obesity was really taking off in America. DuPont dropped that phrase in 1982. But the chemistry that may help bring us more adiposity is starting to get some serious attention. Writing in Obesity Reviews, Kelly Brownell and Tim Lobstein are […]
August 13, 2021 — An impressive new study published today in Science has researchers feeling a bit giddy. “Blown away” was the sentiment Rozalyn Anderson expressed to the New York Times about the study. “A pivotal paper,” said Leanne Redman, adding that it will shape textbooks for years to come. Herman Pontzer and a remarkable array of collaborators analyzed […]
August 12, 2021 — Who would have guessed that makeup might contribute to making us fat? A new report in Environmental Science and Technology Letters gives us pause. The authors find that chemicals known as PFAS are present in more than half of a sample of 231 cosmetics they tested. PFAS is short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They’ve […]
August 10, 2021 — We have food systems that have done a fine job of meeting goals to provide abundant quantities of nourishment. But there is broad agreement that this abundant food supply has fueled global growth in obesity. So the question becomes what to do about it. Can we fix food systems by shifting from a mission to […]
July 24, 2021 — America has some of the cheapest food in the world. Out of pocket, we spend less for food than people in any other country in the world. Food beckons us to eat everywhere we turn. But the actual cost of cheap food can be quite high. A new report from the Rockefeller Foundation tells us […]
July 6, 2021 — Cambridge Professor Sadaf Farooqi calls it a tour de force of genetics. Researchers from Regeneron and nine international research centers sequenced genetic exomes in 645,626 persons. With this painstaking research, they’ve found genetic sequences that protect some people from obesity. These sequences hard wire a person for leanness. In a world that prizes a lean […]
May 24, 2021 — Few subjects rouse more passion than the role of carbs in obesity. Legions of tweeters on Twitter will swarm when the subject comes up. They’re eager to prevail when anyone questions the universal effectiveness of low carb diets. A more nuanced but equally passionate (both pro and con) version of this struggle swirls around the […]
May 4, 2021 — Patterns of disparities surround us so completely that we become immune to them. In fact, disparities even extend to the air we breathe. People of color have dirtier air to breathe and that contributes to disparities in health in countless ways. New research offers evidence that air pollution contributes to the risk of childhood obesity. […]
