September 25, 2022 — An impressive amount of thought and effort goes into messaging about health. Honorable people work diligently to move the population toward healthier lives. They craft messages for leading people to stop smoking, get their vaccinations, eat healthy, stay active and fit. The creativity and strategic skill are impressive. But one dimension of effective and sustainable […]
September 19, 2022 — Will we ever tire of debating the value of eating breakfast for keeping our weight in check? So far, it seems not. In fact, people seem to be rehashing the same old arguments yet again, based on the results from a new study in Cell Metabolism. Is it a good idea to eat breakfast like […]
September 17, 2022 — Yesterday, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review conducted an impressive public hearing on the effectiveness and value of obesity medicines. ICER deserves credit for developing a complex and remarkably transparent model for objectively evaluating this. However, caution is necessary. This model is sufficiently complex to obscure two important facts about obesity and its treatment. […]
July 31, 2022 — Every discussion, every meeting that touches on childhood obesity brings a difficult mixture of encouragement and frustration. The encouragement comes from engagement with good people who have a genuine desire to do the right thing for our children. Everybody wants to see the next generation of children be healthier and have more opportunities than those […]
July 3, 2022 — The script is clear enough. Childhood obesity is a “serious and growing concern.” Its effects can be “devastating,” say the authors of a recent commentary on USPSTF guidelines for it. So the script from the USPSTF tells pediatricians that they should screen for obesity starting at the age of six and refer children to behavioral […]
June 12, 2022 — Talk is cheap. But history tells us that cheap talk doesn’t solve wicked problems. That’s true whether the problem is the relentlessly rising health harms of obesity or the current hot topic – inflation. The notoriously hollow Whip Inflation Now campaign of Gerald Ford seems like a model for equally ineffective campaigns aspiring to overcome […]
May 20, 2022 — Authored by Patrick Stokes, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Deakin University Every year, I try to do at least two things with my students at least once. Firstly, I make a point of addressing them as “philosophers” – a bit cheesy, but hopefully it encourages active learning. Secondly, I say something like this: “I’m sure you’ve […]
April 3, 2022 — Policies to address obesity across the whole population often make perfect sense to the people who are promoting them. But often, they run into resistance from people looking at obesity from a very different place. Writing in the Guardian, Clare Finney offers a case in point: “For the 1.25 million men and women with eating […]
March 30, 2022 — Objectivity about the risks of drinking alcohol is not easy to find. Just like sweet beverages, alcohol has been part of human culture and a source of pleasure for thousands of years. An awareness of its health risks also has a very long history. Because humans can rationalize just about anything, we embrace assurances from […]
March 28, 2022 — A new study in Health Economics reminds us we’re still looking for evidence for the health effect of sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxes. It hasn’t shown up yet. But we’re still waiting hopefully. This latest study comes from John Cawley, Michael Daly, and Rebecca Thornton. They estimated the effect of an SSB Tax in Mauritius on […]
