The USDA has released preliminary information about the next round of changes coming to the Food Pyramid.  First published in 1980, the Dietary Guidelines are mandated by Congress to be reviewed, updated and released by USDA and HHS every five years.
Based on the material being released, it is clear that obesity is front and center [...]

Jeffrey Heer, a professor at Stanford, has a some neat data visualizations on his web site.  They are part of a nice story he co-wrote in the June issue of the Communications of the ACM about different ways to visualize data.  On his site, you can manipulate this graph below and see the rise in [...]

It often seems that obesity is an entirely American phenomenon.  May 22, 2010 is European Obesity Day.  While the U.S. tips the scales at 67% of the population being overweight or obese, European citizens measure in at around 50%.  Watching the international obesity trends, you can see how the spread of sedentary lifestyles (more and [...]

A recently concluded study by researchers at Columbia University and The City College of New York has found that being overweight is now the leading cause of preventable disease.  The study—which looked at survey data from more than 3.5 million American adults over a 16 year window—found that for the first time overweight has edged [...]

Researchers with the American Institute for Cancer Research have found that more than 100,000 cases of cancer each year are caused by excess body fat.  It’s bad enough that obesity increases an individual’s chance of getting cancer, but the damage caused by obesity continues once the cancer has begun to affect the body.  Obese cancer [...]