April 5, 2018 — Headlines tell us that the Netherlands has obesity under control. The most recent dispatch comes from BBC. Earlier this week it ran a story telling us “How Amsterdam is reducing childhood obesity.” We wonder. Has the Netherlands found the secret sauce for reversing obesity trends? Objective Evidence Is Important This cycle of Mission Accomplished headlines […]
March 28, 2018 — In the latest issue of Obesity, Nathan Berger provides a very clear picture of how obesity is bringing cancer into a younger population. He assembles evidence from more than 100 publications to demonstrate that 13 types of malignancies are shifting into younger age groups. Accelerating Progression Berger examines more than just the epidemiology that links […]
March 16, 2018 — Perhaps you’ve noticed. Popular culture has embraced fitness. Athleisure is everywhere in fashion. Gyms are enjoying a prolonged trend of seemingly limitless membership growth. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that the number or people who say they are meeting guidelines for physical activity is growing. But is our popular fitness culture putting a dent […]
March 2, 2018 — Public concern can be a potent force for action. Former First Lady Michelle Obama used her Let’s Move! campaign to rally concern about childhood obesity into action for better childhood nutrition. Unfortunately, recent studies have made it clear that the number of children living with obesity is not declining. This seems to be true across all […]
January 16, 2018 — American lives have grown shorter for the second year in a row. When CDC issued these statistics in December, all the talk was about drug overdoses. That’s certainly a factor. But a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences points to growing obesity rates for peeling away nearly a year […]
October 17, 2017 — Hope and facts live together in an uneasy relationship. We have an excellent example before us as we digest the latest trends in childhood obesity. Specifically, we’re looking at the prevalence in children between the ages of two and five. In new statistics for 2016, the number reached a new high: 13.9%. Perhaps you recall […]
October 13, 2017 — Happy talk makes us impatient. Today, new data on obesity are out from the CDC and they are not good. Yet again, the U.S. is setting new records for obesity rates. Among adults the prevalence is now up to 39.6%. For children and youth, it’s up to 18.5%. Most notably, a big jump came in […]
September 5, 2017 — The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has a rising concern about children with high blood pressure. So they have issued new guidelines that could lead to a million or more new diagnoses. Rising in Parallel with Severe Childhood Obesity The best estimates suggest that 3.5% of children in the U.S. have high blood pressure. That […]
July 19, 2017 — America is heading at a breakneck pace toward an awesome milestone – 100 million Americans with diabetes. According to a new CDC report, 30 million have it already. Another 84 million are well on their way. They have prediabetes – elevated blood sugar that makes it very likely for a person to develop full-blown type 2 diabetes. […]
June 14, 2017 — Obesity has many complications, but here’s one that’s entirely unnecessary – whiplash. Health reporters routinely take the public through wild gyrations of hope and despair in describing obesity trends. This week we have another round of such reporting on a new study and commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine. Spoiler alert: the light at […]
