obesity

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April 24, 2012 | 3:01 PM | By

Weight Of The Nation Is ‘Out Of Control’ So What Can Parents Do?

A new HBO documentary that is really more of a desperate public health plea aims to shock viewers off their couches and away from their sugary sodas in order to reverse a raging national obesity epidemic among children and adults. “Obesity will crush the United States in oblivion,” notes one Texas official, echoing the mood of impending disaster that permeates the series, “The Weight of the Nation.”

At the House of Blues in Boston last night, various public health officials came together to screen one segment of the show: Part three, which focuses on “Children in Crisis” and the alarming number of obese kids in the country. The series takes a hard look at the challenges — from high cholesterol and fatty liver to intense bullying and social stigma — these kids and their parents face.

I spoke with Elsie Taveras, MD, MPH, who is featured in the film and is director of the One Step Ahead clinic, a multidisciplinary childhood overweight prevention and early management program at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Dr. Taveras sees children who are already suffering the effects of obesity. In the film she examines kids with dark rings around their necks, an early sign of insulin resistance. Her patients have signs of pre-diabetes; they have high blood pressure; and some of her 7-and-8-year-olds have adult levels of high cholesterol. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, children's health, obesity, public health
March 20, 2012 | 1:05 PM | By

Video: Why Should Movie Theaters Be Exempt From Calorie Labeling?

There are approximately 1,200 calories in medium-size popcorn at Regal Cinemas, according to the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest. And that’s without the added butter.

Twelve-hundred calories is about what I eat in an entire day. So why, asks this video posted by CSPI, should movie theaters in most states remain exempt from new rules requiring that food sold to the public include calorie counts? The group asks that viewers write to President Obama and “urge him to strengthen the final menu labeling regulations to include movie theaters.” (You’d think Michelle Obama would be interested in this issue too, with her telling kids “Let’s Move” and all.)

FILED UNDER: Money, Personal Health, calories, food labeling, obesity, public health
March 14, 2012 | 12:29 PM | By

Eat Red Meat And Die? Really?


“Ho hum, more evidence that red meat is bad for you,” was my reaction when I saw the new study out of Harvard showing a link between red meat consumption and earlier death. But some of the coverage was fairly alarming — The Los Angeles Times headline is “All red meat is bad for you, new study says.”

So kudos to Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, a Canadian obesity specialist, and his Weighty Matters blog for putting the latest study in perspective. He runs through the study’s methodological strengths and weakness, and sums up:

So are you going to die if you eat red meat?

Well you’re going to die regardless of what you eat, but this study would suggest that you’ll die ever so slightly younger if you eat red meat each and every day of the week, and even younger still if you eat processed red meat each and every day of the week. Did you catch the caveat of each and every day of the week? It certainly wasn’t hidden in the study.

He notes that even one of the study’s authors, Harvard’s Frank Hu, says moderate red meat consumption of perhaps once every other day should be fine. And for himself, Dr. Freedhoff writes: Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, diet, obesity
March 9, 2012 | 8:25 AM | By

The Queen Of Metabolism’s Theory On Why We Are Fat

A researcher in Barbara Corkey's lab with some of the food additives being tested

The headline in Bostonia magazine, in appropriately big black letters, is “Why We Are Fat,” but the Facebook friend who pointed it out notes: “It’s not really about why we are fat. It’s a profile of the butt-kickin Barbara Corkey, a scientist who dropped out of college to get married and have two kids. Then her husband left and somehow she managed to claw her way to a PhD and scientific prominence. She is really cool.”

I spoke with Dr. Corkey in August about her theory that food additives are contributing to the obesity epidemic and came away with the same impression. Also really cool is this rich Bostonia story by the award-winning science writer Barbara Moran, who balances beautifully the hard science with the human element. A couple of favorite quotes:

“Barbara is out of the box—completely,” says collaborator Orian Shirihai, a MED associate professor of medicine. “She doesn’t even know what’s in the box. What she does is turn the box upside down and put it onto other scientists’ heads.”

And later on in the story, when Dr. Corkey has won a major scientific prize and delivers a speech before thousands, Dr. Shirihai takes the metaphor a colorful step further:

“Instead of simply recapping her career, Corkey spent an hour discussing a controversial new direction for her research: whether the 4,000 additives in the U.S. food supply might be contributing to diabetes and obesity. “For those people who never got out of the box,” Shirihai says with a laugh, “it was like having a high-volume enema.”

