June 13, 2023 — We are in the midst of a great deal of cognitive dissonance about obesity. Part of the boilerplate description is that it is simply a dietary disease. But recent scientific and therapeutic advances tell a different story – that obesity is just as much a disease of altered brain function as it is a dietary […]
May 19, 2023 — One question that holds us captive in obesity is the question of its origins. Why has its prevalence been rising so relentlessly now for decades? At ECO2023, this question inserted itself into one of the major themes of the meeting – a pursuit of the determinants of obesity. Commercial Determinants Emma Boyland and Aileen McGloin […]
May 7, 2023 — One of the fundamental assumptions we make about the origins of the rise in obesity is that the food supply has changed in ways that trigger more obesity in more people. You might say it is the foundation upon which most public health experts and policy makers build their thinking about this problem. But what […]
May 3, 2023 — We have received enough lectures for a lifetime from people who know just what the root cause of obesity is. The lecturers know the cause and they know the solution: tax, nudge, cajole, and educate people to follow a healthier diet. Eat less of that awful ultra-processed food. But the presumption that it’s all about […]
May 2, 2023 — “Especially for children, diet and lifestyle must remain at the forefront of obesity prevention and treatment.” This conviction, summing up a new editorial in JAMA, beautifully captures the discomfort that the availability of more effective treatments for obesity causes. The belief persists that diets and exercise are the right way to reverse obesity. So the […]
April 26, 2023 — Tamar Haspel is angry. She notes that many of the people expressing righteous concerns about advanced obesity medicines are also folks who have a book to sell you. Or a diet or a supplement or an exercise program. Personal convictions, money, and the conflicts that go with all of that are a jumbled mess when […]
April 24, 2023 — For an accounting for the food that is fueling a relentless rise in obesity, NIH researcher Kevin Hall is a good source. At the Obesity Medicine 2023 conference in New York Saturday morning, this is exactly what we heard. Systematically, Hall described his work to understand how food can be an important input into a […]
April 23, 2023 — Camilla Kingdon is president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and she has the cause of the whole childhood obesity thing figured out. “The primary cause is clear,” she writes in the Guardian. It’s poverty. She describes how her thinking has evolved: “In the last few years, I have been forced to […]
April 22, 2023 — An “impassioned polemic” is headed our way from British media doctor Chris van Tulleken and it aims to have us excise ultra-processed from our dietary habits. No doubt about it, ultra-processed food wins the prize for today’s best food boogeyman, but how wise is this bit of food fear based on correlation without a cause. […]
April 21, 2023 — Could it be that exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals such as PFAS has more of an effect on body weight and adiposity than diet? Philippe Grandjean and colleagues this week published a new study in Obesity that points to this possibility. Grandjean tells us: “We’ve previously shown that children with increased PFAS concentrations tend to […]
