July 19, 2019 — Cutting as few as 300 calories from the daily diet might offer significant health benefits – even for people with a BMI in the normal or only mildly overweight range. That’s the primary finding of a new 2-year RCT in Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology. Is this groundbreaking research? Or, is restricting calories an impractical option […]
July 10, 2019 — Regarding obesity as a disease is associated with lower weight bias among physicians. That’s the title of a new study in Stigma and Health. Before now, researchers have had experimental evidence. They’ve shown that positioning obesity as a disease could reduce weight stigma and bias. Now, in addition, this new study gives us real world […]
June 28, 2019 — It’s all so simple. We can fight obesity with a single cup of coffee! It’s a “fat-burning, obesity-fighting beverage.” So say the headlines about a study of brown fat activation with caffeine. This new study in Scientific Reports, hyped by a press release from the University of Nottingham, has unleashed a flood of sensational headlines […]
June 12, 2019 — Ultra-processed food is such an ugly phrase. Could this friendly little goldfish cracker really be such a threat to health? Defining that threat was the subject of a very collegial, but intense discussion on the closing day of Nutrition 2019 between Kevin Hall and Mike Gibney. But it was hardly confined to that one session. […]
June 11, 2019 — It was quite a splash. Near simultaneous presentations in Baltimore and San Francisco. For the last two days, Tim Spector and colleagues have been busy presenting data from an ambitious study of personalized nutrition. They had a late breaking poster at the American Diabetes Association meeting. Also, they made two presentations at American Society of […]
May 23, 2019 — Objectivity is tough. For a case in point, let’s look at how people are processing new data from Kevin Hall and colleagues on ultra-processed foods. It’s important. For the first time, we have good data to say that these foods can cause weight gain. Before we had speculation. Now we have good, experimental evidence. Some […]
April 19, 2019 — Facts are stubborn because they’re real. Two new studies in Cell today shine a light on a basic fact about obesity that we’ve known for decades. Obesity is a highly heritable condition. Roughly 70 percent of a person’s risk of obesity is driven by the genes they inherit. But some people work awfully hard to […]
April 12, 2019 — It’s been a long road for Intercept Pharmaceuticals to develop an important advance for treating NASH (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis). Five years ago this little startup company shocked the world when a monitoring board stopped a placebo-controlled study because their drug (obeticholic acid or OCA) had worked so well. A final round of 64 liver biopsies were […]
April 9, 2019 — The logic is inescapable. Type 2 diabetes is a cruel, progressive disease that slowly, but surely destroys a body from the inside out.Strokes, heart disease, amputations, organ failure – they’re all part of a bleak picture. Intensive medical care can slow it down. But metabolic surgery can put it into remission. Three years ago, a […]
April 4, 2019 — It’s a impressive factoid. According to a new study in Lancet, poor diets are a factor in one fifth of the world’s deaths every year. The biggest culprits are too much salt, along with too little fruit and whole grains. All of this comes from the Global Burden of Disease project at the University of […]
