The opioid epidemic has received a lot of media and political attention recently, much more than food-related diseases such as diabetes. Axios recently reported that “U.S. life expectancy was steadily rising since 1970 but stopped in 2014, mostly because of drug-related deaths.” They based this on a new CDC letter in JAMA. Similarly, the Washington Post alleged last year that the “Drug crisis is pushing up death rates for almost all groups of Americans.” The media’s focus on opioid deaths […]

Categories: Uncategorized

UC San Francisco Professor and pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig is best known for taking on sugar and fructose. Dr. Lustig’s new book takes on a deeper topic: the distinction between pleasure and happiness. “The Hacking of the American Mind” tells how corporate interests “hacked” our brains and conflated pleasure with happiness. Coca-Cola’s “Open Happiness” campaign is the most recent example. Can any amount of sugar make someone genuinely happy? Pleasure is a short-term feeling that leaves you wanting more; happiness […]

Categories: Uncategorized

Below is our comment on the Medicare expansion of the Diabetes Prevention Program. It is also published in the US federal government’s website here. September 8, 2017   Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases kill nearly 1.9 million Americans yearly[i]. Each one of those deaths is a preventable tragedy, resulting largely from repeated lifestyle decisions imbedded in a culture corrupted by the soda and junk food industries. The chronic disease epidemic is both the simplest and most pressing health problem […]

Categories: Uncategorized

Amazon, the Clinton Foundation, and the American Heart Association have partnered to sell high-sugar food to children. And they’re marketing this junk food as if it’s healthy. The Amazon-Clinton-AHA initiative is called the Healthier Generation Store. It introduces itself as “your one stop shop for Healthier Generation-vetted Smart Snacks and products for students in and out of school.” The Alliance for a Healthier Generation’s website says its “products…comply with the USDA’s Smart Snacks in School nutrition standards and the National […]

Categories: Uncategorized

Nutrition has become one of the internet’s most controversial topics, up there with race, gender and kipping pull-ups. Recently, the pro-vegan Netflix documentary called “What the Health” has denied that sugar causes Type 2 diabetes, drawing criticism even from vegans such as dietitian Andy Bellatti (Bellatti’s work on corporate influence in nutrition is essential reading). Meanwhile, The Lancet recently published a series of papers that questioned the basis of 40-years’ worth of dietary guidelines. The Lancet series found that carbohydrate intake, […]

Categories: Uncategorized