Why some dogs (and humans) are born hungry

The brain is the central regulator of appetite and body fatness, and genetic variation that affects body fatness tends to act in the brain. ...

Always Hungry? It's Probably Not Your Insulin.

David Ludwig, MD, recently published a new book titled Always Hungry? Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells, and lose weight permanently ...

New Evidence Strengthens the Link Between Hypothalamic Injury, Obesity, and Insulin Resistance

Obesity involves changes in the function of brain regions that regulate body fatness and blood glucose, particularly a region called the hyp...

Carbohydrate, Sugar, and Obesity in America

We like explanations that are simple, easy to understand, and explain everything.  One example of this is the idea that eating carbohydrate,...

Why Do Girls and Boys Reach Puberty Younger Than They Used To?

Girls, and probably boys, are reaching puberty years younger than they did in our great-grandparents' generation.  Why?  There's no ...

How Much Does Sugar Contribute to Obesity?

Last week, the British Medical Journal published a review article titled "Dietary Sugars and Body Weight", concluding that "f...

A New Human Trial Undermines the Carbohydrate-insulin Hypothesis of Obesity, Again

The carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis of obesity states that carbohydrates (particularly refined carbohydrates and sugar) are the primary caus...

Obesity → Diabetes

A new study adds to the evidence that the prevalence of type 2 diabetes is rapidly increasing in the US, and our national weight problem is ...

My AHS14 Talk on Leptin Resistance is Posted

The Ancestral Health Society just posted a video of my recent talk "What Causes Leptin Resistance?"  Follow the link below to acce...

What about the Other Weight Loss Diet Study??

The same day the low-fat vs low-carb study by Bazzano and colleagues was published, the Journal of the American Medical Association publishe...

Low-carbohydrate vs. Low-fat diets for Weight Loss: New Evidence

A new high-profile study compared the weight loss and cardiovascular effects of a low-carbohydrate diet vs. a low-fat diet.  Although many s...

Fat and Carbohydrate: Clarifications and Details

The last two posts on fat and carbohydrate were written to answer a few important, but relatively narrow, questions that I feel are particul...

Has Obesity Research Failed?

I frequently encounter the argument that obesity research has failed because it hasn't stopped the global increase in obesity rates.  Ac...

A New Understanding of an Old "Obesity Gene"

As you know if you've been following this blog for a while, obesity risk has a strong genetic component .  Genome-wide association studi...

Fat vs. Carbohydrate Overeating: Which Causes More Fat Gain?

Two human studies, published in 1995 and 2000, tested the effect of carbohydrate vs. fat overfeeding on body fat gain in humans.  What did t...

More Graphs of Calorie Intake vs. BMI

In the last post, a reader commented that the correlation would be more convincing if I graphed calories vs. average BMI rather than the pre...

Calorie Intake and the US Obesity Epidemic

Between 1960 and 2008, the prevalence of obesity in US adults increased from 13 to 34 percent, and the prevalence of extreme obesity increas...

Uncovering the True Health Costs of Excess Weight

Is excess weight hazardous to health, or can it actually be protective?  This question has provoked intense debate in the academic community...

Why Do We Overeat? A Neurobiological Perspective

I just posted a narrated Powerpoint version of my talk " Why Do We Overeat? A Neurobiological Perspective " to YouTube.  Here'...

Mindless Eating

You think you're in control of your eating behavior-- but you aren't In 2005, Brian Wansink's research group published a remarka...