Glucagon, Dietary Protein, and Low-Carbohydrate Diets

Glucagon is a hormone that plays an important role in blood glucose control.  Like insulin, it's secreted by the pancreas, though it...

Neuronal Control of Appetite, Metabolism and Weight

Last week, I attended a Keystone conference, "Neuronal Control of Appetite, Metabolism and Weight", in Banff.  Keystone conference...

Body Fatness and Cardiovascular Risk Factors

I recently revisited a really cool paper published in the Lancet in 2009 on body fatness, biomarkers, health, and mortality ( 1 ). It's ...

Why Do We Eat? A Neurobiological Perspective. Part VIII

In the (probably) last post of this series, I'll take the pieces that I've gradually outlined in previous posts, and put them togeth...

Why Do We Eat? A Neurobiological Perspective. Part VI

In previous posts in this series, I explained that the brain (primarily the mesolimbic system) integrates various factors to decide whether ...

Why Do We Eat? A Neurobiological Perspective. Part IV

In this post, I'll follow up on the last post with a discussion two more important factors that can affect energy homeostasis and theref...

Why Do We Eat? A Neurobiological Perspective. Part III

In the first post, I explained that all voluntary actions are driven by a central action selection system in the mesolimbic area (the reward...

Why Do We Eat? A Neurobiological Perspective. Part II

In the last post, I explained that eating behavior is determined by a variety of factors, including hunger and a number of others that I...

Why Do We Eat? A Neurobiological Perspective. Part I

As with all voluntary movements, eating food is an expression of activity in the brain.  The brain integrates various inputs from around the...

Announcing the Ideal Weight Program

I often receive requests from people asking for my overall perspective on fat loss and health.  I share my opinions here, but they're sc...

Comment Published in Nature

I recently read an opinion piece by Gary Taubes in the scientific journal Nature , titled "Treat Obesity as Physiology, not Physics...

Overfeeding and Elevated Insulin

It's commonly accepted in the obesity research community that fat gain causes insulin resistance and an increase in circulating insulin,...

The Potato Diet

In 2010, I wrote a series of blog posts on the health properties of potatoes ( 1 , 2 , 3 ).  The evidence showed that potatoes are non-toxic...

Is it Time to Re-write the Textbooks on Insulin and Obesity? Part II

A new paper published on December 6th in the journal Science once again tackles the question of whether elevated insulin drives the develop...

Is it Time to Re-write the Textbooks on Insulin and Obesity?

A recent study in Cell Metabolism by Dr. Arya Mehran and colleagues found a result that, according to a press release, "could overturn...

More Thoughts on Macronutrient Trends

I had a brief positive exchange with Gary Taubes about the NuSI post.  He reminded me that there's an artifact (measurement error) in th...

Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI)

Some of you may have heard of an ambitious new nutrition research foundation called the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI).  In this post,...

Calories and Carbohydrate: a Natural Experiment

In the lab, we work hard to design experiments that help us understand the natural world.  But sometimes, nature sets up experiments for us,...

AHS11 Talk Posted

After a one-year delay, my talk from the 2011 Ancestral Health Symposium is online with slides synched.  The talk is titled " Obesity: ...

Ancestral Health Symposium 2012

I recently returned from AHS12 and a little side trip to visit family.  The conference was hosted at Harvard University through the Harvard ...