On Episode 2 of the ACSH Science Dispatch Podcast, we examine New York City's now-defunct COVID vaccine mandate. Did it work, why or why not? We then dive into recent research showing that diet soda can help you safely lose weight, despite popular claims to the contrary.
weight loss
New research suggests that vegan diets promote weight loss. There's a little bit more to the story, though.
As "fat acceptance" gains cultural traction, a growing coalition of health care providers and advice websites downplays the dangers of obesity to appease social justice activists. LiveStrong offers yet another example of the intellectual tap dancing this charade requires.
Can we get our obesity problem under control? In part one of this series, we saw that common policy responses to our expanding waistlines have failed. Let's now consider why these interventions tend to yield such disappointing results.
Many obesity experts argue that changing the public's "food environment" is the key to promoting widespread weight loss. This proposed solution is not backed by solid evidence.
There is a campaign underway to discourage health care providers from weighing their patients unless it’s "medically necessary." Proponents of this effort are rightly concerned about the stigma often attached to obesity, but they're going about it the wrong way by minimizing the risks of being overweight.
Are "ultra-processed" foods addictive? Some scientists say yes, pointing to experiments with sugar-craving rats and the difficulty many people have losing weight and keeping it off. Taken in isolation, these observations lend themselves to a food addiction model, but there's actually little evidence to support the theory.
A lot has been written about the strengths and weaknesses of using DNA testing to customize individual diets. It's a promising idea, but our knowledge of genetics isn't yet good enough to pinpoint what each of us should eat.
Whether the source is carbohydrates, protein, or fat, a calorie is a calorie. New dietary math based on the microbiome says that a calorie may get eaten– not by us – but by our bacterial companions, altering the balance needed to reduce one’s weight.
Once again, it seems you are what you eat, but only if you consider what your digestive tract’s microbiome is willing to snack on.
Obesity remains a significant public health problem. Now that we have the basic physiology in hand, it’s time to talk about the biggest problem in reducing this disease: human behavior.
Most individuals simply have a very unrealistic expectation as to how many calories they burn during exercise and what they can achieve in weight loss through exercise alone, even though they may have expended a great deal of effort to do so.