January 10, 2026 — “People who come off slimming jabs regain weight four times faster than dieters.” The year is young, but already we have this contender for the dumbest headline of the year about obesity. It is helpful only as a reminder of how pervasive the implicit bias about obesity and its treatment is. Slimming Jabs? The headline […]
January 5, 2026 — This is an uncomfortable truth. Whether health professionals think about it or not in work that touches on obesity, they are making a choice: Are they perpetuating or challenging obesity stigma?
December 15, 2025 — Business is apparently booming in the criminal trade for bogus obesity medicines. The Times (London) reports that criminals are selling dangerous weight-loss jabs on social media and in gyms. They write that: “Pharmaceutical bosses have issued a stark warning about medicines such as Mounjaro sold online without safety controls as gangs branch out from hard […]
December 13, 2025 — The International Journal of Obesity has published a map for future directions in weight bias research. The quality and global diversity of thinking that went into the summit which produced this roadmap is exceptional. The source of this thinking was the International Weight Bias Summit last year in Montreal at Concordia University. Support for the […]
December 11, 2025 — Shifting paradigms is difficult, but that does not mean we can’t try. Recently, I have been continuing the discussion that I started to think about in 2012 when I started my PhD. It is all about drawing a bright line between health promotion and obesity prevention. We need to be sure to be clear about […]
November 13, 2025 — It would be odd to think that medical schools would stigmatize the most prevalent chronic disease that medical students will encounter. But stigmatizing obesity in medical schools is all too common, even today. Kofi Essel and colleagues published a study of the obesity bias observed by third year medical students at George Washington University School […]
October 25, 2025 — In two decades of advocacy for persons living with obesity, we have found great satisfaction in seeing a central role emerge for the lived experience of these people. But it is especially inspiring to see it spread across many different countries with many different health systems. We saw this up close yesterday as a keynote […]
October 3, 2025 — “The Hegseth hypocrisy: Fat-shaming top generals in land of McDonald Trump.” That headline delivers the essence of fat shaming in the week’s political news. It started with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and quickly spread to detractors of the administration. Hegseth explained that he can’t stand the sight of fat people in the military: “Frankly, it’s […]
August 31, 2025 — Empathetic, respectful care sounds like a reasonable expectation for a primary care visit. New research, conducted by the Obesity Action Coalition, Drexel University, the ABOM Foundation, and Thoughtform, shows the way to take this from an aspiration to reality. Simply stated, persons living with obesity want more respect and less finger pointing in primary obesity […]
August 26, 2025 — In the top ranks of the most watched shows on Netflix now is a documentary describing 18 seasons of exploitation on The Biggest Loser. For the folks who ran the original show, it generated hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars in revenue. For the folks who opened themselves up to exploitation on the […]
