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The Cancer Is Just As Real

Pat Hartman June 5, 2025 No Comments

Last year, California passed a couple of laws (including specific deadlines) to ban certain food additives suspected of being harmful. As a consequence, starting in about a year and a half, the state will ban red dye No. 3, brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate and propylparaben from all food sales under its jurisdiction, and assess fines of “up to $5,000 for a first violation and up to $10,000 each for subsequent violations.”

The Red 3 was a tough one. Its tendency to associate with cancer has been studied since the 1980s, with no legal restraint in sight. But the Center for Science in the Public Interest and many other experts kept at it, and in 2023, California banned it.

Another substance, titanium dioxide (TiO2), also had been banned, but that order was rescinded. Still, progress was made when the California School Food Safety Act was passed to forbid public schools from serving foods containing half a dozen different food dyes. A while later, the Food and Drug Administration kicked out brominated vegetable oil on a national basis, and that goes into effect a couple of months from now, in August.

An ocean’s width

It’s funny how the Europeans manage to keep harmful stuff out of their groceries, proving that it can be done. But over here, powerful forces insist that such precautions need not and should not be taken. There is another issue, as explained by California Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, who told HART Design,

Even if the FDA has conducted a thorough review of a proposed food chemical, the agency does not conduct periodic reviews to assess whether old safety determinations remain valid. As a result, many food chemicals have not been reviewed by the FDA since the 1960s or 1970s. The original evaluations frequently fail to reflect both modern toxicology and modern levels of consumption.

Citizens would like to know where to turn if they want to have similar rules to California’s, or even if they do not want to. There is debate about who should be in charge of these matters, and uncertainty about who is currently responsible. As this uncredited author inquires, “Is it a federal agency charged with keeping current around risks in foods? Or is it a state which has significantly fewer resources and is not charged with protecting public health across the entire country?”

A good example

In 2023, activists in four other states aspired to get some food laws, but failed. Still, activists in those and more states who are still trying say that the California precedent helps their efforts. It seems like the public is unable to obtain straight answers about important aspects of grocery shopping. A responsible adult who pauses to read the label on a box or can of alleged food might experience disturbing thoughts. For instance, “The government that regulates alcohol, nicotine, and certain recreational drugs so thoroughly and definitively, why is this same government unable to keep weird chemicals out of the food?”

Apparently, bureaucracy is flexible enough to move with relative alacrity under some circumstances, and with glacial slowness in other situations. Why has the tug-of-war over food additives marketed to kids been dragging on for so long? There is plenty of evidence that they can affect childhood obesity in a causal relationship. The dirty little secret in this case seems to be that such a product does not need to contain literally addictive ingredients. And besides, good dope is expensive.

No, it is quite sufficient to sell children snacks laced with ingredients that stimulate addictive behavior. And yes, having kids act like junkies is a big deal for most parents, as well as imposing a lot of stress on other family members, teachers, babysitters, dentists, and anyone else who comes in contact with the minor in question. If some weird additive causes cancer, that cancer is just as real as one brought on by smoking.

There is such a thing as behavioral addiction. Many adults feel that when a child acts addicted, she or he is as difficult to deal with as a physically addicted child would be. Whatever is in that snack or cereal may be potent enough in some way to stoke up a behavioral addiction, which sells product quite as effectively as a literal, molecular-level addictive ingredient could.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “How State-Led Ingredient Bans Are Reshaping Food Manufacturing Regulations,” HARTDesign.com, 02/14/25
Image by Alexas_Fotos/Pixabay

The MAHA Report’s Shortcomings and Mistakes

Tatyana Meshcheryakova June 4, 2025 No Comments

In a bold and sweeping move, the Trump administration released the “MAHA Report: Make Our Children Healthy Again,” a 72-page document outlining the rise of chronic illnesses among America’s youth. Spearheaded by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the report zeroes in on an urgent public health crisis — one that includes high rates of obesity, asthma, behavioral health disorders, and autoimmune conditions. Among these concerns, childhood obesity stands out as both emblematic of broader systemic issues and as a pressing problem that demands real solutions.

While the report identifies compelling drivers such as poor diet, environmental toxins, lack of physical activity, and chronic stress, experts argue that its proposed solutions fall short. The diagnosis is clear. The treatment? Frustratingly vague.

A real and rising epidemic

The numbers are hard to ignore. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), roughly one in five children in the U.S. is obese. Obesity in childhood is not just about weight; it significantly increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and mental health challenges later in life.

The MAHA report acknowledges this epidemic, pointing to dietary patterns dominated by ultra-processed foods, lack of exercise, and toxic environmental exposures as major contributors. And many experts agree. Dr. William Dietz of George Washington University noted that targeting ultra-processed foods is an important step, though it needs nuance and depth, not just broad condemnation.

Yet, while the report shines a spotlight on known issues, it seems to sidestep a critical aspect of the obesity conversation: socioeconomic inequality.

