February 26, 2023 — Quietly and systematically, Tera Fazzino has been working with colleagues to define a concept of hyper-palatable foods that might explain the apparent effect of ultra-processed foods on body composition and thus, obesity. The latest chapter in this quest appeared recently in Nature Food. In short, a narrative is taking shape that we may have a […]
April 8, 2022 — We are in the midst of a great reformulation of food products. A little more than a decade ago, Robert Lustig stirred everyone up with his bold claim that sugar is toxic. So added sugar took over the role of dietary bad boy in place of fat. In 2015, U.S. dietary guidelines started recommending a […]
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 […]
October 31, 2021 — Many fears are plaguing us right now. A virus is still killing more than five thousand people every day around the world – more than a thousand daily in the U.S. Some people are fearful of spending time indoors with others who are unmasked or unvaccinated. Others are fearful of the masks and the vaccines. […]
September 5, 2021 — The global food industry is huge – so big that people have a hard time putting firm numbers on it. But roughly, it’s worth about ten trillion dollars. It’s also very diverse. The top ten multinational food and beverage companies add up to only half a trillion dollars of those sales. Nonetheless in public health […]
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 […]
May 29, 2021 — Is it still true that seeing is believing? Or in this age of truth decay, is it more likely that people see what they’ve already chosen to believe? We see a lot of this in politics and religion. But it also seems to creep into nutrition research. A case in point would be highly polarized […]
May 10, 2021 — Brace yourself for sugar 2.0. Processed food makers are loading up on sugar that’s not sugar. The push to drive added sugar out of the food supply means that allulose – a rare, but natural form of sugar – is suddenly popular with the industry. It helps that food companies can add this sugar to […]
December 30, 2020 — This happens only once every five years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, along with Health and Human Services, issued new dietary guidelines yesterday. This is big news, but the reporting on it is pretty slim. In the 2020 guidelines for eating, we have some gains and some gaps in translating science into policy. In keeping […]
October 25, 2020 — After two decades of really bad publicity, sugar is reinventing itself. Just last week, FDA finalized its rules for allulose, a rare but natural form of sugar. It looks and tastes a lot like regular sugar, though it’s about one third less sweet. But the really sweet deal is that the final rule from FDA […]
