Posts Tagged ‘scientific rigor’

A new study yesterday in Nature Medicine will surely add fuel to the fire of people who believe we can simply blame ultra-processed foods for the rise in obesity over the last four decades. The design of the study was solid – a randomized controlled crossover study. Just the kind of thing that sticklers for […]

“This study confirms what I’ve been saying, which is that diet is the key culprit in our current epidemic,” says Barry Popkin. He’s talking about a new study in PNAS. With a giant leap of faith, one can use this study for a perfect expression of confirmation bias about the role of diet and exercise […]

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary believes that defining ultra-processed foods is the key to overcoming the health problems these products produce. He recently told the New York Times: “We do not see ultra-processed foods as foods to be banned. We see them as foods to be defined so that markets can compete based on health.” So […]

New research at Nutrition 2025 used blood markers to measure linoleic acid levels and their relation to cardiometabolic risk. The results add to the evidence that this omega-6 fatty acid may help to lower risks for heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Annoyingly, the facts of these findings challenge deeply held beliefs that seed oils […]

This is stunningly positive news. While many of us are debating the nuances and evidence for lifestyle therapy in obesity, a clever group of cancer researchers have gone out and proven its value for extending life in people with colon cancer. A well-controlled clinical trial of personal coaching for exercise showed that it reduced cancer […]

Artificial intelligence sometimes produces artificial information that has no connection to reality. The term of art for this phenomenon is AI hallucinations. This week we learned that at least some parts of the MAHA report might have sprung from such hallucinations. It listed references that don’t exist and conclusions for other references that were not […]

To be sure, exercise has many benefits – including the widely accepted benefit of fitness and a longer life. But a new study of causal inference linking fitness to reduced mortality suggests those benefits have been exaggerated. The problem is an old one: Confounding. The senior author of the new study, Marcel Ballin, explains: “We […]

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 […]

Can obesity prevention be as simple as telling people to chew more slowly? That’s what the principal investigator of a new study published in Nutrients, Professor Katsumi Iizuka, says: “These are easy, money-saving measures that can be started right away to help prevent obesity. “Incorporating the proposed eating behavior into school lunches and other programs […]

In recent years, a troubling trend has emerged – a growing distrust in health science, particularly in fields like nutrition and obesity. This skepticism isn’t just about healthy debate or constructive criticism. It’s about an erosion of confidence in scientific expertise. In the age of social media and viral misinformation, unreasonable doubts have real consequences […]