Poverty, processed foods, and missed opportunities

One of the most glaring oversights in the MAHA report is its limited engagement with poverty as a root cause. Processed foods are cheaper and more accessible than fresh, nutrient-rich alternatives, especially in underserved communities where food deserts persist. Families grappling with low incomes may rely on inexpensive, calorie-dense foods simply to feed their children.

Rather than addressing this systemic problem through programs like expanded school meal funding or subsidies for fresh produce, the report offers proposals that critics describe as “splashy,” such as removing food dyes or funding small-scale research trials — steps that may look good in headlines but lack the structural force needed to shift real-world outcomes.

Mixed messages on prevention and research

The MAHA report calls for a shift toward preventive medicine, urging NIH and FDA to support more research into the health effects of diet and chemicals. On paper, this looks promising. However, in practice, the Trump administration has simultaneously enacted cuts that directly undermine these goals.

Thousands of federal employees have been laid off, and budget cuts have hit agencies such as the CDC and NIH — organizations tasked with the very research and data collection the report claims to champion. Dr. Dietz warns that such cuts may erode our ability to monitor obesity trends, making it harder to assess progress over time.

This contradiction raises the question: Can we fight an epidemic without the tools to measure and understand it?

Overmedicalization and lifestyle solutions

Another area of focus in the report is “overmedicalization”— the idea that the healthcare system is too focused on treating disease rather than preventing it. On this point, there’s widespread agreement. Childhood obesity cannot be solved with a prescription pad alone.

Instead, a comprehensive prevention model would include:

Parent-infant training in emotional regulation
Robust nutrition education in schools
Community-based fitness initiatives
Subsidized access to whole, unprocessed foods
Improved urban planning to ensure walkable neighborhoods and safe parks
Policies addressing environmental pollutants

And while the report mentions lifestyle medicine and surveillance of pediatric drugs, it doesn’t go far enough in proposing how such a shift would be funded or implemented at scale.

What else is missing?

Ultimately, the MAHA report highlights an urgent problem but falls short of a strategy to fix it. Childhood obesity isn’t just a matter of bad personal choices or isolated environmental exposures. It’s the result of systemic forces: poverty, inequality, food industry lobbying, and crumbling public health infrastructure.

Lauren Wisk from UCLA points out that real progress will come from social policies that address root causes, not just from banning food dyes or launching a few more studies. For instance, universal school meal programs, expanded SNAP (food stamp) benefits, and tighter regulations on junk food marketing to kids could move the needle far more than flashy headlines.

If the administration is serious about “making our children healthy again,” it must follow up this report with policies that put science, equity, and prevention at the forefront. Otherwise, this report may end up as just another diagnosis without a cure.

AI only makes it worse

In a follow-up development, the Trump administration has issued corrections to the report after journalists discovered several flawed and nonexistent citations, casting doubt on the report’s scientific integrity. Investigations by a nonprofit NOTUS and NBC News revealed that at least four referenced studies do not exist, including one falsely attributed to epidemiologist Katherine Keyes.

Dr. Keyes commented:

I can confirm that I, and my co-authors, did not write that paper… I was surprised to see what seems to be an error in the citation of my work in the report, and it does make me concerned given that citation practices are an important part of conducting and reporting rigorous science.

The report’s credibility has come under further scrutiny due to its anonymous authorship, limited medical representation among commission members, and questionable interpretation of cited research. Out of 522 total references, seven could not be verified, and some included URLs containing “oaicite,” suggesting that generative AI may have played a role in compiling sources.

Additionally, researchers like Mariana Figueiro, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, have stated that their studies were misrepresented. Her work on melatonin suppression in college students was incorrectly cited as evidence about children’s sleep and screen time. She said:

The conclusions in the MAHA report are incorrect and misrepresented our finding… We looked at melatonin suppression, not sleep onset. We also used college students, not children as subjects. Finally, the journal name was incorrect.

Unsurprisingly, these errors have sparked criticism over the report’s scientific validity and its use in shaping national health policy.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “MAHA Commission report paints a dark picture of U.S. children’s health,” NPR, 5/22/25
Source: “Trump admin corrects RFK Jr.’s MAHA report after citation errors,” NBC News, 5/30/25
Source: “The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don’t Exist,” NOTUS.org, 5/29/25
Image by Markus Winkler/Pexels

Killer Diet on the Loose

Pat Hartman June 3, 2025 No Comments

In “Why is the American Diet So Deadly,” Dhruv Khullar mentions a Frenchman, Guillaume Raineri, who moved to Maryland, USA, and experienced a particularly personal form of culture shock. Every meal seemed to contain too much sugar, too much salt, and too much food, period. So he became a human lab rat, participating in an official scientific study.

This involved spending a month in an environment that could be described as monastic, or perhaps even carceral, learning firsthand that the entire secret of a successful animal study is to control as many variables as possible:

He was not allowed to go outside unsupervised, owing to the risk that he might sneak a few morsels of unsanctioned food.

