December 3, 2025 — As the world is coming around to the understanding that public health policy cannot neglect the need for obesity treatment, a question hangs in the air. What does this mean for obesity prevention strategies? This question – together with fast-changing market realities – begs another question. Will prevention policy or market dynamics reduce obesity more? […]
July 22, 2025 — Since forever we have known that obesity is a highly heritable disease. Genes are important, though not solely determinative. They set the table for obesity, but for the most part, it is the environment that serves it up. That’s because the genetic basis for obesity usually comes from multiple genes, not a single gene. So […]
July 13, 2025 — Nudging the behavior of consumers seems like an appealing strategy for overcoming the rise in obesity and the harm it is causing to population health. Apply a little behavioral psychology and voilà! People make healthier choices. The appeal is so strong that the UK government is counting on supermarket nudges to overcome obesity and save […]
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 […]
August 25, 2024 — When neuroscientists coined the phrase brain plasticity, they were certainly not thinking about microplastics accumulating in our brains. But unfortunately, it seems this is a phenomenon with implications we need to study. New NIH-funded research, published as a preprint, suggests these tiny particles are building up at an alarming rate. But it does not tell […]
July 26, 2024 — The rousing success of GLP-1 medicines for obesity and overweight evokes a wide range of feelings. At the National Academy of Sciences this week we heard lamentations from a scholar in exercise physiology. To him, these highly effective treatments are a distraction from the importance of focusing in healthy eating and active living. We hear […]
July 20, 2024 — In a perverse way, policies to address obesity have been effective in the U.S. But only for specific communities. As the recognition of obesity as a threat to public health has grown, some communities have grown more resistant to it. Others have not and disparities in obesity have grown steadily – between rural and urban, […]
June 23, 2024 — A new study presented at the American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions this weekend shows us quite clearly that bisphenol A (BPA) causes insulin resistance. So we scratch our heads and wonder. Why do we keep on drinking it? This is no trivial observational study of correlations that would be easy to dismiss. Rather, it is […]
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 […]
January 17, 2023 — The food policy spin machine was in overdrive a few years ago, promoting food labeling policies enacted in Chile. “Latin America’s war on obesity could be a model for U.S.,” gushed the Washington Post. Pointing to a new study in PLOS Medicine, Barry Popkin told the Post that the food labeling law in Chile was […]
