Posts Tagged ‘research’

In an editorial for JAMA this week, Frank Hu and Walter Willett tell us they have a clear view of the future for nutrition research. We’ve broken the bonds of biochemistry, animal models, and feeding studies. Biomarkers are nice, but at best they can only complement – not replace – dietary self reports. Thanks to […]

Knowing what you believe can be extremely important. But for science, that’s not enough. There’s a big difference, for example, between believing that intermittent fasting can help patients with diabetes and measuring the clinical outcomes that it produces. Likewise, believing that an Active Classroom intervention can boost activity levels at school is not the same […]

Getting a handle on the real world effectiveness of any medical treatment is devilishly hard. For surgery, it’s even harder. Randomized controlled trials are not impossible, but almost. And many variables come into play that can cause big swings in effectiveness. That list starts with surgical skill and the quality of a program. And it […]

At the age of 2, it’s not especially obvious if a child will have obesity later in life. But a new study, published in mBio, suggests that the microbes in a child’s gut at age 2 might offer some pretty good clues. Microbiota Explaining More Than Half of BMI Scores Maggie Stanislawski and colleagues analyzed data […]

Yesterday, we had an unusual opportunity. We spent the day with a diverse collection of animal scientists – experts in behavior, health, nutrition, and even obesity. One thing was most clear. Pets and humans are on parallel paths for health. And in fact, the parallels in human and pet obesity are quite striking. Can We Talk? […]

Dieting has a bad reputation these days. In popular culture, the concept has lots of detractors. Instead of “going on a diet,” it’s more fashionable to say, “I’m eating healthy.” The reasons for  this shift in attitudes are many. For one thing, a sustainable, healthy pattern of eating seems to be a better way to […]

FNCE served up a little nutrition epistemology in Washington yesterday. How? John Trepanowski and Steve Anton explored the promise and the puffery of intermittent fasting. RDN Carolyn O’Neil moderated. They explained some solid science. But they exposed some appalling hype. What do we really know to be true? Versus what is mere speculation or opinion. […]

New research from the University of Sydney is offering another clue for developing the science of personalized nutrition. Starch is the most common carbohydrate in our diets. And we have an enzyme in our saliva – amylase – that helps us start digesting starch even before we eat it. But different people will have very different responses […]

Our society seems to have accepted that gaining weight is an inevitable consequence of growing up in a place with easy access to calories and where physical activity plays a declining role in our professional and private lives. Aging just makes weight loss even more difficult. In the short term, the consequences of excess weight […]

Tuesday is obesity medicine day for National Obesity Care Week. And it just so happens that we have two new studies on the subject in the Lancet. They point to a trend. Day by day, we see evidence of more options and better outcomes for medical obesity care. A New Dual-Receptor Agonist Juan Frias and […]