Over the course of the trials, he was given both extremely nutritious, sensible meals, and, at other times, a plethora of calorie-dense, processed foods. Results were meticulously recorded, and the whole story is pretty interesting. But sadly, most Americans will never have the opportunity to understand so much about the damage we do to ourselves through incautious eating habits. Who devises these complicated research projects?

It needed to be faced

At the point in history when it started to become apparent that more Americans were overweight than ever before, sugar-sweetened beverages and saturated fat quickly became the “usual suspects.” But an investigator for the National Institutes of Health, Kevin Hall, pointed the finger directly at a third possibility: ultra-processed food, informally known as UPF. He suspected that equally as important as the “what” is the “how.” Industrial techniques and chemical modifications seemed the likely culprits.

In a study published in 2019, Hall invited twenty people to spend a month at the NIH Clinical Center, where his team measured how their bodies responded to different types of food. (Many researchers rely instead on surveys of what people recall eating.) For two weeks, participants ate a minimally processed diet, mostly consisting of “Group 1” foods such as salmon and brown rice; for the other two weeks, they ate an ultra-processed or “Group 4” diet, in which at least 80% of the calories came from the most objectional food choices.

When participants were on the ultra-processed diet, they ate 500 calories more per day and put on an average of two pounds. They ate meals faster; their bodies secreted more insulin; their blood contained more glucose. When participants were on the minimally processed diet, they lost about two pounds. Researchers observed a rise in levels of an appetite-suppressing hormone and a decline in the one that makes us feel hungry.

It was not clear why ultra-processed diets led people to eat more, or what exactly these foods did to their bodies. Still, a few factors stood out. The first was energy density, measured in calories per gram of food. Dehydration, which increases shelf life and lowers transport costs, makes many ultra-processed foods (chips, jerky, pork rinds) energy-dense.

A little surprise

The second, hyper-palatability, was a focus of one of Hall’s collaborators, Tera Fazzino. Long ago, evolution trained us to like sweet, salty, and rich foods because, on the most basic level, they help us survive. Hyper-palatable foods — those esoteric combinations of fat and sugar, or fat and salt, or salt and carbs — cater to these tastes, but are rare in nature. A grape is high in sugar but low in fat, and the typical person can stop eating after one, leading to a suspicion that maybe sugar is not so blameworthy after all. A slice of cheesecake is high in both sugar and fat, and the typical person feels compelled to devour it.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Why Is the American Diet So Deadly?”, The New Yorker, 01/06/25
Photo by Alexander Grey/Pexels

New Study Links Childhood Weight Patterns Before Age 9 to Obesity Risk

Tatyana Meshcheryakova June 2, 2025 No Comments

Children don’t all grow the same way. A recent study from the NIH-funded Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program, reported in JAMA Network Open, sheds light on how early weight trends can signal future health concerns. Researchers tracked nearly 9,500 children’s body mass index (BMI) from infancy through age 9 and identified two distinct growth patterns.

Most kids (about 89%) followed a typical growth curve where BMI naturally dropped between ages 1 and 6, then gradually increased again. However, about 11% showed a different trend — their BMI remained stable from ages 1 to 3.5, then climbed sharply through age 9. Children in this group were significantly more likely to have obesity by age 9, with BMI measurements above the 99th percentile.

The study also found that certain early-life factors may raise the risk of obesity later on. These include being born with a high birthweight, maternal smoking during pregnancy, having a mother with a high BMI before pregnancy, and excessive weight gain during pregnancy.

Childhood obesity, defined as a BMI at or above the 95th percentile for a child’s age and sex, often results from excess body fat and can lead to serious health problems like heart disease and type 2 diabetes later in life. Without intervention, kids who follow these higher-risk growth patterns may continue to struggle with weight into adolescence and adulthood.

To better understand these trends, researchers used data from medical records, parent-reported measurements, and both in-person and at-home evaluations. Their goal was to track how BMI changed over time and uncover any links to early childhood experiences.

Lead researcher Chang Liu, an assistant professor of psychology at Washington State University, said in a news release:

The fact that we can identify unusual BMI patterns as early as age 3.5 shows how critical early childhood is for preventing obesity… Our findings suggest there are important opportunities to reduce childhood obesity, such as helping pregnant women quit smoking and manage healthy weight gain, as well as closely monitoring children who show early signs of rapid weight gain.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Early childhood weight patterns linked to future obesity risk,” News Medical, 5/22/25
Source: “Preschool BMI Can Predict Childhood Obesity Risk,” HealthDay News, 5/28/25
Image by Nataliya Vaitkevich/Pexels

Target of Influence

Pat Hartman May 29, 2025 No Comments

A recent post described how in 2019, The New York Times reporter Andrew Jacobs exposed some of the doings of the International Life Sciences Institute, otherwise known as ILSI. During that year, the director-general of the World Health Organization was Dr. Margaret Chan, and ILSI founder Alex Malaspina aimed to discover how to influence her thinking, and bend it away from any impulse to critique his organization.

