March 4, 2025 — It is about time. The world is waking up to the realization that rising global obesity is not a problem of personal failures. Rather, it is the product of systems with the unintended effect of promoting obesity while denying people care for this chronic disease. At the heart of World Obesity Day 2025 is 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 9, 2025 — April this year will mark 20 years of patient advocacy in obesity by the Obesity Action Coalition. We’ve spent this weekend with the OAC board, looking back and looking forward at advocacy to educate, elevate, and support the voices of people living with obesity. So this is a good time to ask what has changed […]
November 15, 2024 — If one is in the mood to stare into the abyss of futility, the Lancet has a perspective for you on obesity today. The Global Burden of Disease project has a new analysis of obesity in the U.S. It tells us that 76% of adults 25 and older have overweight and obesity. Furthermore, that number […]
October 2, 2024 — We are witnessing something rare. It is a sweeping change in how people are looking at a whole spectrum of chronic diseases. They all tie back to obesity: hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, many cancers, liver disease, kidney disease, and joint disease come quickly to mind. Most of the time, the change in perspective comes in […]
September 13, 2024 — In a perverse way, it is nostalgic. Yesterday, the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) published the latest edition of their annual series: State of Obesity 2024. Though the subtitle is “Better Policies for a Healthier America,” it seems more like a replay of golden oldies in obesity policy. Reading this report, we come away with […]
June 29, 2024 — The revolution in obesity treatment has brought surprising new discoveries along with a lot of unsettling change. Among those discoveries is that food noise is a big part of living with obesity for many people. The noise of food cues all around us sets up intrusive thoughts. It can come to dominate the lived experience […]
December 20, 2023 — Military service in the U.S. has mostly dealt with obesity in a pretty simple way. Keep it out has been the overarching strategy. Every branch of service has different standards, but the fact is that obesity disqualifies many otherwise eligible recruits. For example, a male of average height (5’9″) cannot meet U.S. Army height and […]
November 28, 2023 — Up front, we want to say that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans are incredibly important and we are very grateful for the diverse and talented experts who are working on scientific input for the 2025 edition. They offer a framework for healthy nutrition that guides U.S. (sometimes even global) food policy in ways that are […]
September 22, 2023 — We are at the very beginning of a revolution in obesity treatment. A new perspective article in Nature Medicine points to this and notes that with the great power of new obesity medicines comes great responsibility to fully understand how to best utilize them. All very true. But more to the point, the greatest responsibility […]
