January 9, 2022 — “Know that BMI is BS.” On NPR’s Life Kit podcast, that’s the advice for coping with the boogeyman of diet culture. Whatever diet culture is, in this season of anxiety about weight and health, it certainly seems to be on the minds of many influencers. So if one defines diet culture as a preoccupation with […]
November 9, 2021 — A few weeks ago, nutrition researchers at Tufts released Food Compass. It is a complex algorithm for scoring the healthfulness of foods on a scale of 1 to 100. I’ve not yet heard a positive assessment from RDN colleagues. The tool has generated anger and rage on Twitter, which is to be expected. Personally I […]
September 24, 2021 — Julia Child may have had it right. Way back in 1990, she had serious questions about dietary guidance to avoid saturated fat. At a food event in 1990, she described the response to her renowned cooking: “I hear them saying, ‘Here comes Julia, with all the cream and butter.’ “Everybody is overreacting. If fear of […]
September 20, 2021 — The concept of food addiction holds strong sway in popular culture. You can find tips for overcoming it. WebMD will tell you how to diagnose and treat it. Psychiatrist Anna Lembke has a book to sell you. In Dopamine Nation, she describes the source of addictive behaviors linked to food, phones, and sex. It was […]
September 14, 2021 — Simplicity sells while complexity crashes. So for years, a simple idea has dominated our thinking about obesity. It is merely a matter of letting the balance of calories in and out – energy balance – get out of hand. For decades, scientists have known that the story is more complex, but simplicity has staying power. […]
July 17, 2021 — Back in 2005, new obesity research from CDC produced an unexpected finding. JAMA, a first-rate journal, carefully peer-reviewed and published it. But Harvard’s Walter Willett didn’t like what the data showed. So he mounted an offensive to discredit the researcher and her work. We would call this academic bullying. He called it necessary because his […]
May 24, 2021 — Few subjects rouse more passion than the role of carbs in obesity. Legions of tweeters on Twitter will swarm when the subject comes up. They’re eager to prevail when anyone questions the universal effectiveness of low carb diets. A more nuanced but equally passionate (both pro and con) version of this struggle swirls around the […]
March 9, 2021 — We are learning in so many ways that it’s hard to shake a cult. It might be a cult of personality or a cult around a theory. Right now, one that seems unshakable is the cult of vitamin D. With a frequency that seems daily, we see new studies proclaiming that vitamin D levels predict […]
February 21, 2021 — There’s a new mantra making the rounds, but it’s really not so new. Let’s follow what the science says. That’s well and good, except that the science is seldom as definitive as we would like. In fact, when you dig into the details of any given study, you may find surprises – or more questions […]
January 30, 2021 — Nevermind. As far as we can tell, that’s the bottom line on a convoluted story about data thugs, pajamas, and a provocative study of ultra-processed food. It starts with the study by Kevin Hall et al that found ultra-processed food can cause people to eat more and gain weight. All by itself, that finding was […]
