Most of us know schools as institutions of learning, usually associated with “the three Rs,” but now schools in 19 states are reporting progress on another subject: “BMI”—body mass index. These schools are measuring the heights and weights of students to determine BMI, a measure of weight based on height, then sending home letters to Read more
Diet
In a thoughtful, measured and well-reasoned blog post in these pages, Dr. Keith Ayoob recently discussed the AMA’s decision to classify obesity as a “disease.” As he concluded his post, Dr. Ayoob wrote: “I don’t care how obesity is categorized. I care about what’s being done about it…. We need to stop talking Read more
The American Medical Association (AMA) now officially considers obesity a disease. Prior to the decision by the full association, a special committee within the AMA, assigned to explore the issue further, had just recommended against labeling obesity a disease, so I sense a civil war. Here are the two sides of this issue: Calling obesity Read more
Editors’ Note: Last week, The Doctor’s Tablet published a post by Paul Marantz, M.D., M.P.H., in which he asserted that adding folic acid to the food supply may be helping babies at the expense of harming adults. The widely accepted practice of adding this B vitamin to our food supply is credited with preventing Read more
As a pediatric endocrinologist, I find the sharp increase in type 2 diabetes cases among children truly alarming. Not too long ago, pediatricians considered type 2 diabetes in children an anomaly—accounting for only 1 or 2 percent of all pediatric diabetes cases. Now, government statistics indicate that as many as one in three children diagnosed Read more
By now virtually everyone has heard of the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, even more so now that bold new research, called the PREDIMED study and just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, has shown that such a diet can reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes and heart-related deaths by about 30 Read more