“This threat to our business is serious,” he said, which puzzled some listeners because ILSI was allegedly a legitimate nonprofit organization whose only mission was to help. Jacobs wrote,

In addition to its far-flung offices, ILSI runs a research foundation and an institute focused on health and environmental issues that is largely funded by the chemical industry. It also publishes the academic journal Nutrition Reviews and organizes scores of scientific conferences around the world.

But more was going on than met the eye. Monsanto and other less-than-ethical companies donated boatloads of money to ILSI, whose whole funding system looked kind of shady. In countries where it established a presence, its behavior was neither straightforward nor impartial. In India, for instance, it infiltrated government bodies that were supposed to prevent too many additives in processed foods. The processed food industry was rumored to be more powerful than even the tobacco industry, and that is a pretty serious indictment.

Meanwhile, with all kinds of shady maneuvers going on, India saw alarming increases in obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. In 2012, reacting to a Public Interest Litigation suit that had been filed by concerned citizens, the Delhi High Court directed that guidelines be drawn up to ensure that school children had access to wholesome, nutritious, safe, and hygienic foods.

Action taken

A rule was made for the whole country that edible items high in fat, salt, and sugar could not be sold within 50 meters of any school. Other guidelines were established, and officials charged with carrying out the new orders were pleased to find that some schools had already acted on their own to keep a stricter eye on what the students were being fed.

By 2015, almost one-third of the country’s teenagers were in the obese category. Still, rural areas were less affected than the cities — which strongly hinted that readily available highly processed foods laced with additives probably had something to do with the disparity. It was estimated that the urban areas alone held more than 15 million obese children, helping to make India the third most obese country on the planet.

In the same year, officials added up the operations performed to excise fat, and the news said,

The number of bariatric surgeries performed in the country has increased almost ten times over the last decade, with over 10,000 such surgeries performed in the previous year.

Medical conference attendees emphasized the importance of teaching parents that a chubby child is not necessarily a healthy one. The worst culprits were seen to be “shortcut” meals and, you guessed it, highly processed foods. Around the same time a study confirmed that India’s affluent class was plagued by obesity, but the same societal and environmental factors impacted folks of all kinds, which implied that unless corrective action was taken, future conditions would be “serious.” Some authorities claimed that other authorities underestimated the childhood obesity rate, and that the upper classes were still in worse shape than was previously admitted.

One philosophy held that obesity was caused by the environment, rather than by socio-economic conditions; although it could be argued that the environment itself is a socio-economic condition, and vice versa. Not surprisingly, obesity also correlated with a lack of playgrounds. The fact that schools where unhealthful snacks were served had more obese students was an observable reality.

The epigenetic theory was popular, suggesting that the ability to retain fat is a useful survival trait bestowed by the “thrifty phenotype” widely shared by natives of the subcontinent. In 2016, when India’s first obesity clinic for adolescents opened, the situation was dire:

[A] a recent survey in Pune and Mumbai found that 18 per cent of the school-going children suffer from obesity, 32 per cent are over-weight and 52 per cent of the students are potential diabetics.

In 2017, the government slapped sugar-sweetened soda with a 40% tax.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “A Shadowy Industry Group Shapes Food Policy Around the World,” NYTimes.com, 09/16/19
Source: “Obesity among Indian teens swells,” IndiaTimes.com, 07/04/14
Source: “India sees 10 time increase in bariatric surgeries in last decade: OSSI,” IndiaTimes.com/ 07/17/15
Source: “India’s quiet tide of childhood obesity,” Scroll.in, 05/07/16
Source: “First obesity clinic for adolescents in India opens in Mumbai,” TheHealthSite.com, 10/09/16
Image by Waldemar_RU/Pixabay

What Is ILSI, and Why Does It Hate Our Kids?

Pat Hartman May 27, 2025 No Comments

Wherever there is a hugely populated country, there is ILSI. Some years back, this was a problem in India because many people wanted manufacturers to begin placing red warning labels on the packaging of highly processed foods. But strangely, the leader of the committee responsible for achieving this reform turned out to be a member of the American non-profit, International Life Sciences Institute, funded by all the biggest producers of ultra-processed foods on the planet.

A reader might ask, “Just a moment, please. Isn’t that exactly backwards?” As a matter of fact, yes. A recent Childhood Obesity News post mentioned what has been deemed a “shadowy industry group,” the International Life Sciences Institute, which has managed to get its fingers into all sorts of places where they don’t belong.

ILSI’s publicly avowed mission is to improve “public and planetary health by convening international experts from academia, the public sector, the private sector, and other NGOs to advance evidence-based scientific research.” The federation currently includes 10 “entities,” namely: Mesoamerica, North Andean, Brazil, Europe, India, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and U.S./Canada/Global (headquartered in the U.S.).

The grim details

It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit which, by law, ought not to “engage in lobbying or political activities.” On its homepage, ILSI’s science videos boast a collective total of 33,726 YouTube views, which is not a lot. (By not a lot, we mean that a podiatrist’s single YouTube video titled “Two-Inch Toenails Trimmed” has accrued 227,000 views.)

