Posts Tagged ‘scientific debate’

With the Lancet Commission’s definition and criteria for diagnosing clinical obesity, Stat News says the Commission has sparked “a global debate among experts.” The latest flare-up comes from a clinical practice guideline communication the Endocrine Society published last week. In this guidance, the authors explain that the society chose to pause before fully endorsing the […]

A new systematic review in Annals of Internal Medicine underscores something we’ve long said in obesity and nutrition science. The science of saturated fat is complex, and nuance is its first casualty when the headlines start spinning. A Risk-Stratified Analysis Steen and colleagues conducted a risk-stratified analysis of 17 randomized trials. It is the largest […]

Soybean oil is the most common cooking oil in the American food supply. By far. If you are consuming a lot of ultra-processed foods, you are consuming a lot of soybean oil. Now, the University of California at Riverside says that a new study links soybean oil to obesity. Specifically, scientists at the university have […]

“Big food is taking over,” says Barry Popkin, adding an exclamation point in the New York Times to a growing roar of condemnation for ultra-processed foods. The occasion for this is the publication of three new papers – plus an editorial – all at once in The Lancet this week. Popkin was an author on […]

It was fascinating yesterday hearing former FDA Commissioner David Kessler close out a symposium on food noise, chatting about his views on healthy weight. He marvelled at the size of the problem and how, after years of studying it, people have difficulty with agreeing on a definition for “clinical obesity.” How hard can it be? […]

Six months have passed since the Lancet Commission on the definition of clinical obesity aimed to “settle the ongoing dispute around the idea of obesity as a disease.” At the time, we had doubts about this new definition “settling” disputes about defining obesity. Indeed, we have seen lots of vigorous discussion, but not a lot […]

It is really easy to beat up on the lowly BMI. The Lancet Commission on clinical obesity gently kicked it to the curb by saying BMI “can both overestimate and underestimate adiposity” and thus declared its obsolescence as a singular measure for excess adiposity. “Excess adiposity should be confirmed by either direct measurement of body […]

“It takes years for scientists to prove things we’ve always known were true – like food addiction.” This thought emerged from the meeting this week of the Roundtable on Obesity Solutions. The current science of food noise was a focus. In the course of some outstanding presentations, three distinct and distinctly challenging concepts mixed together […]

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 […]

In recent years, a troubling trend has emerged – a growing distrust in health science, particularly in fields like nutrition and obesity. This skepticism isn’t just about healthy debate or constructive criticism. It’s about an erosion of confidence in scientific expertise. In the age of social media and viral misinformation, unreasonable doubts have real consequences […]