Author, obesity researcher .

The Mediterranean Diet and heart disease

The last week in February (2013) saw headlines all over the world: “Mediterranean diet shown to ward off heart attack and stroke.” The Guardian ran with “Mediterranean diet ‘cuts strokes and heart attacks in at-risk groups‘.”  The Sydney Morning Herald announced “Mediterranean diet cuts risk of first heart attack by 30%”. The world headlines were [...]

Read more »

American dietitians, big ‘food’ companies & conflict of interest

I obviously follow like minded people on twitter because one item has dominated my timeline over the past 24 hours. Michele Simon, author of the brilliant book Appetite for Profit, has written a report called “And now a word from our sponsors. Are America’s nutritional professionals in the pocket of Big Food?” I have no [...]

Read more »

Coca-Cola, Obesity and Conflict

Coca-Cola launched an advert about obesity. You can see the advert here as part of a short clip on ABC news. The ABC news item had an interesting factoid in it: “Sugary sodas are the number one source of calories in the American diet.” The Coca-cola advert has a female voice over – that kind [...]

Read more »

The British Heart Foundation & Flora pro.activ – an unhealthy relationship

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) describes itself as “a charity that aims to prevent people dying from heart diseases”. Until now, the BHF has remained relatively conflict free – a paragon of virtue in fact when compared with some other ‘heart charities’. Heart UK, for example, calls itself the cholesterol charity (cholesterol should have a [...]

Read more »

The BDA attacks diets, but what about theirs?

The British Dietetic Association (BDA) did some self promotion last week – they had an article in the Daily Mail attacking some fad diets, which they said should be avoided in the New Year. Two were so ridiculous that they involved being on intravenous drips – not something that the average dieter could try, let [...]

Read more »

Conflicted nutritionists defend bread

“Not a grain of truth: Bread has been ‘demonised by TV nutritionists and is a vital part of our daily diet‘” screamed the Daily Mail headline on Friday 14th September. I was pretty disgusted by this on a number of levels: 1) Conflict of interest The article talked about nutrition scientists and then went on [...]

Read more »

People can be fat yet fit, however…

“People can be fat yet fit, research suggests” was the BBC headline. “People can be fat AND fit as study finds obesity doesn’t automatically lead to ill-health” claimed the Daily Mail. “Fat but fit people as healthy as normal weight ones: research” was The Telegraph’s take on the study. And the story was covered from [...]

Read more »

Egg yolk consumption, carotid plaque & bad science

“Egg yolks linked to heart disease” screamed the headlines on Monday 6th August 2012.  The newspaper article came from a journal article called “Egg yolk consumption and carotid plaque“. I really have got better things to do than to continually dissect articles from so called scientists, but, when the item under attack is the super [...]

Read more »

Cholesterol – what does the blood cholesterol test actually measure?

This post is dedicated to Mat Cooke who asked a great question! Cholesterol targets for USA, Australia and UK The world is obsessed with cholesterol levels. The UK and Australia work in mmol/l and the USA works in mg/dl. Americans are told to have a total cholesterol level below 200 mg/dl and LDL below 100 [...]

Read more »

10 facts about The Olympics & Junk Food Sponsors

The London Olympics start today (Wednesday 25th July 2012) with the women’s football kicking off in Cardiff. There has been much talk about the sponsors involved in the Olympics – particularly the junk food sponsors – McDonalds, Coca-cola and Cadbury. Here are some factoids that you may enjoy: 1) The major part of funding comes [...]

Read more »

Next Page »