June 20, 2019 — Confirmation bias is a potent motivator. Pollsters get fired when their polls don’t tell the right story. Industry scientists may do better when they find results to advance an employer’s interests. Academics can prosper when they produce evidence to support their hypotheses. And government researchers may feel more job security when their work aligns with […]
June 12, 2019 — Ultra-processed food is such an ugly phrase. Could this friendly little goldfish cracker really be such a threat to health? Defining that threat was the subject of a very collegial, but intense discussion on the closing day of Nutrition 2019 between Kevin Hall and Mike Gibney. But it was hardly confined to that one session. […]
June 8, 2019 — A new study in Diabetes Care is telling us that irregular sleep patterns have a clear association with obesity and metabolic dysfunction. It’s more than just how much we sleep. In fact, this study is all about the regularity of sleep patterns. So does this mean that irregular sleeping patterns will cause obesity? Not exactly. […]
May 27, 2019 — Can we please retire the mantra of making the healthy choice the easy choice? It’s a great concept. Maybe it’s even a good marketing tagline…if you’re a food marketer. But for reducing obesity, it seems more and more like Eat-Less-Move-More version 2.0. Rather than pointing fingers at people for making “unhealthy choices,” we’ve moved to […]
May 23, 2019 — Objectivity is tough. For a case in point, let’s look at how people are processing new data from Kevin Hall and colleagues on ultra-processed foods. It’s important. For the first time, we have good data to say that these foods can cause weight gain. Before we had speculation. Now we have good, experimental evidence. Some […]
May 21, 2019 — Another solution to obesity popped up in the headlines today. “Student Loses 115 Lbs. by Walking to High School Every Day,” says People magazine. That headline happened to coincide with the release of a new study in BMC Public Health. A press release from the University of Cambridge tells us: Children who regularly walk or […]
May 17, 2019 — Kevin Hall is a bit of a myth buster. In a number of studies, he has put popular ideas about obesity and nutrition under the microscope of objective data. And by doing so, he proved them wrong. But in a new study published yesterday, he proved himself wrong about ultra-processed food. In a carefully controlled […]
May 9, 2019 — “There’s a heck of a lot of bias among a lot of researchers,” Professor Barry Popkin tells us. On the subject of what’s driving global obesity prevalence, he’s certainly right. Is it the urbanization? To be sure, many authoritative voices promote that view. But it’s just not that simple. A new paper, published yesterday in […]
May 5, 2019 — Beating up on carbs is a popular pastime these days. The nutrition guys at Harvard seem to hate potatoes. And rice sometimes gets a bad rap – especially white rice. But at ECO 2019 last week, we heard a different story. Increasing the world’s supply of rice might actually reduce the world’s prevalence of obesity, […]
April 27, 2019 — For reasons we cannot fathom, Jay Leno decided to deliver a rant about “this disturbing trend of gluttony” that he supposes is the root cause of obesity. Thanks, Jay. But you’re not helping. Food marketers might be pushing a lot of disgusting “innovations,” but gluttony is not the root cause of obesity. And rants about […]
