NEWS

Right now, we are witnessing a great withdrawal from healthcare, especially for people living with obesity. Many people are losing health insurance coverage altogether because it has become unaffordable. Many others are finding that their insurance will no longer pay for the care they need – if they want the care, they must have the […]

Who knew? The vaguely wholesome but ultra-processed graham crackers we use to make s’mores and pie crusts had their beginnings in the righteous temperance movement of the 19th century. Sylvester Graham was a Presbyterian minister and dietary reformer. In his powerful preaching, he explained that God intended for us to be vegetarians and that coarsely […]

It’s a perfect straw man argument. To make the case that dietary guidelines with the personal stamp of RFK Jr. are revolutionary, HHS has resurrected the long-defunct food pyramid and turned it upside down. It perfectly satisfies the impulse to tell the nutrition establishment that they’re wrong about everything. But folks who know a thing […]

If you were confused this week by headlines proclaiming that “nearly half of Americans will have obesity by 2035,” don’t feel bad. It means you are paying attention. Because this proclamation flies in the face of headlines from last year telling us obesity rates are declining in the U.S. So what gives? The New Research […]

Good luck if you want to make sense of headlines about health insurance and coverage trends for GLP-1 medicines. Peruse the headlines and you can find just about any narrative you want. “Rising health premiums push more small business to drop coverage,” according to Inc. “Employers are opting out of covering GLP-1s,” claims Hines, a […]

We are in the midst of what used to be known as diet and weight loss season. And now the Super Bowl is coming up. Instead of diet ads this year, our video feeds are full of ads for telehealth and GLP-1s. Some of them are annoying. But when Serena Williams comes on screen to […]

Yesterday, Roche announced topline results from a phase two study of a new injectable dual agonist medicine for obesity. The drug, CT-388, delivered a reduction in body weight of 22.5% after 48 weeks at the highest dose tested (24 mg). Placebo-subtracted weight loss was 18.3% and at 48 weeks, patients taking the drug were still […]

Observational studies have suggested for some time that obesity might raise the risk of dementia for a person with obesity. But observational studies have limitations. They can suggest a hypothesis. Not prove causality. So the news of evidence from a Mendelian randomization study that obesity can cause vascular dementia is important. Methods and Findings This […]

People who know a thing or two about nutrition continue to puzzle over the strange dish of commerce and politics served up in the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans. In a new editorial for the BMJ, Marion Nestle, one of the most influential authorities in the world on food policy, is blunt. Political and commercial […]

Reporting for the Washington Post, Daniel Gilbert tells us “the next frontier in weight-loss drugs is one-time gene therapy.” Setting aside his misuse of the “weight-loss” misnomer, should we take him seriously? How much can we expect from gene-based therapies for obesity? Scientifically Substantial The body of peer-reviewed evidence for genetic therapies in obesity is […]