September 7, 2023 — The Wegovy brand of semaglutide has finally come to the UK this week – albeit in limited quantities. So in the Guardian, Zoe Williams wonders if this will mean the end to blathering about obesity: “Despite this being a breakthrough, it is going to pose an immense challenge to those, in medicine and beyond, who […]
April 16, 2023 — The availability of advanced medicines for obesity presents a dilemma. On one hand, people are accustomed to both patronizing and disparaging a diverse industry devoted to helping people lose weight. It ranges from the obvious frauds of dietary supplements that promise to help people lose weight quickly and permanently to behavioral support programs like Weight […]
March 10, 2023 — Anyone who doesn’t think a major shift in public perceptions about obesity is not underway has simply not been paying attention. Public discourse about this complex chronic disease is more intense (albeit sometimes frustrating) than we have seen in more than two decades of work on obesity. We see a pattern of three threads in […]
March 4, 2023 — Today – World Obesity Day – is all about changing perspectives. The World Obesity Federation deserves credit for a well-chosen theme, because in the face of much new evidence about obesity, old perspectives are crashing into newer ones driven by evidence and science. Research has brought us new options for treating obesity more safely and […]
February 10, 2023 — We are in the midst of a fundamental change in the understanding of obesity. Years of hand-wringing – with urgent calls to eat less and move more – promoted weight stigma more than it reduced obesity prevalence. To counter this, the trademarked Health at Every Size (HAES) movement rose up to call out the mistake […]
January 27, 2023 — We count on newspapers for coming up with sensational headlines to inflame passions. Opinion pages seldom disappoint. But those flames of passion very often bring more heat than light. Such was the case yesterday when the New York Times published a sensational headline for an opinion article by a HAES activist, Virginia Sole-Smith. She wants […]
January 16, 2022 — Critical thinking is vital for progress. It really doesn’t matter whether the goal is overcoming obesity, COVID, or economic hardship. Rigorous, objective analysis allows us to recognize the truth of the situation we’re dealing with and then find solutions. But that’s not the end of the story, because the behavior that flows from critical thinking […]
