Kevin Klatt, PhD, RD

If you read this blog regularly, i'm highly against obesity shaming. The whole idea that people simply choose to be obese and lack the will power to change ignores a multitude of educational/psych-social/politcal/cultural factors, as well as physiological and genetic susceptbility. It's extremely reductionist to play the calories-in-calories-out blame game. This isn't too say there isn't some level of personal responsibility, but obesity is a multi-factorial issue - as i've blogged about before. A new study (1) recently came out in the New England Journal of Medicine that looked at the incidence of obesity in the United States using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. Taking data from school children from 1998-2007 (about 21000 children were enrolled in the study), early childhood obesity (the age entering kindergarten) was highly predictive of obese status at age 14. About half of the children who were obese at age 14 had been overweight when they were in kin...

If you didn't hear, there was a pretty controversial report in the Annals of Medicine put out claiming that consumers should stop wasting their money on Multivitamins (1). In my opinon, a more appropriate summary is to not expect anything that great from popping your daily. I've got a lot of thoughts on this issue so let's break it down: 1.  May the Odds be Ever in your Favor - tossing a bunch of vitamins and minerals into the intestines at once is a bit like the Hunger Games- you've got a bunch of competitors, some will beat out others (for absorption) and maybe one will win out (be highly bioavailable) at the end. if you've ever taken a course on micronutrient metabolism, you'll probably hear this report and think ..'duh?' Mineral bioavailability is dependent upon a number of factors, and is largely inhibited by the presence of other minerals. Think back to your high school chemistry days - what happens when you put a bunch of positive charged min...

Registered Dietitians get attacked by a lot of sub-groups in nutrition for not being one of a myriad of things, depending upon the dietary mantra of the group - low carb'ers accuse RDs of heresy for recommendations concerning the consumption of carbohydrates and allotting for some level of added sugars in the diet; paleo'ers attack RDs because they push whole grains and dairy, purporting that these are two of the major toxins in our food supply; vegetarians/vegans say that RDs are pushing cancer-causing animal products that harm the environment and cause unnecessary suffering. These are just a few of the major nutrition-minded groups that have asserted their dominant, superior nutrition viewpoint and attacked the current medical model of nutrition. But who is correct? Put any of these 3 major groups alone in a room together and everyone may very well not make it out alive, or at least without being covered in Red paint and/or being accused of ignoring your primal blueprint. ...

If you don't already follow Marion Nestle's blog @ foodpolitics.com, I'd highly recommend checking it more frequently. Her perspective on socio-political issues is a nice counter-point sometimes. In perusing her blog, I came across an action notice by the FDA. The FDA will be studying the effects that nutrient claims have on consumer attitudes and responses. I find that this goes quite nicely with my most recent post on Isolated Nutrients and how the food industry likes to manipulate nutrient content to glorify the healthful components of their products. The FDA notes that it's stance "...  does not encourage the addition of nutrients to certain food products (including sugars or snack foods such as [cookies] candies, and carbonated beverages).  "  The FDA will be giving 15 minutes web-based interviews to 7500 individuals that reflect the U.S. Census data regarding gender, SES, age, education, ethnicity, etc. They will be using mock snacks, candy and carbo...