August 10, 2024 — This is an impressive sales push. A diet of soups and shakes offers a brilliant path to weight loss, changing the lives of people with obesity and diabetes. So says the director of the NHS Type 2 Diabetes Path to Remission program, Clare Hambling: “It’s brilliant that these findings show a large number of those […]
June 21, 2024 — This week in JAMA, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) published an evidence review and recommendation for youth with obesity. In a word, it is disappointing. The task force seems to have completely lost touch with advances in obesity care in young persons. They recommend only that youth with a BMI in the […]
May 26, 2024 — Skimming the headlines, it would be easy to think that the combination of mobile phones and social media are responsible for quite a range of our current ills – including mental health and obesity. If you want to dig deeper, you can find a whole tome on the subject from Jonathan Haidt. He has woven […]
October 22, 2023 — “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” It is an ancient but fair question. It comes to mind as we read mind-numbing headlines asserting that the scientific advisory committee for the 2025 dietary guidelines is “rife with” and “plagued” by conflict of […]
July 5, 2023 — IARC, the agency of the World Health Organization (WHO) responsible for research on causes of cancer, is preparing to issue a determination that aspartame is “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” It will have lots of company on their lists of definite, probable, or possible carcinogens. Cell phones, sunlight, red meat, and hot dogs all enjoy this […]
June 9, 2023 — We say it over and over again. Obesity is a heterogeneous disease. But it seems never to sink in. Perhaps this is because of the irresistible attraction of the idea that one size fits all – or at least it ought to. To make matters worse, the one-size thinking coming at us right now for […]
April 18, 2023 — Consider these two competing headlines. In the Washington Post, Kate Cohen tells us “It’s time to cancel diet culture.” Then with a press release about new papers in Nature Medicine, researchers tell us “Most new Type 2 diabetes cases attributable to suboptimal diet.” It’s a fascinating mashup of causality, attribution, and diet culture. On one […]
April 2, 2023 — We are living in an age of low trust. Trust in scientists declined through the pandemic and around the world, trust in elected officials registers at very low levels. Because of this, we are absolutely not surprised with the frequent finger-pointing and stories about conflicts of interest in nutrition and obesity. These are subjects that […]
March 19, 2023 — People want to be seen and heard. To feel like they matter. But in research and policy related to obesity, this fact was long neglected for many reasons. The principal reasons have much to do with stigma and the explicit dehumanization of people with this disease. With explicit efforts to overcome these issues, we see […]
February 18, 2023 — Often indirectly, but sometimes directly, we hear from true believers in concepts attached to obesity, nutrition, and public policy. The embedded question is “Why do you doubt this article of faith?” Among the many articles of faith in this realm is the belief that if we deliver just the right education or just the right […]
