Posts Tagged ‘health reporting’

Misinformation about obesity trends has us a little cranky. For example, Reason Magazine is telling us, “Obesity in the U.S. is finally declining. You can (probably) thank Ozempic.” This is wrong on both counts. First and most basic, two data points do not make a trend. The latest NHANES data on obesity shows that the […]

The difference between investigative journalism and opinion writing is enormous. Both are valuable. But not interchangeable. So when Stat News publishes a lengthy opinion piece on pediatric obesity guidelines and labels it as investigative journalism, they are unfortunately dispensing spin. This is the case of a report published yesterday under a headline reading: “Pediatricians’ Obesity […]

It’s true. We have been getting some pretty good news about GLP-1s lately. In persons with prediabetes and obesity, tirzepatide was 94% effective at preventing the development of diabetes. In the SELECT study, semaglutide for obesity might have cut COVID fatalities by a third. So a little exuberance about the potential of GLP-1 medicines is […]

From time to time, nutritional epidemiologists take themselves entirely too seriously. This week is one of those times. Health reporting is full of warnings that your lunch sandwich might give you type 2 diabetes. The senior author of the paper in Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology causing this stir, Professor Nita Forouhi, expresses no caution about […]

The annual meeting of the ASMBS wrapped up last week in San Diego after producing a steady flow of new insights and headlines. Robotic surgery, long-term outcomes, and diabetes prevention figured prominently in the news. But one of the less enlightening threads of news from the meeting was a horse-race narrative about metabolic surgery versus […]

Keeping up with virtues and vices in food just keeps getting harder. Planetary health is a virtue to pursue, but ultra-processed food is a vice, and plant-based foods are virtuous unless they are ultra-processed. Then perhaps they become virtuous vices. So confusing. A series of publications this week adds to the confusion. In the American […]

In a world that systematically denies people access to obesity medicines, the rush of reports that people frequently stop taking them makes us wonder. How does this qualify as news? Why do reporters repeatedly paint a misleading picture of non-compliant patients? Yet, health reporters keep offering up this narrative. The latest prompt for this is […]

We thought it would be hard to top the vacuous absurdity of juice cleanses. But it turns out that the Washington Post was up for the challenge. So the paper assigned an intrepid travel reporter and even hired a model to make the medical spa baloney of intravenous infusions for hangover therapy sound and look […]

If you pay attention to nutrition headlines in consumer media, avocados sound pretty amazing. “Eating more avocados could help women stave off type 2 diabetes,” says one report. “Avocado a day may keep diabetes at bay,” says another. The only problem is that neither of the studies that prompted those stories actually support the claims […]

Clickbait is a new spin on an old thing. Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll used to be the formula for drawing eyes to advertising. Now the hottest clickbait is sex, alcohol, and GLP-1 drugs. People magazine tells us this month that GLP-1 agonists “may impact the desire to drink alcohol or have sex.” Oh […]