Internet searches like ILSI+scandal, ILSI+corruption, ILSI+exposed, and ILSI+unethical bring up alarming results. Even Coca-Cola, which had long been a prominent financial backer, broke up with the non-profit. Mars, Nestlé, and other companies have also severed ties. Apparently, the outfit’s efforts have been focused on such dubious goals as convincing the world that obesity is caused solely by insufficient exercise, and sugar has nothing to do with it. Like so many other organizations that want something quite badly (and quite bad), it entices its members with nice conference vacations, at the very least.

Journalism to the rescue

A few years back, ILSI was examined comprehensively by The New York Times reporter Andrew Jacobs. For the public’s benefit, he broke down for general comprehension information originally made available in professional journals about ILSI, which at the time ran 17 branches around the world. At first, outrage was mainly focused on what was going on in China, with the encouragement and support of that country’s government.

A few months later, Jacobs expanded on the first round of reportage. Harking back to the initial paragraph of our blog post, it turned out that the committee head who put a stop to the red warning labels was ILSI’s own Dr. Boindala Sesikeran. Of course, all suggestions of conflict of interest were righteously denied. “Under no circumstance does ILSI protect industry from being affected by disadvantageous policy and laws,” the official statement attested.

But the jig was up. Jacobs wrote,

After decades largely operating under the radar, ILSI is coming under increasing scrutiny by health advocates in the United States and abroad who say it is little more than a front group advancing the interests of the 400 corporate members that provide its $17 million budget… Over the past year, researchers have documented how the organization’s China affiliate helped shape anti-obesity education campaigns…

But what is wrong with anti-obesity education? Well, it seems the philosophy advocated by ILSI did not call for dietary change, especially if that change involves reducing the amount of sugar that humans consume, even the obese ones. The organization was all about promoting physical activity, which, of course, is excellent advice. But not when it comes along with complete, uncritical acceptance of all the sugar anybody wants.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “ ILSI: Collaborative science for safe, nutritious and sustainable food,” ILSI.org, undated
Source: “ How Chummy Are Junk Food Giants and China’s Health Officials? They Share Offices,” NYTimes.com, 01/09/19
Source: “A Shadowy Industry Group Shapes Food Policy Around the World,” NYTimes.com, 09/16/19
Image by NB_art/Pixabay

The Worldwide Growth of Growth

Pat Hartman May 22, 2025 No Comments

Back in 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released several charts and tables that collectively told a dismal story of how, since the 1950s, child obesity rates had doubled and adolescent numbers had quadrupled. This led to the publication of an article titled “6 real culprits that are making American kids fat.”

What were those villains deemed to be? For starters, people were eating an enormous amount of sugar, like an average of 132 pounds per year per capita. Even way back at the turn of the century, in 1900, that figure had been 90 pounds per year, and at no point since then had it decreased. Also, awareness was dawning that sugar, especially in the form of high fructose corn syrup, is wickedly addictive.

At the same time, people were eating lots of fast food, which is mostly highly processed fare, and fresh fruits and vegetables were much less popular than pizza, pancakes, pasta, and potatoes of the fried variety.

Bad habits grow fast

People, especially the young, were watching way too much television and neglecting physical activity in droves. Lack of exercise also contributed to insulin resistance, which is associated with both diabetes and obesity. To and from school, kids were traveling by car rather than walking or bicycling.

Among average people and their average meals, portion sizes had grown humongous. Since the 1950s, the standard portion size for soda pop had grown from seven ounces to an astounding 42 ounces, while the size of a hamburger tripled, and an order of fries did too. Last but not least, advertising convinced people to buy more and more of those processed, excessively large meals.

Of course, all these factors sound very familiar to today’s well-informed public, but back then, more than a decade ago, awareness of such matters was nowhere near as acute. In 2019, a randomized controlled trial, led by Kevin D. Hall, Ph.D., stirred things up by finding an association between ultra-processed foods and weight gain that did not exist with an unprocessed diet.

So, what else is new?

In the same year, The New York Times published an exposé of a “shadowy industry group” called ILSI. Reporter Andrew Jacobs commenced by remarking that, when the food corporations objected to the proposed inclusion of red warning labels on junk food, the government of India had backed down. Those who wanted warning labels were, naturally, unhappy; so the government set up a panel of experts to review the proposal yet again.

However, the choice of a Nestlé S.A. adviser to head the three-member committee did not go over well. Dr. Boindala Sesikeran was also a representative of the International Life Sciences Institute, an American nonprofit funded by agribusiness, food, and pharmaceutical corporations that works with, or some say infiltrates, governmental bodies in charge of nutrition and health. ILSI had been founded by a high-ranking Coca-Cola executive, so what could go wrong?

Jacobs writes,

In China, the institute shares both staff and office space with the agency responsible for combating the country’s epidemic of obesity-related illness. In Brazil, ILSI representatives occupy seats on a number of food and nutrition panels that were previously reserved for university researchers.

