September 18, 2023 — Clickbait journalists are taking aim at clickbait nutrition influencers and we wonder: Who benefits from this fracas? Late last week, the Washington Post ran a story exploring the phenomenon of dietitians who are active in social media. Their thesis: “Registered dietitians are being paid to post videos that promote diet soda, sugar and supplements on […]
April 9, 2023 — Hello darkness, my old friend. Welcome to the sound of silence. Social networks, conceived to connect and inform us, have evolved in a way to polarize and misinform us. Loud voices dominate public narratives on a wide range of subjects and leave us little room for the development of well-informed and nuanced views. Certainly we […]
March 24, 2023 — You might have thought the U.S. government was busy with other stuff. Like writing new dietary guidelines. Or defining what food is naughty or nice. Or perhaps even sorting out problems with bank regulation. Maybe so, but these folks can multitask, so now we have the final word on peanut butter – it’s definitely, certifiably […]
March 16, 2023 — We are living in an age of amplified contention. Anger can be like a muscle that gets stronger when we exercise it. If you doubt that, take a long look at what social media amplifies. So seeing passionate contention at the intersection of obesity and eating disorders might be unsurprising. But it’s not especially helpful […]
December 20, 2022 — Information technology has morphed into social media and become an essential tool for many of us. Is it amplifying our obsessions or informing our thoughts? Perhaps it’s a matter of perspective – and thus, a bit of both. It can bring informed thinking about matters of health, wellness, and social progress. Or it can fuel […]
August 29, 2022 — Here we go again. Chia seeds are back for another round of faddish popularity. This ancient grain popped up on TikTok recently – attached to an #InternalShower hashtag. It’s promoting chia seeds mixed with water and lemon for a supposedly cleansing experience. To be clear, we’re not fans of any kind of “cleansing” dietary experience. […]
June 29, 2022 — Today in New York, the Media Empathy Foundation is unveiling an unusual report and, hopefully, starting a conversation. Both the report and the conversation are all about weight stigma in popular media. Because popular media has a way of shaping popular culture and right now, weight stigma is pervasive in all media channels: news, entertainment, […]
February 12, 2022 — To each his own – because truly, one size will never fit all. We can find no better illustration for this than the idea that perfectly healthy people might want to wear a continuous glucose monitors. And yet we have a crop of new tech startups that want to put these glucose monitors on all […]
October 24, 2021 — Two stories about very different industries – one very old and one very new – are demanding our attention right now. The new industry is social media. For weeks now, a litany of stories has made it plain that Facebook has made some bad choices to protect their profits while causing harm. The old industry […]
September 17, 2021 — For some time, it’s been clear to mental health professionals that social media could be a problem for teens. Facebook, which owns Instagram, has long minimized the issue. But reporting this week from the Wall Street Journal tells suggests that Facebook knows from its own research that Instagram promotes self-stigma for teenage girls. Slides from […]
