Posts Tagged ‘public health’

It will be hard to ignore: This is an election year. So our very political health secretary, RFK Jr., is making a pivot. It turns out that making polio and measles great again is not resonating well with voters. Much of the public hates his vaccine policies. On the other hand, yelling at people to […]

When public figures talk about science, the stakes are high. So when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently asserted that research shows a ketogenic diet can “cure” schizophrenia, it was more than a casual misstatement. It was a distortion that risks misleading patients, families, and clinicians confronting one of the most serious mental illnesses in medicine. […]

The slate is clean. All is forgiven. We have a fresh new year ahead. So that has us thinking about the trends that are likely to define 2026 in obesity, nutrition, and health. Here are five that floated to the top of our mind. 1. Healthy Weight for Life We have said it before. Weight […]

In 2016, the use of the word “numbskull” in English literature soared to a new high. It has remained high ever since. Though we cannot be sure why, we are confident that members of Congress are earning that label as they crash toward creating an utterly unnecessary American hunger crisis by cutting off SNAP food […]

Honestly, there is so much glaring, blinding irony in the news these days that this one almost slipped by us. Costco makes its money from selling people ginormous packs of food, but now the chain is getting into the action on GLP-1s by selling them at the discounted price of $499 per month. Both Ozempic […]

In good conscience, it is hard to ignore the steady stream of scientific publications that tell us we are putting our children at risk by filling the world with plastics. And yet it seems that the convenience and ubiquity of plastics make it hard to resist. A sweeping new review in Lancet Child and Adolescent […]

Nudging the behavior of consumers seems like an appealing strategy for overcoming the rise in obesity and the harm it is causing to population health. Apply a little behavioral psychology and voilà! People make healthier choices. The appeal is so strong that the UK government is counting on supermarket nudges to overcome obesity and save […]

Whatever one’s politics, it should be plain to all that this is a humbling moment for the righteous cause of public health. An essay by John Tierney in The Atlantic says public health has discredited itself. Tierney describes the state of things in stark terms: “Although many skeptics have overreacted, rejecting sound science in favor […]

In BMJ Public Health, Annabel Davies and colleagues have published a new analysis of interventions to prevent obesity in children. They started with data from two Cochrane systematic reviews published in 2024 (here and here) and applied a Bayesian multi-level meta-regression analysis. What they found were obesity prevention effects that range from being small and […]

Who needs 164 pages of nutrition mumbo jumbo? The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, yesterday told the House Appropriations Committee he will be releasing a four-page document that sounds a lot like U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Dummies. He says it will be done by August: “We have until January, […]