83 posts · 54,569 views
Musings of an obesity medicine doc and certifiably cynical realist
Yoni Freedhoff
83 posts
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- May 12, 2009
- 05:30 AM
- 1,069 views
Is "vicarious goal fulfillment" to blame for that order of French fries?
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
How simply having healthy menu options available makes a person feel they've already fulfilled their goal of eating healthy and sends them to the French fries!... Read more »
Wilcox, K., Vallen, B., Block, L., & Fitzsimons, G. (2009) Vicarious Goal Fulfillment: When the Mere Presence of a Healthy Option Leads to an Ironically Indulgent Decision. Journal of Consumer Research, 2147483647. DOI: 10.1086/599219
- June 2, 2009
- 05:30 AM
- 1,065 views
Refreshments Canada President playing from Big Tobacco's playbook
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
There was a letter to the editor in yesterday's Edmonton Journal. The letter was written by Mr. Justin Sherwood, the President of Refreshments Canada. According to their website Refreshments Canada, "represents more than 30 brands of beverages including bottled waters, juices and carbonated soft drinks, all of which have a place in a healthy, balanced lifestyle and offer consumers choice and variety."Justin was writing in response to a column written by Dr. Louis Francescutti (an ER doc and th........ Read more »
Kelly D. Brownell, & Kenneth E. Warner. (2009) Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died. How Similar Is Big Food?. The Milbank Quarterly, 87(1), 259-294. DOI: 19298423
- May 19, 2009
- 05:30 AM
- 974 views
Does just thinking about exercise make your heart beat faster?
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
I certainly hope not because if a recent study holds true, if thinking about exercise causes your heart to race you're twice as likely to die of a sudden heart attack.Of course it occurs to me that the folks whose hearts are likeliest to race at the thought of exercise would be those who are the least fit as they'll be worried about the prospect of exercising which in turn might cause their adrenalin to flow and their hearts to race.So perhaps the results aren't so surprising - those who are the........ Read more »
Jouven, X., Schwartz, P., Escolano, S., Straczek, C., Tafflet, M., Desnos, M., Empana, J., & Ducimetiere, P. (2009) Excessive heart rate increase during mild mental stress in preparation for exercise predicts sudden death in the general population. European Heart Journal. DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehp160
- June 30, 2009
- 05:30 AM
- 947 views
Quit smoking (and junk food?) through brief exercise?
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
Brains are crazy places.So neuroscientists using fancy brain imaging (fMRI) devices have demonstrated that nicotine stimulates the brain's mesocorticolimbic system (a reward centre).Other research has demonstrated those same centres lighting up with food cravings.Old news, no?Sure, but new fMRI studies combining smoking cues with exercise may help to explain how exercise helps with weight loss.Now most people believe exercise's role in weight loss is purely mathematical - it burns calories. Whi........ Read more »
Janse Van Rensburg, K., Taylor, A., Hodgson, T., & Benattayallah, A. (2008) Acute exercise modulates cigarette cravings and brain activation in response to smoking-related images: an fMRI study. Psychopharmacology, 203(3), 589-598. DOI: 10.1007/s00213-008-1405-3
- October 7, 2009
- 05:30 AM
- 932 views
For the poor in NYC costs count more than calories
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
On July 18th, 2009 New York City's mandatory menu calorie law went into action and restaurants with 15 or more locations were forced to post calories on menu boards and/or menus for their patrons.The hope has always been that armed with this information people would choose fewer calories.Well, so far the results aren't too promising - at least not for a very specific population.In a paper published online in the journal Health Affairs, Brian Ebel and colleagues explored the purchasing behaviour ........ Read more »
Brian Elbel, Rogan Kersh, Victoria L. Brescoll, & L. Beth Dixon. (2009) Calorie Labeling And Food Choices: A First Look At The Effects On Low-Income People In New York City. Health Affairs. info:/
- August 16, 2010
- 05:30 AM
- 909 views
Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids, and Unhealthy Peer Review.
