Meet the average American man. He weighs 198 pounds and stands 5 feet 9 inches tall. He has a 40-inch waist, and his body mass index is 29, at the high end of the “overweight” category. The picture for the average woman? She is roughly 5 feet 4 inches tall, and weighs 171 pounds, with a […]

After decades of research, there are shockingly few firm conclusions. You’d think that scientists at an international conference on obesity would know by now which diet is best, and why. As it turns out, even the experts still have widely divergent opinions. At a recent meeting of the Obesity Society, organizers held a symposium during which two leading scientists […]

Survey respondents report embarrassment, fear of being judged by clinicians. Most patients appeared to withhold medically relevant information from their clinicians, survey data indicated. Among respondents to two online surveys — Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and Survey Sampling International (SSI) — 81.1% and 61.4%, respectively, avoided disclosing at least one type of medically relevant information, […]