July 6, 2025 — In the midst of a lot of blather that assigns magical medical properties to food, its downright refreshing to read reflections from Tamar Haspel on the nature of food in Italy – and how people enjoy their food in that country. It is the food environment in Italy, not the food itself, that seems to […]
June 8, 2025 — This headline from the University of Oklahoma captured our attention: “Fatty acid in olive oil drives obesity.” It was even more attractive when we read and understood this was not more of the linoleic acid and seed oils dogma bubbling up. It was a headline prompted by a new study of oleic acid and molecular […]
May 14, 2025 — New studies released yesterday at ECO2025 remind us doctors and other health professionals often miss things that are quite obvious to people living with obesity. For one thing, there is the phenomenon of food noise. It’s very real for many people with obesity. For health professionals, it can seem a bit abstract. Then there is […]
May 8, 2025 — David Kessler is the former FDA Commissioner who laid the groundwork for aggressive tobacco regulation with a simple metaphor. He argued that nicotine is addictive like heroin or cocaine. Now he and many others are working to stretch that metaphor to warn the public about addictive junk food. It is a simple and very appealing […]
April 8, 2025 — We find ourselves wondering, as Marion Nestle does, about the unlikely alignment of RFK’s MAHA concept with some of the ideas about food policy she has been advocating for decades. We do not always agree, but we have long admired Nestle’s convictions in taking on problems with food systems and the business model of the […]
February 16, 2025 — “Poor diet is the leading cause of mortality in the U.S. due to the direct relationship with diet-related chronic diseases,” write Emily Matthews and Emma Kurnat-Thoma for Frontiers in Public Health. At the top of the list of “diet-related chronic diseases” is obesity, because it leads to so many other chronic health problems, disability, and […]
February 6, 2025 — From the category of stuff that can’t be good. a study in Nature Medicine this week documents a spoonful of microplastics accumulating in an typical human brain. Alexander Nihart and colleagues used diverse methods to detect microplastics in various tissues (kidney, liver, and brain) of deceased individuals from 2016 and 2024. They found these particles […]
December 31, 2024 — The best thing about this day is that we can finally say we are done with 2024. We can savor the good news it brought and put the bad behind us. And while you are shaking off that bad news, we want to offer you some bad ideas on obesity, nutrition, and health that perhaps […]
December 9, 2024 — Eat healthy and get your exercise. It is a straightforward framework for dealing with obesity. But that simple prescription of diet and exercise for preventing obesity overlooks a critical factor – the prolonged sitting time very often required by work and school. A recent study of data from young adult twins showed that sitting time […]
December 3, 2024 — “This seems like a landmark paper in my books and a call from the other side of the energy balance equation. We seem built to be a highly physically active species, not sedentary office workers and couch dwellers.” With these words, Professor Emeritus Jennie Brand-Miller seized our attention today. She was writing about a new […]
