{"id":31809,"date":"2012-09-13T12:47:34","date_gmt":"2012-09-13T16:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=news&p=31809"},"modified":"2012-09-13T12:47:34","modified_gmt":"2012-09-13T16:47:34","slug":"a-manhattan-project-to-end-the-obesity-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2012\/09\/13\/a-manhattan-project-to-end-the-obesity-epidemic\/","title":{"rendered":"A Manhattan Project to End the Obesity Epidemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

A newly launched nonprofit organization,\u00a0the Nutrition Science Initiative<\/a>,\u00a0will try to find an answer to the question,\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWhat should we eat to be healthy?\u201d<\/em> Called NuSI\u00a0(pronounced “new see”<\/em>) for short, the organization is nothing if not ambitious: its goal is to seek “the end of fad diets and high obesity rates.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>NuSI’s founders are\u00a0Gary Taubes<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Peter Attia<\/a>. Taubes is\u00a0the science journalist who helped launch the low-carb diet resurgence with his controversial\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0magazine articles and subsequent books,\u00a0Good Calories, Bad Calories<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Why We Get Fat<\/a><\/em>. Attia, who is the President of NuSI, trained in surgery at Johns Hopkins and the NIH before working as a consultant at McKinsey & Company.<\/p>\n

Taubes\u00a0explains<\/a>\u00a0the premise of NuSI:<\/p>\n

NuSI was founded on the premise that the reason we are beset today by epidemics \u00a0of obesity and type 2 diabetes, and the reason physicians and researchers think these diseases are so recalcitrant to dietary therapies, is because of our flawed understanding of their causes. We believe that with a concerted effort and the best possible science, this problem can be fixed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

NuSI originally started as a more modest endeavor, but has now received a significant commitment of financial support from\u00a0a foundation started by billionaire hedge fund manager John Arnold<\/a>. The aim of the organization, as the following NuSI publicity slide states, is to “create a Manhattan Project-like effort to solve” the problem of obesity in the U.S.:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The NuSI scientific advisory board is composed of Alan Sniderman, a lipid researcher at McGill University; David Harlan, the former head of the Diabetes, Endocrinology, & Metabolic Diseases branch of the NIDDK and now at the University of Massachusetts; Mitchel Lazar, of the University of Pennsylvania; and Kevin Schulman, of Duke University.<\/p>\n

On his\u00a0Weighty Matters<\/em>\u00a0blog<\/a>, obesity clinician and writer Yoni Freedhoff offers a perspective both critical and supportive of the NuSI agenda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A newly launched nonprofit organization,\u00a0the Nutrition Science Initiative,\u00a0will try to find an answer to the question,\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWhat should we eat to be healthy?\u201d Called NuSI\u00a0(pronounced “new see”) for short, the organization is nothing if not ambitious: its goal is to seek “the end of fad diets and high obesity rates.” NuSI’s founders are\u00a0Gary Taubes\u00a0and\u00a0Peter Attia. Taubes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[200,1453,1452,1305,284],"class_list":["post-31809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-prevention","tag-diabetes","tag-diets","tag-low-carb","tag-nutrition","tag-obesity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}