August 4, 2024 — Warning: this is a bit of a rant, albeit a good-natured one. The persistent irritant of implicit ignorance about obesity confronts us in virtually every dialogue we have about obesity. Sometimes it gets to be too much. Specifically, it is the presumption woven into almost every conversation about obesity, that obesity is all about bad […]
July 11, 2024 — “Not everything is healthcare,” writes Chris Pope in an essay for the Wall Street Journal, questioning policy advocates who focus on disparity in social determinants of health. In his commentary, he expresses doubt about diverting money from healthcare to other social programs: “Social theories of health have become so popular because they allow states, nonprofit […]
July 4, 2024 — “I don’t eat like an American,” says our good friend and wise dietitian Linn Steward. “I spend more on food than the average American, but I economize in other areas, like clothing, travel, and entertainment. So I figure that in the long run, it all evens out.” But as we contemplate the quintessential American holiday, […]
May 11, 2024 — We are living in an amazing time for people who live with obesity. But it is also a time when harsh inequities in health grow wider because of obesity, even though innovation could be bringing brighter prospects for everyone who is vulnerable to this chronic disease. But inequitable access to care might instead be amplifying […]
February 3, 2024 — We confess to a significant amount of fatigue with a social agenda related to size and weight getting overlaid on the medical concern of obesity. The bickering of people who want to make believe that obesity is a purely social issue can be too much to bear. This has been one of those weeks. Moral […]
January 8, 2024 — Right now, the promise of GLP-1 medicines for obesity, though revolutionary, is serving only to widen the economic rift in health. People with extraordinary wealth or generous health insurance plans receive the health benefits that flow from treating obesity effectively – which include a longer life, fewer strokes, and fewer heart attacks. Others are consigned […]
December 31, 2023 — “We have found a way to soothe the pain of living in this society by stimulating the reward pathway with unhealthy foods just as people do with alcohol and drugs.” This blunt obserservation landed in our inbox with a thud from obesity scientist and clinician Caroline Apovian last week. A counterbalance to the optimistic talk […]
October 8, 2023 — We have a problem with the health of America and it is fundamental. Chronic illness is killing too many of us too soon. It’s not getting better, either. Instead of helping with chronic illness, much of the response amounts to scolding the people who suffer with it. Much of the problem can be traced to […]
July 3, 2023 — A new Mendelian randomization study brings a disciplined look at the question of why social and economic status correlates with lifespan. Such questions are hard to answer with certainty, so this new publication in Nature Human Behavior is quite welcome. Chao-Jie Ye and colleagues found a causal association between education and longevity in populations of […]
July 2, 2023 — The impulse to attach health claims to food is growing stronger among many advocates and agencies for food and health policy. The FDA is moving to put nutrition information on the front of food packages. This news comes in addition to the agency’s seven-year quest to define healthy for food marketing claims. The Food Is […]
