January 28, 2023 — When curiosity fades, research ceases to be science and becomes an exercise in advocacy. That advocacy might be for a commercial interest or it might be for a presumably good cause. But in either case, it’s not sound scientific research with the aim of finding the true answer to a clear question. It is a […]
March 25, 2022 — Sweet drinks never cease to activate controversies. For millennia, people have enjoyed them. But that enjoyment has also long sparked a reaction from folks who find fault with enjoying them. So often, people turn to science to justify their beliefs that these sweet beverages are either a good source of refreshment or a hazard to […]
February 18, 2022 — Alcohol can have some seriously bad effects on health and life. So a century ago, zealous advocates worked to ban alcoholic beverages altogether and they briefly succeeded in a number of countries, including the U.S. But the impulses for prohibition faded away because of popular resistance and unintended consequences. Today, the harm that stems from […]
February 2, 2022 — PLOS Medicine has quite a good new study of gross pictures on beverage labels to deter purchases of sugary drinks. It is a randomized, controlled study which proves quite convincingly that gross pictures deter purchases of beverages when they appear prominently on labels. Mission accomplished. Our only quibble would be with the meaning these researchers […]
July 7, 2021 — The best thing to demonize is sugar-sweetened beverages, says Harvard’s Mary Bassett. She pointed this out at the Roundtable on Obesity Solutions last month. Thus, yet another paper from Harvard about yet another danger of drinking something sweet is no surprise. This time, it’s about a link between SSBs and colon cancer. In fact, to […]
August 22, 2020 — An interesting new study in the Journal of the American Heart Association isn’t really getting the attention it deserves. It asks simple questions. What’s the effect of cutting sugar-sweetened drinks? First, does it reduce risk factors for heart disease? Second, does it bring weight loss? Finally, does it lead people to prefer less sweetness? The […]
May 13, 2020 — Two new papers give us a mixed picture of results from the holy war to drive sweet drinks from the American diet. On the front lines in Oakland, California, economists tell us that a beverage tax has had negligible effects. But the good news is that perhaps that doesn’t matter. Researchers have discovered that sweetened […]
December 1, 2019 — It seems like a simple proposition. Stop drinking your calories. Drink water or other non-caloric beverages instead. In the calories-in-calories-out way of thinking, weight loss will be automatic. Drink only water and you’ll be drinking for weight loss. The CHOICE Study This study actually tested the drinking for weight loss proposition. It was a rigorous […]
November 1, 2019 — Objectivity is having a rough time these days. This is true whether the subject is politics, policy, or even a study in a medical journal. Very often, believing is seeing. Not the other way around. A new study on soda policy in JAMA Internal Medicine provides a case in point. Improving Metabolic Profile Very Effortlessly […]
June 17, 2019 — Everything is effective. Give somebody a potent drug and it will surely do something to them. Enact a health policy and it will surely have an effect. In fact, the effects will certainly be many – both desired and undesired. But for both drugs and health policies, the target is health. So we’d best be […]
