September 11, 2025 — Toxic is one of those clickbait words that ironically fuels poisonous rhetoric on the very nuanced subject of food and health. Insert “toxic” into a conversation and nuance will disappear. Robert Lustig famously used the word “toxic” to inject hyperbole into food policy when he proclaimed that sugar is toxic. Now we have a demagogue […]
August 6, 2025 — We have a great privilege this week to spend time in Canberra (and Sydney), delivering two invited presentations and finally meeting up with quite a number of people we have known only virtually. Now in person. The occasion is the annual meeting of ANZMOSS – the Australian and New Zealand Metabolic and Obesity Surgery Society. […]
June 4, 2025 — It is fascinating. Nutrition 2025 concluded yesterday in Orlando and even though the conference is all about nutrition research, an intense interest in the interaction of GLP-1 medicines with nutrition was a theme in the meeting from its very start all the way to the end. At the end, with two distinguished obesity researchers, Randy […]
January 28, 2025 — It is fascinating to watch the public discourse about newly proposed criteria from the Lancet Commission for a clinical diagnosis of obesity unfold. The headline is easy. “It’s time to move beyond BMI alone.” The response to that idea has been clear and unmistakable: “What took so long?” But then comes the hard part that […]
January 21, 2025 — In case you missed it, we are going through a transition in American government. Unlike four years ago, this one is peaceful and we can look forward to four years of a different approach to government in the United States. One of the most unusual facets of this turning point was an eminent scientist, Anthony […]
December 18, 2024 — The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine issued a new, exhaustive report yesterday on alcohol and health. Anticipating pressure for stronger advice against drinking alcohol in the 2025 edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans, Congress asked for this report – perhaps to provide a rationale for toning down any such strong advice. More or […]
October 11, 2024 — Misinformation about obesity trends has us a little cranky. For example, Reason Magazine is telling us, “Obesity in the U.S. is finally declining. You can (probably) thank Ozempic.” This is wrong on both counts. First and most basic, two data points do not make a trend. The latest NHANES data on obesity shows that the […]
September 2, 2024 — It’s true. We have been getting some pretty good news about GLP-1s lately. In persons with prediabetes and obesity, tirzepatide was 94% effective at preventing the development of diabetes. In the SELECT study, semaglutide for obesity might have cut COVID fatalities by a third. So a little exuberance about the potential of GLP-1 medicines is […]
June 12, 2024 — Senator Bernie Sanders doesn’t want to let this go. Novo Nordisk isn’t eager to cut its thousand-dollar list price for Ozempic. Nor is it eager to face a grilling about this in the Senate. So yesterday, Sanders announced that the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee will vote next Tuesday on a subpoena for […]
June 5, 2024 — Big change sometimes happens very quietly. For example, on April 5, the AP Stylebook added a new entry on “obesity, obese, overweight.” It goes into a great deal of detail about language for writing about obesity. But here is the heart of the matter, in the words of the Associated Press stylebook editors: “The phrasing […]