Sounds cozy.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “6 real culprits that are making American kids fat,” MarketWatch.com, 01/18/15
Source: “A Shadowy Industry Group Shapes Food Policy Around the World,” NYTimes.com, 09/16/19
Image by Hans/Pixabay

A Drug-Free Approach to Weight Loss

Tatyana Meshcheryakova May 21, 2025 No Comments

While semaglutide-based drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy have become popular tools for weight loss, many people still prefer to lose weight without relying on medication. For those looking for a natural approach, research shows that certain nutrients and eating habits can stimulate the same biological pathways that these drugs target.

Specifically, eating more fiber and healthy fats — like those found in olive oil and avocados — as well as paying attention to meal timing, food order, eating speed, and chewing thoroughly, can naturally boost the body’s production of GLP-1, a hormone that plays a key role in appetite control and digestion.

Mary J. Scourboutakos, Adjunct Lecturer in Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, who has a Ph.D. in nutrition, doled out advice and looked at some studies supporting it. According to Dr. Scourboutakos,

A strategic approach to weight loss rooted in the latest science is not only superior to antiquated calorie counting, but also capitalizes on the same biological mechanisms responsible for the success of popular weight-loss drugs.

Semaglutide medications work by increasing levels of GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide 1), a hormone that signals fullness and slows digestion. They also block DPP-4, an enzyme that normally breaks down GLP-1 quickly. This dual action allows the hormone to remain active in the body for much longer (sometimes up to a week), helping people feel full for extended periods and eat less as a result.

But medication isn’t the only way to elevate GLP-1, as we’ve explored in some of our previous posts. There are some less expensive regimens that could serve as alternatives to taking weight loss drugs.

What you eat matters

Fiber, especially from beans, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and seeds, is a powerful GLP-1 booster. When gut bacteria ferment fiber, they produce short-chain fatty acids that trigger GLP-1 release. This may help explain why higher fiber intake is consistently linked to weight loss, even without cutting calories.

Monounsaturated fats, like those in olive oil and avocados, can also increase GLP-1. Nuts like pistachios, which are rich in both fiber and healthy fats, have also been shown to boost GLP-1.

How you eat is just as important

Beyond food choices, how you eat can also influence GLP-1. Meal sequence makes a difference: eating protein before carbs, or vegetables before carbs, leads to greater GLP-1 release than the reverse order.

Timing matters too

Like other hormones, GLP-1 follows a daily rhythm. Eating a meal in the morning, such as at 8 a.m., triggers a stronger GLP-1 response than eating the same meal in the evening. This helps explain the wisdom behind the saying, “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.”

The pace of eating and chewing also affects GLP-1 levels

One study found that slowly eating ice cream over 30 minutes led to higher GLP-1 levels than eating it quickly in five minutes. However, when vegetables are eaten first, the speed of eating seems to matter less in terms of blood sugar response.

Even how well you chew your food can play a role. Chewing cabbage, for example, increased GLP-1 levels more than drinking it as a purée.

Food vs. medication

While these dietary strategies can raise GLP-1 levels, the effects are still modest compared to medications, Dr. Scourboutakos points out. For example, a Mediterranean diet was shown to raise GLP-1 to around 59 picograms per milliliter, while even the lowest dose of Ozempic can push levels to 65 nanograms per milliliter, which is over 1,000 times higher.

Still, when it comes to long-term health outcomes, food may have the edge. Dr. Scourboutakos writes that…

[…] when you compare long-term risk for diseases like heart attacks, the Mediterranean diet lowers risk of cardiac events by 30 per cent, outperforming GLP-1 medications that lower risk by 20 per cent. While weight loss will always be faster with medications, for overall health, dietary approaches are superior to medications.

Dr. Scourboutakos’ advice for a drug-free weight loss approach includes:

Eating a substantial breakfast, or frontloading your calorie intake earlier in the day
Including a fiber-rich food at every meal
Making olive oil a regular part of your diet
Eating protein and vegetables before carbohydrates
Snacking on fiber- and fat-rich nuts like pistachios
Chewing your food thoroughly
Eating slowly and mindfully

What else can you do to lose weight without the meds?

A recent article on the Medical News Today website also dug deep into some proven, drug-free strategies to lose weight and keep it off. Besides of the ones mentioned above and a few other, most obvious ones like recommending regular physical activity. The three we’d like to mention are intermittent fasting, tracking your progress, and getting enough sleep.

Intermittent fasting

Intermittent fasting involves cycling between periods of eating and fasting, typically within a set window of time each day. It encourages weight loss primarily by helping people consume fewer calories overall. A 2022 meta-analysis found that intermittent fasting, when practiced for up to 26 weeks, can be just as effective for losing weight as a traditional low-calorie diet. Of course, fasting isn’t for everyone, even adults, so it’s best to consult your doctor.

