The U.S. government is approaching the study of obesity all wrong.
According to leadership at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, food companies are to blame — they’re engineering their snacks, fast food and sweets to addict us the same way cocaine and nicotine do. Others assessing the epidemic say people overeat because they lack willpower and could stop if they really wanted to.
While the blame game has been good for stirring public outrage, it hasn’t led to anything useful for improving our health. Meanwhile, some health officials have been undermining potentially useful research on novel causes of overeating. A leader in diet and obesity research quit his NIH job after he says officials interfered with his ability to discuss his results — which he said didn’t align with the agency’s talking points.
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