Posts Tagged ‘scientific rigor’

Type 2 diabetes prevalence is up and the Lancet Regional Health has a simple way to reduce it. Daniel Windred and colleagues write: “Advising people to turn off their lights at night, or use lights that reduce the circadian impact (dim and “warm” light), is a simple, cost-effective, and easily-implementable recommendation that may promote cardiometabolic […]

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 soft drinks industry levy came into effect in the UK in early 2018. The first study to investigate the effect of this “sugar tax” on individual-level consumption has just been published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The headline finding is that adults reduced their daily added sugar intake by about two […]

This is one of the most robust and enduring myths of food policy. The mythology holds that the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods is clear, but many consumers are confused about it. So if we can educate, persuade, cajole, or nudge them toward buying more of those healthy foods and less of the unhealthy […]

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 […]

Almost two centuries ago, the world was in the midst of a cholera pandemic and the prevailing belief was that “bad air” was the cause. Near Broad (now Broadwick) Street in London, an especially bad outbreak occurred, killing 616 people. The key to stopping it was to figure out that it was not bad air. […]

A fascinating new study is prompting some very clickable headlines this week. It is all about the interaction of genetic risk for obesity and physical activity. It shows that in people with higher genetic risk scores for obesity, the association between physical activity (using daily step counts as a surrogate) and BMI is different than […]

Eight states have moved to provide nutritious meals at school for free to all students. A few simple reasons make it clear enough that this is a good idea. It reduces the stigma attached to receiving free school meals while improving food security for children from low-income families. Furthermore, nutrition quality goes up for all […]

What could explain the observation that self-reports of exercise predict less of a benefit for men than women? In the Journal of the American College of Cardiology researchers nimbly leap to a conclusion that women get greater gains in mortality risk reduction from “equivalent doses” of physical activity. But would men exaggerate their self-reports? When […]

The setup has been great. Kimchi lands near the top of the list of “must-eat fermented foods for a healthy gut.” On top of that, nutrition gurus advise us “food is medicine” and a fermented food diet “increases microbiome diversity and decreases inflammatory proteins.” So we should be ready to believe when a study tells […]