Posts Tagged ‘bias’

A professor of pediatrics was visiting patients with her medical students. They saw a patient, a teen with class III obesity that had begun at a very early age. One of her students asked, don’t her parents know their daughter needs to eat  healthy and stay active? Another said, it’s terrible what the food industry […]

At the National Academies yesterday, we found ourselves immersed in mixed messages on obesity. The occasion was a public workshop on effective communications strategies for obesity. OCEANS President Faith Newsome summed it up for us: I left with a lot of questions, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We talk about “solutions” and promote “healthy” […]

Listen up folks. A donut is not the way to tell the world about the state of obesity in the United States. Nope, not at all. Donuts do not lie at the root of the problem. Neither do french fries. But cluelessness drives people to reduce the complex problem of obesity into a simplistic infographic […]

Bill Maher has kindly reminded us that we have no time for hateful public figures. Friday he held forth with a hateful diatribe about fat people on his HBO platform. He says we need more fat shaming. According to him, the answer to obesity is to shame people into having smaller bodies. With talk about […]

Yesterday in Copenhagen, ten outstanding advocates for people living with obesity gathered. They came from all over Europe and North America. And for a little over two hours, they presented compelling personal stories about their lived experiences with the disease. These DEEP talks draw upon Disease Experience Expert Panels that Novo Nordisk assembles to guide […]

Easy peasy. That’s how a thinsplaining cardiology professor describes long-term calorie restriction. He did it in one of JAMA‘s most popular articles this week. That article is a news report on a study of calorie reduction and cardiometabolic health. The treatment group in this RCT cut about 300 calories from their diet for two years. […]

Almost 30 years ago, David Allison, Vincent Basile, and Harold Yuker were studying how to measure weight stigma. Among other things, they found belief in personal control over obesity is a key factor in bias against people with obesity. Likewise, disgust is a key factor. Together, these factors provide the basis for moralizing obesity. They […]

JAMA has a new paper describing in detail how the progress in reducing deaths from heart disease is grinding to a halt. Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Liverpool found disturbing trends in heart deaths. The decline in overall deaths from heart disease is slowing. Deaths from stroke and diabetes are no longer […]

The Kurbo kerfuffle has revealed a lot about how grownups are dealing with childhood obesity. Because mostly, they’re not. In fact, most of them are totally out of touch with the reality of childhood. But in sharp contrast, Michelle Cardel and Elsie Taveras bring a refreshing dose of reality and balance with a new commentary […]

Last week, the introduction of Kurbo by WW prompted a flutter of twittering about weight and health and childhood. Twitter exploded with strong opinions from people who didn’t need to know much about Kurbo to render judgment. In today’s guest post, our friend Sarah Bramblette offers a very personal perspective on having options in childhood. […]