Common forms of intermittent fasting include:

Alternate-day fasting: This method involves fasting every other day, while eating normally on non-fasting days. A modified version allows 20–30% of daily caloric needs on fasting days.
The 5:2 diet: Fast (or drastically reduce calorie intake) for two days each week and eat normally on the other five.
The 16:8 method: This plan limits eating to an eight-hour window each day (e.g., noon to 8 p.m.) and involves fasting for the remaining 16 hours. It’s often referred to as time-restricted eating.

Tracking your weight-loss progress

Keeping a record of daily food intake, physical activity, and weight progress can significantly support weight loss goals. Using journals, apps or online trackers helps people become more aware of their habits and encourages healthier choices.

A 2020 review found that this kind of self-monitoring can drive behavior change and increase motivation. A 2021 study also linked consistent food and weight tracking with more successful weight loss, particularly among users who logged their meals diligently. Additionally, a 2022 review suggests that wearable fitness trackers can improve activity levels, fitness, and body composition.

Getting enough sleep

Finally, this article took a comprehensive look at childhood obesity causes and treatment. We’ve covered plenty of that over the years on this blog, but the article reminds us that…

Studies show children who sleep less are more likely to be overweight or obese, and the risk increases with shorter sleep duration. A review of 17 studies found that children of all ages who slept less than the recommended amount had a 58% increased risk of being overweight or obese.

(Here’s a link to the study.)

So, just how much sleep do children need? The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends (and the American Academy of Pediatrics endorses) the following amounts of sleep by age group:

Ages 4-12 months: 12-16 hours (including naps)

Ages 1-2 years: 11-14 hours (including naps)

Ages 3-5 years: 10-13 hours (including naps)

Age 6-12 years: 9-12 hours

Age 13-18 years: 8-10 hours

Even though these natural strategies may seem obvious and may not match the potency of medications, they offer a sustainable, side-effect-free way to manage weight and improve overall health.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Nature’s Ozempic: What and how you eat can increase levels of GLP-1 without drugs,” The Conversation, 5/15/25
Source: “How to naturally lose weight fast,” Medical News Today, 5/14/25
Source: “Childhood Obesity Causes and Treatments,” Very Well Health, 5/13/25
Image by Vanessa Loring/Pexels

When NOVA Came on the Scene

Pat Hartman May 20, 2025 No Comments

As mentioned in a recent post, the NOVA system classifies ultra-processed foods according to their potential to do harm. The term (shortened to UPF) was brought into the mainstream by Carlos Monteiro, a Brazilian epidemiologist.

In the early 1970s, curious about why so many people were both obese and malnourished, he learned that his fellow citizens were at the same time buying less “fattening” grocery items like sugar, oil, and salt, and none of it made sense. In 2009, he published a research paper, writes newyorker.com journalist Dhruv Khullar, M.D.,…

[…] suggesting that something very bad had happened when industrial food systems started churning out cheap, convenient, and tempting foods. He argued that scientists should classify foods by their most unnatural ingredients and by their means of production.

Group 1 foods are as basic as it gets, either minimally processed or left alone, and the examples given are nuts, eggs, vegetables, and pasta. Group 2 includes stuff you put on or in those basic foods: butter, salt, oil, sugar, etc. The combination of the two is labeled Group 3, food that is technically somewhat processed, but not necessarily unhealthful.

But then comes the great leap into Group 4 where anything goes, including the examples given here — “modified cornstarch, whey-protein concentrate, xanthan gum, and disodium phosphate” — to name just a few of the possibilities, and there are hundreds. These are the additives now required to be listed on product labels and scrutinized with a magnifying glass.

Khullar explains the next stage thusly:

The ingredients of a Group 4 meal tend to be created when foods are refined, bleached, hydrogenated, fractionated, or extruded — in other words, when whole foods are broken into components or otherwise chemically modified. If you can’t make it with equipment and ingredients in your home kitchen, it’s probably ultra-processed.

It took a while for Monteiro’s theory to catch on. Eventually in 2015, researcher Kevin Hall, of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, got interested. He had been working with contestants from “The Biggest Loser” and saw an opportunity to understand more about obesity, which was becoming a national concern of immense proportions.

Hall recruited 20 subjects to spend a month at the Center, closely watched, on a minimally processed diet for half the time and an ultra-processed diet the other half. With the former, they tended to lose a pound per week, and with the latter, to gain a pound per week. Of course weight gain and loss were not the only factors the team tracked.

One important observation was that dehydration necessarily concentrates the ingredients of a product and makes it energy-dense. The hyper-palatability factor (irresistible taste) showed up as pretty important. Many interesting details were revealed. For example:

The occasional whole egg, which contains more than half the daily recommended dose of cholesterol, might be preferable to packaged liquid eggs, which are protein-rich and sometimes cholesterol- and fat-free, but often contain preservatives and emulsifiers.

Then Harvard University scholars performed a massive study of 200,000 people’s eating habits, and reclassified ultra-processed foods into 10 subgroups. Eventually they came up with contradictory and puzzling conclusions:

Two types of ultra-processed foods (sugary sodas and processed meats) increased people’s risk of cardiovascular disease, but three types (breads and cold cereals, certain dairy products such as flavored yogurts, and savory snacks) seemed to decrease their risk. Another five didn’t appear to affect it at all.

