January 29, 2022 — For decades now, public health figures have been talking about an urgent need to prevent and reverse the rise of obesity. A number of U.S. presidents – notably George W. Bush and Barack Obama – have embraced this goal. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a whole division devoted to this goal. […]
January 23, 2022 — Increasingly, we find ourselves burdened by TMI about health, much of which we cannot trust. Such an overload of dubious information makes it hard to make good decisions. Evidence of this is everywhere we turn. People are dying needlessly from COVID after choosing to refuse vaccination. And to be sure, the subject of obesity, weight, […]
January 7, 2022 — We are stuck in an infinite loop, it seems. Yet again, we have a new report in MMWR to tell us that Americans are eating too few fruits and veggies. In fact, only one in ten meet the recommendation in the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans. That’s one and a half to two cups of […]
December 29, 2021 — Following the science is a catchphrase in wide circulation throughout this past year with good reason. Scientists have been warning us about a number of threats to humanity and, at times, we seem to have dismissed those threats. Of course, COVID-19 and climate change are two very prominent examples that come to mind. But many […]
December 4, 2021 — Recent analyses of health policy on obesity present a rather stark picture. Policies aimed at obesity have done more to promote stigma than health. The focus on individuals has not changed for decades, say James Nobles and his colleagues. In fact, they found that 58 percent of research aimed to prove that educating individuals to […]
November 17, 2021 — This was not entirely unexpected, but the jolt is remarkable. New stats are out for the rates of child obesity in England for 2021 and the numbers are up even more than we might have expected. For children aged four to five years, prevalence jumped from 9.9 to 14.4 percent between the 2019/2020 school year […]
November 13, 2021 — Jeff Colgan and Miriam Hinthorn have a provocative new paper suggesting that cheap gas drives obesity prevalence higher. At first glance, the title of their paper borders on sensational: “Is cheap gasoline killing us?” It worked. They made us look, even though (or perhaps because) the implicit claim of cause and effect is so absurd. […]
October 24, 2021 — Two stories about very different industries – one very old and one very new – are demanding our attention right now. The new industry is social media. For weeks now, a litany of stories has made it plain that Facebook has made some bad choices to protect their profits while causing harm. The old industry […]
September 15, 2021 — New data on poverty came out this week and oddly enough, the news was pretty good. Though many aspects of 2020 were really stinky, this data on poverty is pretty sweet. In fact, after accounting for government relief payments, the U.S. poverty rate fell to its lowest rate ever – 9.1 percent. This good news […]
September 12, 2021 — The failure of experts unfolding around us right now is spectacular. In health and public policy, experts have stumbled in very visible ways. Thus, public confidence in expertise is shaky and people are doing some absolutely wacky things, harming themselves and others. But why? No doubt, the reasons are many. However, part of the pattern […]
