March 29, 2024 — A fascinating new study is prompting some very clickable headlines this week. It is all about the interaction of genetic risk for obesity and physical activity. It shows that in people with higher genetic risk scores for obesity, the association between physical activity (using daily step counts as a surrogate) and BMI is different than […]
March 26, 2024 — Eight states have moved to provide nutritious meals at school for free to all students. A few simple reasons make it clear enough that this is a good idea. It reduces the stigma attached to receiving free school meals while improving food security for children from low-income families. Furthermore, nutrition quality goes up for all […]
March 17, 2024 — Professor Bruce Hood at the University of Bristol wants us to know that we can indeed learn to be happier. He has been teaching the Science of Happiness there since 2018 and measuring the results over time. Collaborating with Catherine Hobbs, Sarah Jelbert, and Laurie Santos in Higher Education, he reports that coursework in positive […]
March 2, 2024 — Nutrition research in medical journals follows trends that define what the cognoscenti can regard healthy – or not. For decades, the bad stuff was fat. Then we switched to the sugar is toxic meme and that was the preoccupation through the 2010s. Now there can be no doubt. Research on ultra-processed foods is providing a steady […]
February 29, 2024 — What could explain the observation that self-reports of exercise predict less of a benefit for men than women? In the Journal of the American College of Cardiology researchers nimbly leap to a conclusion that women get greater gains in mortality risk reduction from “equivalent doses” of physical activity. But would men exaggerate their self-reports? When […]
February 10, 2024 — The setup has been great. Kimchi lands near the top of the list of “must-eat fermented foods for a healthy gut.” On top of that, nutrition gurus advise us “food is medicine” and a fermented food diet “increases microbiome diversity and decreases inflammatory proteins.” So we should be ready to believe when a study tells […]
February 5, 2024 — The perils of ultra-processed foods received widespread coverage in recent months – thanks in no small part to the publication and promotion of TV presenter and doctor of virology Chris Van Tulleken’s book Ultra-Processed People. Ultra-processed foods, in short, are commercially manufactured food products that include ingredients you wouldn’t cook with at home. Some of this […]
January 20, 2024 — We do admire the tenacity of folks who promote the virtues of a plant-based diet. But that admiration stops when we move on to the dimension of scientific rigor and objectivity. In BMJ Nutrition, Prevention, and Health, a group of researchers are claiming that plant-based diets “may be considered protective against COVID-19 infection.” The only […]
October 25, 2023 — It’s a popular cause. Red meat production is a problem for the climate. Add that to ethical concerns some people have about consuming meat, and the push to reduce red meat consumption makes total sense. But when people start spinning misleading narratives about observational research and using them to promote this otherwise worthy idea, they’re […]
September 25, 2023 — “Morning workouts turbocharge the benefits of exercise,” says Psychology Today. A litany of headlines like this have been crossing our screen for weeks now. They are insistent. “The early bird gets the worm – and sees better workout results,” said People magazine. “This is the best time of day to work out if you want […]