The end results were not very definitive, but did inspire an official warning against processed meats. Meanwhile another expert, Prof. Alan Levinovitz, defined the whole research effort as a waste of time and money: “We already know why populations are gaining weight: ubiquitous, cheap, delicious, calorie-dense foods.” Dr. Khullar, meanwhile, summed up his article with words from Michael Pollan’s 2008 book, In Defense of Food:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Why Is the American Diet So Deadly?,” NewYorker.com, 01/06/25
Image by johnhain/Pixabay

Ultra-Processed Food — the Scoop Goes On

Pat Hartman May 15, 2025 No Comments

About half a year back, a new study made the case that probably far too much of the average child‘s diet is composed of ultra-processed food, familiarly known as UPF. Measuring consumption in terms of calorie intake, researchers reckon that for 7-year-olds, processed foods comprise 59% (well over half) of their diets. But just wait until you hear about the younger ones:

Researchers found processed foods made up 47% of toddlers’ calories… The nutritional culprits may not be what you expect. The biggest offenders weren’t ice cream, fries or candy. They were products like high fiber cereals, flavored yogurt, and breads — foods that are often marketed as “healthy.”

Toddlers are commonly understood to be children whose walking skills are not yet fully developed; from one to three or even four years old, depending on whom you ask. Also, to be fair, some babies start to toddle at nine months, so of course they must be included in the classification.

It will come as no surprise, that kids who are set on the UPF path by heedless adults, will probably continue upon it. Most people like to stick with what they already know, so hyper processed it is. But even if they don’t cling to the familiar, that curious adventure-seeking tendency will send them eagerly in pursuit of more exciting junk food. Yet, at the same time, these early adapters to ultra processing are rarely adventurous about exploring ultra-nutritious alternatives to balance out their diets.

Regrettably hooked minors

The consumption of excessively processed foods (and food-adjacent substances) is believed to correlate with an overall higher mortality rate. For instance, research published by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine showed that chowing down on a lot of UPF “increased the risk of premature death from all causes,” and the authors cited numbers:

A new study has found that for each 10% increase in calories from these foods, the risk for premature death increases by almost 3%.

According to a very recent piece published by BBC.com, a study that covered eight countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom (which are the worst two in terms of junk food’s effects on their citizens), suggests a connection between UPF and early death.

One factor that makes it so difficult to keep track is that the typical hyper-processed food tends to contain five or even more ingredients with shady reputations. Sacrificing safety to favor aesthetics, these additives, sweeteners, and other chemicals are tossed in to improve the texture, flavor, eye appeal, or some other aspect of the product. Also, human life is complicated, so the individual’s general dietary preferences, exercise, sleep, medications, and many other factors can affect the equation.

Regrettable limits

This fact is hard to accept, but we have no other choice: To perform really undeniable research in this area would require keeping humans in conditions matching those of experimental laboratory animals, for decades. Because otherwise, there are just too many variables, and too many opportunities for accidental mistakes in reportage, or even deliberate sabotage.

But when people are just living their ordinary human lives, any attempt at strict accounting is vulnerable to colossal amounts of randomness, which is not compatible with good science. The uncontrollable quality of life holds less true with infants and very young, who can sometimes be satisfactorily managed. There is no excuse for not exercising some amount of conscious deliberation in feeding them.

A moment’s consideration will reveal that children whose ambulation is still uncertain, even at the advanced age of four, are probably not able to hike to the convenience store on their own. Also, few of them drive, and even if they did, they might not be able to reach up to the counter to pay for their junk food.

The hard truth is that no child gets hold of UPF unless some nominally responsible adult supplies it to them. Grownups, there is no point in trying to squirm out of responsibility. This is a “you problem.” Please don’t feed those kids junk, or let other people do it either.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Study finds how much ultra-processed foods children are eating,” WBay.com, 11/11/24
Source: “Every Bite of Ultra-Processed Foods May Increase Risk of Early Death, Study Says,” VeryWellHealth.com, 05/05/25
Source: “Ultra-processed foods may be linked to early death,” BBC.com, 04/28/25
Image by angelicavaihel/Pixabay

An ocean’s width

A good example

A real and rising epidemic

Poverty, processed foods, and missed opportunities

Mixed messages on prevention and research

Overmedicalization and lifestyle solutions

What else is missing?

AI only makes it worse

It needed to be faced

A little surprise

Action taken

The grim details

Journalism to the rescue

Bad habits grow fast

So, what else is new?

What you eat matters

How you eat is just as important

Timing matters too

The pace of eating and chewing also affects GLP-1 levels

Food vs. medication

What else can you do to lose weight without the meds?

Intermittent fasting

Tracking your weight-loss progress

Getting enough sleep

Regrettably hooked minors

Regrettable limits

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

The Book

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Presentations

Food & Health Resources