December 13, 2022 — The American Diabetes Association is out with their new standards of care for 2023 and at the top of the list of seven major changes is a refined focus on obesity. Changes in medical care are subtle and slow. But when you look at how it has evolved over recent years, the shift in views […]
November 28, 2022 — How important is the social dimension of physical activity? Recent modeling research published in PLOS One suggests that it’s critical. Ensela Mema and colleagues developed a mathematical model to estimate both social and non-social influences on physical activity across the population. They found that social influences were critical for maintaining physical activity or reducing sedentary […]
September 22, 2022 — Problems are messy, so to solve them, humans quite naturally move to make them tidy. We sort them, label them, and get to work on resolving them. But news this week reminds us that health issues often resist our efforts to sort them out and find tidy solutions. The USPSTF this week published a draft […]
August 24, 2022 — In so many ways, it’s become plain that children have carried a big burden in the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, there have been disruptions to their social and educational lives. They’ve suffered trauma from losing parents and caregivers. And then there’s the documented rise in obesity. But just last week came some of the most […]
August 17, 2022 — For a very long time, a basic question about the rising rate of obesity has seemed to frustrate people. Why is it relentlessly rising? Some pundits seem to think people have become stupid, lazy, or undisciplined over the last several decades. “You think cake wasn’t delicious iu 1969?” quipped one self-appointed expert recently. Others are […]
June 21, 2022 — While many researchers are having scholarly debates about their competing models for obesity, they focus primarily upon how food is doing it to us. Is it the excessive supply of hyper-palatable, ultra-processed food? Or is it all about carbs and insulin? But nowhere in these lovely models is there any focus on factors that go […]
June 18, 2022 — Two new studies in AJCN provide observations on the relationship between health outcomes and fast food, take-out, café, or home-cooked meals. These studies find an association of worse outcomes with fast food and take out. But the real question is, why? What are the causal relationships behind these observations? In an editorial, Barry Popkin suggests […]
June 13, 2022 — Though we hate to say it, we are entering into a time of increased food insecurity. Of course that will bring a toll of death from hunger. It also likely means a further rise will come in non-communicable diseases such as obesity. But why? Why is it that food insecurity has such a link to […]
April 23, 2022 — The buzzwords are flying. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is such a common theme that all you have to say is “DEI” and people will nod solemnly. The same goes for social determinants of health – SDOH. However, the Northeast Business Group on Health (NEBGH) has gone further to connect the two and identify some real […]
April 15, 2022 — The drumbeat is growing louder. “Ultra-processed foods are trashing our health – and the planet,” say four nutrition scientists from Deakin University. It would be hard to find a clearer definition of these products as our enemy. Yet another set of distinguished nutrition scientists argue that ultra-processed alternatives to meat and dairy can offer valuable […]