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
Last week Colby Vorland tweeted a link to a new study that looked at the impact of a lifestyle modification program geared at overweight fathers and their children.The study set out to randomly investigate something called the Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids Program - a 3 month program that delivers 10 hours of behavioural change counseling to overweight dads and their kids (where the kids showed up for 4 of those). The study looked at dads' and kids' weights at the end of the program and 3 months l........ Read more »
Morgan, P., Lubans, D., Callister, R., Okely, A., Burrows, T., Fletcher, R., & Collins, C. (2010) The ‘Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids’ randomized controlled trial: efficacy of a healthy lifestyle program for overweight fathers and their children. International Journal of Obesity. DOI: 10.1038/ijo.2010.151
- January 13, 2010
- 05:30 AM
- 906 views
Obesity, weight gain and pregnancy. Are the guidelines flawed?
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
Last year the Institute of Medicine (IOM) revised their guidelines on weight gain in pregnancy.The new recommendations state that obese women should gain between 11 and 20lbs during pregnancy (compared with a previous recommendation of 15lbs).The Institute didn't stratify these recommendations to different classes of obesity and consequently whether you've got a BMI of 30 or a BMI of 45 the recommendations remain the same.Many physicians (myself included) found this to be odd - both in terms of ........ Read more »
Artal R, Lockwood CJ, & Brown HL. (2010) Weight gain recommendations in pregnancy and the obesity epidemic. Obstetrics and gynecology, 115(1), 152-5. PMID: 20027048
- June 1, 2010
- 10:45 AM
- 892 views
Is air pollution responsible for rising rates of diabetes?
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
A recent study says so.The study, Traffic-related Air Pollution and Incident Type 2 Diabetes: Results from the SALIA Cohort Study set out to look at 1,775 non-diabetic middle aged women and their incidence of developing type 2 diabetes over a 16 year period as a function of their exposure to traffic-related air pollution. The study was conducted in Germany and the authors hypothesized that particulate matter air pollution may promote the development of type 2 diabetes with the proposed mechanism........ Read more »
Krämer, U., Herder, C., Sugiri, D., Strassburger, K., Schikowski, T., Ranft, U., & Rathmann, W. (2010) Traffic-related Air Pollution and Incident Type 2 Diabetes: Results from the SALIA Cohort Study. Environmental Health Perspectives. DOI: 10.1289/ehp.0901689
- July 7, 2009
- 05:30 AM
- 882 views
Fortified ice cream - an osteoporotic miracle?
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
Oy.From the labs at Unilever comes a study that calcium absorption following the consumption of calcium fortified ice-cream was comparable to absorption following the consumption of milk.Huzzah!?I suppose that given obesity's ability to increase bone density, by creating calcium fortified ice-cream we might finally have the "natural" cure for osteoporosis.Some great quotes from the researchers in Food Navigator, "Concerns over the unhealthy image of ice cream appear unfounded however, with the i........ Read more »
van der Hee, R., Miret, S., Slettenaar, M., Duchateau, G., Rietveld, A., Wilkinson, J., Quail, P., Berry, M., Dainty, J., & Teucher, B. (2009) Calcium Absorption from Fortified Ice Cream Formulations Compared with Calcium Absorption from Milk. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 109(5), 830-835. DOI: 10.1016/j.jada.2009.02.017
- October 13, 2009
- 05:30 AM
- 879 views
Big Milk PhD bares her bias
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
Meet Dr. Susan Barr.Dr. Barr is a professor of nutrition at the University of British Columbia and she has had a truly illustrious career, having published dozens of peer reviewed articles. She's also been a workhorse for the milk industry serving as a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Milk Processors' Education Program, the Medical Advisory Board for the International Dairy Foods Association and speaking and writing regularly for the Dairy Farmers of Canada.So what's got my knickers ........ Read more »
Kris-Etherton PM, Grieger JA, Hilpert KF, & West SG. (2009) Milk products, dietary patterns and blood pressure management. Journal of the American College of Nutrition. PMID: 19571168
BARR, S. (2000) Effects of Increased Consumption of Fluid Milk on Energy and Nutrient Intake, Body Weight, and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Healthy Older Adults. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 100(7), 810-817. DOI: 10.1016/S0002-8223(00)00236-4
Appel, L. (1997) A Clinical Trial of the Effects of Dietary Patterns on Blood Pressure. New England Journal of Medicine, 336(16), 1117-1124. DOI: 10.1056/NEJM199704173361601
- September 21, 2009
- 05:30 AM
- 872 views
Danone's latest sexy health claim (sarcasm alert).
