If there ever was a sober voice in this world’s considerable madness around weight loss, it’s the National Weight Control Registry. Based in Rhode Island, it tracks more than 10,000 people who’ve been keeping an average of 70 pounds off for more than 6 years, and its purpose is to learn what helps these people keep it off. Read more »

One of the greatest harbors for sanctimony is when something is “for the children.” Children are the future, you know.

It’s not that I object to child protection as a motivation. I have a child, and I take seriously my role as one of his caregivers, guides, and educators. It’s going to take a lot more than me to care for, guide, and educate him, but it has to start with my wife and I.

What I object to, other than rank sanctimony of any kind, is how horribly unevenly “child protection” is defined. Read more »

Mom instructed me that if you can’t say anything nice, to not say anything at all. But at least one corollary just doesn’t hold up, as exemplified by an ad for cookies that Dr. Yoni Freedhoff highlighted on his blog. Read more »

Friday, I argued against soda-tax proposals because I don’t see how proponents could win a high-enough tax to affect consumer behavior, which should be their only justification. And while weaker versions that were doomed to failure were being tried, industry would use them as justification to not try other measures. Read more »

Sorry, but I just don’t believe in them. Not penny-per-ounce soda taxes, not front-of-nutrition labeling, not vague industry pledges to make their food healthier ... at some specified time far enough into the future that everyone will have forgotten. Read more »

I often score the ugly mouthpieces of Big Food for faulty logic, especially when they recast reasonable positions as absolutes, so they can then “prove” their falsity. (Example: “There is no evidence that sugary soda is the sole cause of obesity, so soda taxes or other curbs are unreasonable.” Except, no one (except them) says it’s the sole cause. Just that it’s an egregious, unredeemable cause, and therefore a good place to begin attacking the obesity problem.) Read more »

One of the tactics that Big Food's paid apologists deploy is class warfare. The pointy-headed, Ivy League liberals conspire with parentally support Berkeley students to take away gosh-darn good eatin' from simple folks like us. Read more »

Note to devious mouthpieces of Big Food ("Always with the negative waves, man."):

Something needn't the sole cause of a problem to be a cause of a problem. So when you fault any attempt to curb consumption of sugary sodas because soda isn't the sole cause of obesity, you're just obscuring the truth.

No, sugary soda is not solely responsible. The problem and its contributors are varied, confusing, and sometimes conflicting. Read more »

I have acknowledged my possibly self-defeating urge to bring attention to bullshit that deserves no attention (see: every post I’ve ever done about the liarly named Center for Consumer Freedom (no link, intentionally)). But here I go again. Read more »

I was listening to Ira Flatow interview Rob Lustig on a Science Friday podcast when I heard Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UC Berkeley, make a really good point.

Big Food spinmeisters subvert the libertarian viewpoint to “keep Big Brother from telling me what to eat” as a way to avoid any fetter on its ability to sell its products, when Big Food is already telling us what to eat! Read more »