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Science, Boston University School of Medicine, diabetes, obesity
February 9, 2012 | 2:09 PM | By

Michelle Obama’s Initial Doubts About Fighting Childhood Obesity

Just in case you’re not a regular reader of the journal “Childhood Obesity,” FLOTUS — The First Lady of the United States — has written the foreword to this month’s edition. She begins with her initial doubts about whether progress fighting children’s obesity was possible:

When I first decided to focus on the issue of childhood obesity, I wondered whether it was really possible to make a difference. I knew the conventional wisdom on this issue —- particularly when it comes to changing how and what our kids eat. There’s the assumption that kids don’t like healthy food, so why try to feed it to them? There’s the belief that healthy food doesn’t sell as well, so companies will never change the products they offer. There’s the sense that this problem is so big, and so entrenched, that no matter what we do, we’ll never be able to solve it.

Now, she writes, she’s thrilled to report that “We have begun to change the conversation about childhood obesity in America.”

I know, I know, it’s political and there’s a very, very long way to go to reverse the current wave of childhood obesity. But I’m a sucker for good news, and she offers a nice roundup of some: Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Politics, childhood obesity, let's move, Michelle Obama, obesity
February 1, 2012 | 3:40 PM | By

Call For A National Campaign Against Sugar

By Karen Weintraub
Guest contributor

Did you add a packet or two of sugar to your morning coffee? Grab a mid-morning Coke? Eat dessert with lunch?

For typical Americans, sugar accounts for more than 600 of their daily calories.

Such high levels are so incredibly dangerous, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco write in a commentary in today’s Nature, that we need to launch a national campaign against the powdery white stuff.

But do we really need government in our sugar bowl?

Laura A. Schmidt, a professor at UCSF and one of the commentary’s three authors, compared eating lots of sugar to chain smoking and binge drinking. Sugar creates the same rush in the brain as drugs, and can also be addictive, she said, citing the obese kids in her clinic who constantly complain of hunger. Many of the metabolic problems we blame on obesity –- heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes –- are really the fault of sugar consumption, she and her colleagues wrote.

And society is paying a fortune to cope with health problems the UCSF trio blames on our sugar overload. The group estimates that Americans pay $150 billion a year in obesity-related health care expenses.

“The social costs to the whole society are great enough that we all have a stake in preventing the harm,” Schmidt said, just as we’re justified in restricting who can buy alcohol and cigarettes, where you can smoke, and how much you can drink before you can drive. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, Politics, nature, obesity, sugar
February 1, 2012 | 1:40 PM | By

Study: ‘Virtual Coach’ Helps Keep Overweight People Moving

If you’ve been talking with Siri on your iPhone lately, you know how deeply natural it is to respond to a computer-generated “person” as if they were human even when you know perfectly well they’re built of nothing but bits. (I heard my 85-year-old dad tell his iPhone after a failed query the other day, “Thank you for trying.”)

Researchers had already found that patients tend to respond well to post-hospital instructions from computer-generated “discharge nurses.” Now, a new study finds that “virtual coaches” can help overweight people get more active, at least during a 12-week study.

(Of course I applaud anything that helps encourage exercise, but I’m having a dark vision at the moment: An AI-based coach built into my alarm clock, intoning, “You know you have to get up now to have time to work out, because it’s been three days and you’re up one pound and your blood sugar is a bit high from that ice cream and you know you’re hoping to fit into those jeans by Memorial Day!” On the other hand, maybe that’s what it takes…)

First, what is a virtual coach? There she is above, and Partners Healthcare’s Center for Connected Health explains in a press release:

“The Virtual Coach is a computer-animated advisor and simulated face-to-face conversation, including verbal and non-verbal communication, including goal setting, positive reinforcement, problem solving, education and social interaction. Dialogue was tailored based on the participant’s progress, current status against their goals and interaction with the Virtual Coach (i.e., asking the Virtual Coach a question or asked for help).” Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, diabetes, obesity, virtual medicine, weight loss
January 18, 2012 | 1:26 PM | By

Boston Mayor Pledges To Lose 2 Lbs A Month; Councillors Up The Ante

Mayor Menino in a September interview at WBUR

The big news from Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s 19th State of the City speech last night was about overhauling the city’s school assignment system, but let’s not neglect the health elements in his address. WBUR’s Delores Handy covered the speech and reports on a “Biggest Loser” moment afterward.