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
Somehow I don't think you'll be seeing this one on the side of your Activia anytime soon, but not because it isn't true.If you remember a while back I observed that if Danone's Activia health claims were really as robust as they like to present them, that perhaps they wouldn't have withdrawn them from consideration in the EU where the rules of proving your claim to be true are much, much more stringent.Well Danone's resubmitted a claim all right, but it's not the claim that Activia helps keep yo........ Read more »
Hickson, M., D'Souza, A., Muthu, N., Rogers, T., Want, S., Rajkumar, C., & Bulpitt, C. (2007) Use of probiotic Lactobacillus preparation to prevent diarrhoea associated with antibiotics: randomised double blind placebo controlled trial. BMJ, 335(7610), 80-80. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.39231.599815.55
- July 19, 2010
- 05:30 AM
- 871 views
Not everything's caused by obesity: Brain and memory function edition
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
Good lord.I know people like to blame obesity for everything. Every disease, every problem - everything.You know what I'm blaming on it today? Authors' and peer reviewers' attitudes about their studies and results.Last Tuesday I was asked by CTV to read a study that was pending publication in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society so that I could comment on it for the national news. The study looked at 8,745 women between the ages of 65-79 free of dementia and evaluated their weight a........ Read more »
Kerwin, D., Zhang, Y., Kotchen, J., Espeland, M., Van Horn, L., McTigue, K., Robinson, J., Powell, L., Kooperberg, C., Coker, L.... (2010) The Cross-Sectional Relationship Between Body Mass Index, Waist-Hip Ratio, and Cognitive Performance in Postmenopausal Women Enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. DOI: 10.1111/j.1532-5415.2010.02969.x
- February 16, 2011
- 05:30 AM
- 867 views
Think the gym's gonna make you slim? Think again.
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
Not sure why we're still funding exercise for weight loss studies as two recent comprehensive reviews of the medical literature have concluded that weight loss by means of exclusively exercise interventions run in the order of a 1-3% loss in response to 180 mins/wk of exercise and no loss at all if less than 150 mins/wk, but yet here's another one to discuss.What's a bit different about this study is that it was long - 18 months and hence perhaps will yield a different outcome.So what'd the stud........ Read more »
Jakicic, J., Otto, A., Lang, W., Semler, L., Winters, C., Polzien, K., & Mohr, K. (2010) The Effect of Physical Activity on 18-Month Weight Change in Overweight Adults. Obesity, 19(1), 100-109. DOI: 10.1038/oby.2010.122
- April 27, 2011
- 05:30 AM
- 852 views
Food addiction. Chicken or egg?
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
Food addiction's a hot topic these days.Proponents posit that food addiction is a real phenomenon that leads people to almost irresistibly eat.Opponents believe that it doesn't exist, and it's just a means with which people justify their difficulties with food.What if they're both right?A recent study's got me thinking. Now be forewarned, it's an animal study and therefore not necessarily attributable to human beings, but nonetheless....The study looked at minipigs (which as evidenced by the ph........ Read more »
Val-Laillet D, Layec S, Guérin S, Meurice P, & Malbert CH. (2011) Changes in brain activity after a diet-induced obesity. Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.), 19(4), 749-56. PMID: 21212769
- June 9, 2009
- 05:30 AM
- 851 views
What the American Beverage Association and Philip Morris have in common.
