Posts Tagged ‘obesity causes’

Bob Kushner knows a thing or two about the complexity and challenge of obesity and clinical care for this disease. He’s written 15 books, 56 chapters, and hundreds of scientific articles about it. But the unique thing he brought yesterday was a skill for explaining the complexity of obesity in plain language that real people […]

For years, people living with obesity have been given the same basic advice: eat less, move more. But while this mantra may sound simple, it’s not only ineffective for many, it can be deeply misleading and damaging. Obesity is not just about willpower. It’s a complex, chronic, relapsing condition, and it affects around 26.5% of […]

Since forever we have known that obesity is a highly heritable disease. Genes are important, though not solely determinative. They set the table for obesity, but for the most part, it is the environment that serves it up. That’s because the genetic basis for obesity usually comes from multiple genes, not a single gene. So […]

Inundated. We are inundated with 16,235 chemicals present in the plastics filling our environment, says a new report in Nature. This meticulous inventory tells us that a subset of those, more than 4,200 of them, are chemicals of concern. The concern springs from one or more of the following properties. They migrate out of the […]

In the midst of a lot of blather that assigns magical medical properties to food, its downright refreshing to read reflections from Tamar Haspel on the nature of food in Italy – and how people enjoy their food in that country. It is the food environment in Italy, not the food itself, that seems to […]

This headline from the University of Oklahoma captured our attention: “Fatty acid in olive oil drives obesity.” It was even more attractive when we read and understood this was not more of the linoleic acid and seed oils dogma bubbling up. It was a headline prompted by a new study of oleic acid and molecular […]

New studies released yesterday at ECO2025 remind us doctors and other health professionals often miss things that are quite obvious to people living with obesity. For one thing, there is the phenomenon of food noise. It’s very real for many people with obesity. For health professionals, it can seem a bit abstract. Then there is […]

David Kessler is the former FDA Commissioner who laid the groundwork for aggressive tobacco regulation with a simple metaphor. He argued that nicotine is addictive like heroin or cocaine. Now he and many others are working to stretch that metaphor to warn the public about addictive junk food. It is a simple and very appealing […]

We find ourselves wondering, as Marion Nestle does, about the unlikely alignment of RFK’s MAHA concept with some of the ideas about food policy she has been advocating for decades. We do not always agree, but we have long admired Nestle’s convictions in taking on problems with food systems and the business model of the […]

“Poor diet is the leading cause of mortality in the U.S. due to the direct relationship with diet-related chronic diseases,” write Emily Matthews and Emma Kurnat-Thoma for Frontiers in Public Health. At the top of the list of “diet-related chronic diseases” is obesity, because it leads to so many other chronic health problems, disability, and […]