October 14, 2018 — Our society seems to have accepted that gaining weight is an inevitable consequence of growing up in a place with easy access to calories and where physical activity plays a declining role in our professional and private lives. Aging just makes weight loss even more difficult. In the short term, the consequences of excess weight […]
October 6, 2018 — The eternal debate grinds on. What determines our destiny more? Nature or nurture? And where does that leave the important matter of free will? When the subject is obesity, this debate is especially contentious. The most common – but incorrect – understanding of obesity holds that it is a failure of willpower. Nature and nurture take a […]
October 2, 2018 — France has one of the lowest obesity rates in the world. But it’s growing and the French parliament knows why. Le Big Mac. Burgers outsold baguettes for the first time ever in 2017. Burgers are on the menus in 85 percent of French restaurants. They sold 1.5 billion of them last year. So naturally, when the parliament […]
September 30, 2018 — If you want to understand where the future lies in obesity medicine, Aaron Kelly suggests you look closely at precision medicine. At the fall summit of the Obesity Medicine Association yesterday, Kelly offered a tantalizing overview of this approach. But for now, he cautioned, clinicians have to fall back on a more pragmatic approach. In […]
September 21, 2018 — Perhaps your mother told you cleanliness is next to godliness. That concept found its way into a 1778 sermon by John Wesley. But it’s even older than that. Ancient Babylonian and Hebrew religious texts have the earliest references. Now, CMAJ wants to put cleanliness next to obesity. Could there be a clean connection? An Association with […]
September 11, 2018 — Ever increasing reliance on restaurant food is high on just about everyone’s list of suspects to blame for rising obesity. But what’s the right response? One answer, from CSPI, is to call out ridiculously unhealthy menu items. CSPI unveiled its latest lineup of absurd entrees last week. 2018 Xtreme Eating Awards Truly, the winners on […]
September 3, 2018 — Obesity is a condition that we largely inherit. But that’s a tough concept for some folks to accept. Even the AHA misclassifies BMI as a “health behavior” – a mistake we keep hoping it will correct. Meanwhile, contrary evidence keeps coming. Brains, behaviors, and BMI are heritable and related. Neurologic and Behavioral Dimensions of Obesity For […]
August 20, 2018 — Ask a thoughtful scientist precisely what has brought us a global pandemic of obesity and you are likely to get an ambiguous answer. We have plenty of suspects. But no sinuglar culprit. So the honest answer is IDK. Faking It vs “I Don’t Know” Most often, neither journalists nor policymakers let the facts get in […]
August 8, 2018 — At the National Academy of Sciences yesterday, the Roundtable on Obesity Solutions got a bit of a jolt. It came in the form of an afternoon spent reflecting on the counterintuitive physiology of obesity. One roundtable member summed it up nicely. “This way of thinking about obesity just smashes our old models for solving the […]
July 11, 2018 — New data on almost 13 million people, from 200 countries around the world, points to a tenfold increase in rates of obesity among children and adolescents over the last four decades. This is the largest study of its kind and it paints a startling and depressing picture of a world with soaring childhood obesity. The […]
