- Author: Alec Rosenberg
Many people worry about the outside of their gut – watching their weight and suffering through sit-ups in search of six-pack abs.
Research from UC San Francisco is showing that we also should pay attention to what's inside the gut.
Gut bacteria may affect both our cravings and moods to get us to eat what they want, and often are driving us toward obesity, according to an article published this month in the journal BioEssays.
Researchers concluded from a review of recent scientific literature that microbes influence human eating behavior and dietary choices to favor consumption of the particular nutrients they grow best on, rather than simply passively living off whatever nutrients we choose...
- Author: Marissa Palin
I spent last week at the Childhood Obesity Conference in Long Beach representing UC Agriculture and Natural Resources. I had heard that obesity was an epidemic. I had heard it's an issue that needs to be tackled. But I hadn't ever heard the extent of it before.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), childhood obesity has more than doubled in the past 30 years. Adolescent obesity has tripled. In 2010, more than one-third of children and adolescents were obese. Last week, the American Medical Association went as far as to
- Author: Ann Brody Guy
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Michael Moss is best known for coining the term “pink slime,” a reference to a meat additive that, thanks to Moss’s reporting, had a particularly bad PR day in 2009, when his high gross-out factor exposé was published in the New York Times. Products containing the cringe-inducing substance were subsequently banished from many grocery stores and schools.
In his most recent book, Salt, Sugar, Fat, Moss shined daylight on the happier sounding, but no less alarming phrase “bliss point,” a food industry term for the exact combination of those titular ingredients that stimulates our brain’s pleasure center and makes us — and our kids...
- Author: Ann Brody Guy
The biennial Childhood Obesity Conference is taking place in Long Beach June 18-20. Book-ended by two world-class keynote speakers — Michael Moss, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter and author of Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, and Marion Nestle, a New York University professor of food studies and public health, and author of Food Politics and What to Eat — the event promises a no-holds-barred, systemic look at the problems of obesity in all their complexity.
Public outreach on the part of dynamic writers...
- Author: Julian M Alston
The Center for Public Health Advocacy released a report this month on the obesity rates of children in 250 cities in California. According to the report, 38 percent of children statewide are overweight.
America’s rising obesity rates are exacting a high cost on society. In looking for solutions, many people blame federal farm subsidies for the current obesity problems. The Farm Bill is up for reauthorization this year. As Congress considers changes, I think it is important to understand that the Farm Bill is not to blame for America’s increasing weight gain.
It may seem obvious that subsidies make certain foods cheaper,...