S1E5: Obesity
What do we get wrong about weight? Where did BMI even come from? And is there really an obesity "epidemic"?
Today's guest is Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, an Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Ottawa and Medical Director of Ottawa's Bariatric Medical Institute who's known as Canada's most outspoken obesity expert. He's also the author of "The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work."
Citations and further reading:
- A History of Obesity, or How What Was Good Became Ugly and Then Bad by Garabed Eknoyan, Advances in Chronic Kidney Disease
- When Fat was in Fashion by Anne Hollander, The New York Times
- Fat phobia by Heather Ashbach, UCI News
- Same B.M.I., Very Different Beach Body by Albert Sun, The New York Times
- Why BMI is a flawed measure of body fat, explained by an eloquent 14-year-old by Julia Belluz, Vox
- Accuracy of current body mass index obesity classification for white, black and Hispanic reproductive-age women by Mahbubur Rahman, MD, PhD, MPH and Abbey B. Berenson, MD, MMS, Obstetrics & Gynecology
- The Bizarre and Racist History of the BMI by Aubrey Gordon, Elemental
- Anthropometry, Britannica.com
- Adolphe Quetelet and the Evolution of Body Mass Index (BMI) by Sylvia R. Karasu M.D., Psychology Today
- Indices of relative weight and obesity by Ancel Keys et. al., International Journal of Epidemiology
- Obesity epidemic increases dramatically in the United States: CDC director calls for national prevention effort, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- How Often Is B.M.I. Misleading? By Albert Sun, The New York Times
- Is dust making you fat? by Andrea Downey, The New York Post
- Low-fat vs. low-carb? Major study concludes: it doesn’t matter for weight loss by Michael Hull, Examine.com
- Fat Is Not the Problem—Fat Stigma Is by Linda Bacon and Amee Severson, Scientific American
- Airline Passenger of Size Policies: Will You Be Forced to Buy an Extra Seat? by Ed Hewitt
- How and why weight stigma drives the obesity ‘epidemic’ and harms health by A. Janet Tomiyama et. al., BMC Medicine

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