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
There was a letter to the editor in yesterday's New York Times. The letter was written by Ms. Susan K. Neely, the President of the American Beverage Association. According to their website the ABA`s members, "market hundreds of brands, flavors and packages, including regular and diet soft drinks, bottled water and water beverages, 100-percent juice and juice drinks, sports drinks, energy drinks and ready-to-drink teas."Susan was writing in response to an editorial where the New York Times call........ Read more »
Kelly D. Brownell, & Kenneth E. Warner. (2009) Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died. How Similar Is Big Food?. The Milbank Quarterly, 87(1), 259-294. DOI: 19298423
- August 10, 2009
- 05:30 AM
- 833 views
The unintended consequences of banning trans-fats
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
While Health Canada continues to ignore its own task force's recommendations to ban trans-fats, New York is off an running.A recent report published in the Annals of Internal Medicine revealed that since their regulation in 2006 98% of restaurants are trans-fat free and that it has been a "cost neutral" shift.What's more interesting is that preliminary studies suggest that while indeed the shift from trans-fats have increased the use of saturated fats, it also increased the use of unsaturated fa........ Read more »
Angell SY, Silver LD, Goldstein GP, Johnson CM, Deitcher DR, Frieden TR, Bassett MT. (2009) Cholesterol control beyond the clinic: New York City's trans fat restriction. Annals of Internal Medicine, 151(2), 129-134. DOI: 19620165
- December 17, 2009
- 05:30 AM
- 829 views
(Podcast) Obesity's dangerous. Period.
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
Why?Not sure.But Dr. Jennifer Kuk and Dr. Chris Arden from my undergraduate Alma mater York University in Toronto recently published a paper that looked at 6,011 adults and then subdivided them into those who were "metabolically normal" and obese and "metabolically abnormal" and obese and then followed those individuals' mortality rates over the course of 10 years.The results?Obesity doesn't generally occur in the absence of metabolic abnormalities (only about 6% of the obese folks fall into thi........ Read more »
Kuk JL, & Ardern CI. (2009) Are metabolically normal but obese individuals at lower risk for all-cause mortality?. Diabetes care, 32(12), 2297-9. PMID: 19729521
- June 20, 2011
- 05:30 AM
- 829 views
Obesity's contagious, or is it? A sober second look at obesity and social networks.
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
Right off the top let me say I'm not well versed enough in statistics to know who's right.On one side of the fence are the findings of Christakis and Fowler, famously published in the New England Journal of Medicine that posited obesity is socially contagious. Non-statistically, their paper didn't sit right with me, but as far as stats go, I'm no maven.On the other side of the fence is a new paper published by Russel Lyons who posits that Christakis' and Fowler's work is a great example of stat........ Read more »
Lyons, R. (2011) The Spread of Evidence-Poor Medicine via Flawed Social-Network Analysis. Statistics, Politics, and Policy, 2(1). DOI: 10.2202/2151-7509.1024
- August 3, 2009
- 05:30 AM
- 828 views
Food branding appeals more to overweight kids?
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
Here's a weird result.A study published in the journal Appetite found that overweight children were more likely than healthy weight children to be influenced by the branding of food.The 43 kids were presented with lunch options on 4 non-consecutive days. On two of the days they received branded foods that they were allowed to eat as much of as they wanted (Lunchables, Trix Yogurt) and on the other two days they were offered the same food just repackaged in non-branded containers.The overweight ........ Read more »
Forman, J., Halford, J., Summe, H., MacDougall, M., & Keller, K. (2009) Food branding influences ad libitum intake differently in children depending on weight status. Results of a pilot study. Appetite, 53(1), 76-83. DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2009.05.015
- May 10, 2011
- 05:30 AM
- 828 views
Is sodium a dietary red herring for the effects of processed foods?
by Yoni Freedhoff in Weighty Matters
You may have read or heard about a research paper that came out a few weeks ago in JAMA. The study followed 3,681 Europeans and looked for relationships between sodium excretion (the gold standard means of determining sodium intake), and cardiovascular disease and death.The study's findings were in contrast with what most would have expected. Though higher sodium excretion did in fact correlate with higher blood pressures, surprisingly, it also correlated with decreased mortality.So what's goi........ Read more »
Stolarz-Skrzypek K, Kuznetsova T, Thijs L, Tikhonoff V, Seidlerová J, Richart T, Jin Y, Olszanecka A, Malyutina S, Casiglia E.... (2011) Fatal and nonfatal outcomes, incidence of hypertension, and blood pressure changes in relation to urinary sodium excretion. JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association, 305(17), 1777-85. PMID: 21540421
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