Posts Tagged ‘scientific controversy’

FNCE: Skeptical About Dire Risks from Ultra-Processed Foods?

October 7, 2024 — Public discourse about nutrition and health seems to go through waves of fear. There was the fear of fat that began in the 1980s. In the early 2000s, that wave subsided and the fear of sugar and carbs swept us all up with a fever to count carbs and especially, grams of added sugars. Though […]

Debunking the Blue Zone Diet and Winning an Ig Nobel Prize

September 16, 2024 — From the swimming habits of dead trout to the revelation that some mammals can breathe through their backsides, a group of leading leftfield scientists have been taking their bows at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the 34th annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Not to be confused with an actual Nobel prize, the Ig Nobel […]

Nutrition 2024: Ultra-Processed Associations and Puzzles

July 1, 2024 — Two presentations of research about ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and health at Nutrition 2024 offer associations and puzzles that should make us think twice about sweeping generalizations on this subject. Increased Death On one hand, Erikka Loftfield presented data from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study in which she found an association of consuming ultra-processed foods […]

Prediction: Guidelines Will Disappoint Ultra-Processed Hardliners

May 31, 2024 — It’s difficult to make predictions – especially about the future. Nonetheless, it’s not hard to see that the new 2025 edition of dietary guidelines will disappoint ultra-processed hardliners. The rhetoric from that sector sounds increasingly like something from a highly polarized presidential campaign. We pity the nutrition scientists and clinicians who have the hard job […]

Loose Takes on a Study of Red Meat and Type 2 Diabetes

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 […]

Humility to Know What We Don’t Know About Obesity

July 9, 2023 — This is a heady time for people pursuing scientific insights into obesity. Better knowledge of the physiology that regulates healthy weight and adiposity has brought breakthroughs in medicine for obesity. Some people living with great harms from obesity are finding profound benefits because of these advances. Further advances are on the way. Yet all this […]

AMA Takes a Swipe at Misuse of the Feeble BMI

June 15, 2023 — BMI seems to be everyone’s favorite target for abuse these days. Depending on whom you listen to, it’s racist, sexist, useless, or useful.  Nobody really stands up for it, except as an simple, objective measure of weight for height. Now, the AMA decided to caution doctors about the misuse of BMI as a surrogate for […]

The Wisdom of Collaborating with Adversaries

December 11, 2022 — “Let’s just agree to disagree” is an expression of utter nonsense, says Professor David Allison in an introduction to the concept of adversarial collaboration. Of course, he is describing this in the context of scientific controversies. And in obesity and nutrition research, it’s quite easy to construct a list of subjects on which the disagreements […]

Sweeteners: Different Effects in Different People?

August 23, 2022 — To start an impassioned discussion on nutrition is easy. Bring up non-nutritive sweeteners. Some people see them as a plague in the food supply. Others insist upon evidence to back up such dire claims and can see only fragments propping up presumptions about harms that are yet to be documented. But once again, a study […]

Who Cares About Complexity and Nuance?

August 21, 2022 — Good and bad, healthy and toxic, clean and dirty, right and wrong. These are the kinds of distinctions the public, pundits, and policy makers can embrace. We too like simple guideposts – when they’re valid. But standing in the way of finding such simple guidance is a lot of complexity and nuance on many difficult […]