WBUR's Delores Handy

In his speech, Mayor Menino noted that half of Bostonians are overweight, and said: “Look, weight is an issue that many of us struggle with. But what is daunting on our own becomes doable when we work together. So my goal is to see all of us combine to shed a million pounds this year.”

Delores reports that after the speech, Menino pledged personally to lose at least two pounds a month for the next year.

City councillor Tito Jackson one-upped the mayor and pledged to lose three pounds a month.

Councillor Felix Arroyo raised the ante just a bit, saying he’d go to 3.2 pounds a month, and that he could use help with his weight loss efforts.

Gentlemen, start your engines….

See Delores Handy’s excellent full report on the State of the City speech here.

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, mayor thomas menino, obesity, weight loss
January 11, 2012 | 1:16 PM | By

A Step Toward Health Benefits Of Exercise In A Pill?

Bruce M. Spiegelman of Dana-Farber in his lab

We’re a long way from being able to bottle the myriad benefits of exercise, but a study just out in the journal Nature looks like a promising step in that direction. It describes the discovery of a naturally occurring hormone christened irisin — pronounced like the name “Iris” with an “in” tacked on the end — that is elevated during exercise in mice and humans.

Irisin appears to be a possible key to the positive effects of exercise on blood glucose and energy expenditure — and thus on Type 2 diabetes and obesity. And because it is naturally occurring, it could be tested in humans fairly soon, perhaps in a couple of years.

But before we get to the science, a word from the study’s senior author, Dr. Bruce Spiegelman of Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. To all the negativity-mongers (my phrase, not his) out there who will grumble (my verb, not his) that this discovery will just enable more slothfulness, and would be unnecessary if all those couch potatoes would just get off their butts and eat better, please consider:

“The last thing in the world we’re trying to do is substitute for diet and exercise,” Dr. Spiegelman said. But first of all, there are many people who can’t exercise, whether because of paralysis or age or illness, he said. Work on irisin could potentially help them.

Second, yes, everybody should exercise and eat right but they don’t. Obesity and diabetes are worldwide epidemics costing untold billions, he points out. If irisin proves able to help fight them, it could benefit all of us.

Our conversation, lightly edited:

So where did the name irisin come from?

Iris is the Greek messenger goddess who carried messages between humans on earth and the gods on Olympus. We didn’t want to name it for any specific function because we don’t know what all of those are going to be, and what the most important are going to be, so instead we named it for its messenger function.

So what did you already know, and what did you find out?  Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, Science, dana-farber cancer institute, diabetes, harvard medical school, hormones, obesity
January 11, 2012 | 10:17 AM | By

NYC Health Department: ‘Don’t Super-Size Yourself’

Amputations? Linked to my soda size? Yes, you got my attention. (It may not jump out at you, but the man in the poster to the left is missing the lower half of his leg.)

The ever-innovative — and sometimes controversial — New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has just launched a new series of posters aimed at calling public attention to the insidious up-creep of portion sizes in recent years. The department writes:

“The portion sizes that are marketed are often much more than humans need,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley “We are warning people about the risks of super-size portions so they can make more informed choices about what they eat. Consuming too many calories can lead to weight gain, which greatly increases the risk of type 2 diabetes. If New Yorkers cut their portions, they can cut their risk of these health problems.”

The New York Times reports here on the new poster campaign, and includes a beverage industry response:

But the American Beverage Association, which represents sellers of sodas in cans and bottles and at fountains, countered that the health department was oversimplifying the connection between serving sizes and obesity.

“Portion control is indeed an important piece of the solution to obesity,” said Stefan Friedman, a spokesman for the association. “But instead of utilizing scare tactics, the beverage industry is offering real solutions like smaller portioned containers and calorie labels that show the number of calories in the full container, right up front, to help people choose products and sizes that are right for them and their families.”

A couple more posters, kindly provided by the NYC health department:

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, new york city, obesity, public health, soda