 In my last blog entry, I highlighted how the high fat/low carb Inuit diet could counter-intuitively be healthy for its adherents. One of my students read the article and asked me if I knew anything about the (also) high-fat, low-carb ketogenic diet. Sometimes used as a treatment for pediatric epilepsy, the diet has also become increasingly popular not just for weight loss, but to change body composition - that is, to increase muscle mass and decrease body fat percentage. The student asked me if the ketogenic diet could do that in a safe way for a young person like him.
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 It’s hard to go too long in today’s 24-hour news cycle without seeing headlines announcing the “latest scientific report” on weight loss, fad diets, or why the health trend of the moment is the best thing you never knew about. And as exciting as many of these news reports seem at first, these research headlines are often a sugar-coated version of the real story. And the outcomes of these studies may not even be the most important part.
 For the first few months of their lives, babies can’t do much. In the first video I filmed of my son, when he was three weeks old, he struggles for several minutes just to turn his head from one side to the other. Imagine my skepticism, then, when I learned about “baby-led weaning” or “BLW”. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that you start giving your child solid “complimentary” foods, in addition to breast milk or formula, when he reaches 6 months of age. Instead of starting with “baby” food – rice cereal, fruit and vegetable purees – devotees of baby-led weaning call for feeding babies small pieces of “real” food, allowing babies to feed themselves.
 What feels like a food allergy, looks like a food allergy, but is NOT actually an allergy? The answer for me was mast cell activation syndrome, or MCAS. Two years ago, I marched myself to the doctor, convinced that I had an undiagnosed food allergy. I explained my symptoms—chronic hives and itching, intense facial flushing, gastrointestinal upset, headaches, and difficulty breathing out of my nose, especially after eating. After much discussion about my symptoms and medical history, my amazing allergist realized my symptoms for what they were—a mast cell disorder. I was diagnosed with mast cell activation syndrome; a newly recognized immune system disorder that normally takes an average of 10 years to accurately diagnose. Although MCAS is currently quite rare, experts estimate that it is actually very common, with many cases going undiagnosed.
 When we hear about childhood obesity, a few main factors get the majority of our attention: quality and quantity of food eaten, levels of physical activity obtained and total screen time consumed, to name a few. While these factors undoubtedly influence the development of childhood obesity, there are other variables that might also play a role. If we are thinking about how the quality and quantity of food a child consumes might lead to obesity, we should also consider how parents affect how a child approaches food. Evidence suggests that there is an association between restrictive feeding practices by parents and both overeating and weight gain in children.
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