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The"Obesity Gene": New Insights and Implications
by Matthew Gillman, MD, SM A lot of publicity has accompanied a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine about how FTO, the most common “obesity gene,” works. What does it mean for...
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Sugar-coated Research Is Bad For Your Health
by Ashley Hoesing It’s hard to go too long in today’s 24-hour news cycle without seeing headlines announcing the “latest scientific report” on weight loss, fad diets, or why the health trend of the...
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Heart Attacks or Sculpted Abs? What to Look For in Nutrition Research
by Avik Chatterjee, MD, MPH In my last blog entry, I highlighted how the high fat/low carb Inuit diet could counter-intuitively be healthy for its adherents. One of my students read the article and...
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Antibiotics and Weight Gain
by Wei Perng, PhD We’ve all heard why eating non-organic animal products is a bad idea: the animals may be raised in poor conditions, industrial agriculture produces large amounts of air and water...
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First, Do No Harm: Common Medications as Barriers to Weight Loss
by Kristina Lewis, MD In my practice as a weight management physician, I routinely see patients with medication lists that are a mile long. This is not entirely unexpected. With obesity comes comorbid...
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Metabolically-healthy Obese (MHO): contentious unicorns?
by Wei Perng, PhD Obesity is one of the greatest current public health concerns, as it is a major risk factor for metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic...
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60 Ways the Food Industry Hides Added Sugar
By Mike Seward, AB The FDA has finally taken an official stance against added sugar, recommending that consumers limit their total daily intake of added sugar to no more than 10 percent of their daily...
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Converting Picky Eaters into Foodies by Welcoming Tiny Hands into the Kitchen
by Denise Simon MPH Thanksgiving is a holiday filled with abundance, particularly of food. Usually there is a dish at the table for everyone, but this year, one young guest came up to me to share her...
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How Important is Removing a TV from a Child's Bedroom?
by Lauren Fiechtner MD, MPH In my weight management clinic, I’m always telling parents to remove the TV in their child’s bedroom, both to improve their sleep and decrease their sedentary time....
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What My 12-year-old Self Would Regret Saying: Bring Back Gym Class
by Nicole Witham, BS Working on Project Viva for the past few years, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and completing study visits with dozens of moms and their children. In addition to collecting...
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Diagnosis or Neurosis? Eating Gluten-Free in a Skeptical World
by Jen Thompson, MPP Lately I’ve felt defensive when ordering food at restaurants. “Can you let me know if this has any gluten in it? I have celiac disease,” I’ll say while silently whispering to...
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New York City - Public Health Pioneer or (Na)nny State?
by Kristina Lewis MD, MPH, SM Beginning on December 1 in New York City, food items that are extremely high in sodium acquired a warning label. Specifically, any item that contains more than a full...
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Obesity, Underweight and the Unacceptable Dual Burden
Avik Chatterjee, MD Recently, I was speaking with a student about income and weight in the United States, and he described the difference he saw between his hometown in rural California, where many...
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The Eternal Diet(er)
Ashley Hoesing, MPH Oprah -- yes, THE Oprah -- recently made headline news with her $43 million dollar investment in the diet company Weight Watchers. She also announced that she is now actively...
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Living Closer To A Supermarket Helped Children Achieve A Healthier Weight In...
Lauren Fiechtner, MD, MPH In previous studies, we investigated if distance to a supermarket was associated with a child’s BMI or weight status. However, these studies only measured one point in time,...
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Why Should I Just Let My Kid Eat What he Wants?
Karen Switkowski, MPH, MS My 1-year-old is an impressive eater. During recent holiday family gatherings, he provided regular entertainment as he sat at the table devouring near-adult-size portions of...
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How To Limit Added Sugar, Not Taste
Mike Seward, AB My friends and teammates frequently ask me how I avoid added sugar – sugar added to processed or pre-packaged food during the production process – in what I eat. Here are some ways to...
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Personalized Nutrition
Wei Perng, PhD Advancements in high-throughput technologies have enabled us to assess health from a more holistic point of view by considering our genetic code (“genomics”), actual expression of our...
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The End Of An Era - What Happens To Obesity In A Post-Obama World?
Kristina Lewis, MD Whatever your take on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Syrian refugee crisis, or the bailout of Wall Street, there is probably at least one area where we can (mostly) agree that...
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To Seed Or Not To Seed: How A Preliminary Study Was Blown Wildly Out of...
Jen Thompson, MPH Full disclosure: all of my colleagues refused to write a blog post on this topic. “Ewww,” one said. “I don’t feel comfortable writing about that,” said another. Even when I...
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