Susan Yager

As long as the temperature is between 18 and 90 degrees, with no adjustment for the wind chill factor or humidity index, a New York City carriage horse works nine hours a day, seven days a week. It is a brutal existence, dodging buses and taxis, standing in...

It's summer in the city, and that means weekends at the beach, walks in the park, and, for the third year in a row, the annual slaughter of Canada geese. Those same birds that add charm and atmosphere to our green spaces have become victims of their disorderly ways. They...

Champagne corks will be popping at the Salt Institute, and fast food executives and food processors will be joining the party. A new study published in the May 4, 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that subjects who consumed the least amount of salt were...

Whatever we have been doing to reverse the obesity epidemic in America clearly has failed miserably. The latest USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Report revealed that 35 percent of all the calories we currently consume are from solid fats and added sugars. This is now such a large part of...

The French know a great deal about food and how to prepare it; they've taken pride in their national cuisine for centuries. It was a Frenchman, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who famously wrote in 1825: "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are." In Larousse Gastronomic,...

Remember the Peter Allen/Carole Bayer Sager song "Everything Old is New Again?" It keeps running through my mind, because hCG for weight loss, an idea that originated in the 1950s and became a popular fad in the 1970s, is back.

HCG stands for human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone found...

In mid century, Coca-Cola -- which had become a beloved symbol of America in a bottle during World War II -- was beginning to be looked at critically by nutritionists and physicians, who suggested that carbonated sugar water lacked any nutritive value except energy. A new term entered the language...

Any bipartisan agreement that our badly broken food system is in dire need of repair is a step in the right direction, and so thank you and congratulations to the Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate who voted to pass the Food Safety bill yesterday. However, I think...

Statisticians like to say: "What gets measured gets done." Well, everyone out there opposed to putting a tax on sugary soft drinks, measure this! The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recently published their latest statistics on health. Once again, when it comes to obesity,...

This is a trick question, because they are both the same cheap, nutritionally empty sweetener. But in case you haven't read the news, the Corn Refiners Association has petitioned the FDA to allow them to change their name. Just as grandma's old-fashioned prunes were transformed into trendy dried plums with...

A recent Gallup Poll stated that 67 percent of adult Americans currently consume alcohol, which is the highest that figure has been in 25 years. For those earning more than $75,000 a year, the number jumps to 80 percent. The Midwest prefers beer, while the Atlantic and Pacific coasts prefer...

Obese people are all alike in the way they become obese, to paraphrase Tolstoy, but every slim person is slim in his or her own way. At least, that's what you might infer after reviewing the data from the non-profit and non-partisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's F as in Fat...

For the past seven years, the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer have rolled out with the non-profit and non-partisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's release of F as in Fat alongside the soda, pretzels and beer. This year it could be renamed F as in Even Fatter. July 2010's report...

Coca-Cola -- with a twist of the wrist you "open happiness." Coke may be nutritionally devoid of anything but calories and as worthy of taxation as a pack of Marlboro Lights, but brilliant marketing turned that sweet, fizzy liquid into a bottle of America. The label states 97...

Here's an interesting new combination of words: sexual obesity. It's new to me, anyway. I came across this expression for the first time last week when it appeared, somewhat incongruously, in my Google alert for diet and nutrition news. It was mentioned in "The Weight of Smut," by Mary Eberstadt,...

I'll bet I'm right about this: You know someone who tried Atkins'. That person lost weight, quit and regained the weight. Perhaps it was even you.

In 1972, when Robert C. Atkins first published Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution: The High Calorie Way to Stay Thin Forever, he captured the...

I never set out to write a book about how to lose weight. However, while researching The Hundred Year Diet. America's Voracious Appetite For Losing Weight, I learned a great deal about what works, what doesn't and why, which is what today's blog is all about.

To begin: Current evidence...

In 2008, there seemed to be a razor thin ray of hope shining on the obesity epidemic in America -- we had reached a plateau. Since 67 percent of the country was overweight or obese, this was no cause for celebration, but it was something. But now it appears that...

Michelle Obama refuses to demonize Twinkies -- they are safe in the White House and I suppose that is good news. Vilifying one particular food or food group makes no sense at all when the goal is to eat not less but better, and one Twinkie now and then is...

Cecily: When I see a spade I call it a spade.
Gwendolyn: I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.

It is likely...