Hi from Paris

An introduction

Photo by Thibault Penin on Unsplash

Hi!

Thanks for signing up to my newsletter. It’s a pleasure to “meet” you. I’ll mostly ping any time I have a new story out, which might be sporadic for a while because I’m working on a book. I’ll also reach out when I have ideas in progress to share, probably about food, nutrition, obesity, and diabetes – subjects I’m thinking about a lot these days, in part because of the book. And please don’t hesitate to reach out whenever you have tips, comments, or ideas to share, too.

Before I get to my latest story, a quick introduction. I’m Canadian, originally from Toronto, but I’ve now spent most of my adult life bouncing around the world for work or university (Italy, London, Boston, Washington, DC etc.) Just before the pandemic, my husband’s job moved us to Vienna, Austria where our first child was born (on the second day of the first Covid-19 lockdown, no less). We’ve since had a second, and moved to Paris.

My journalism has focused on global and public health issues — stories and subjects as varied as maternal mortality, the explosion of e-cigarettes, the anti-vaccine movement, physician suicide, health law reform and repeal, and the structural and social determinants of health. I often look at how policy fails to protect human health and address inequities. In addition to Covid, I’ve covered many outbreaks, from Ebola to measles. I’ve also spent a lot of time unpicking dubious medical claims — made by everyone from celebrities to celebrity doctors — and using them to explain how science works (or doesn’t). This reporting led me to collaborate with researchers on the problem of how to tackle medical misinformation, and make better use of evidence in journalism, policy, and personal decision-making.

While living in the US, where I worked at Vox, I kept returning to the subject of obesity, a health challenge I think is still sorely overlooked. Obesity affects more than 40 percent of American adults and costs the U.S. health system an estimated $173 billion every year. It’s a growing problem in low- and middle-income countries, and it’s closely linked to the devastating, and even costlier, diabetes burden. Yet obesity is rarely prioritized in policy, and obesity science tends to be distorted or divorced from the public conversation. I think this is because of the long and persistent history of viewing obesity as a moral failing. Many people believe they should be able to will their way out of the condition. Meanwhile, scientists who study obesity see it differently. I explored that gap in understanding in my latest, a New York Times opinion article about how decades into the obesity epidemic, no one’s bothered to define the illness.

Out of all the subjects I’ve covered, I pursued reporting on obesity-related issues, not only because there’s a mountain of quackery (and equal parts inaction) meeting a pressing public health crisis. But because I’ve also been on a quest to understand my own history of weight struggles, and why so many others struggle like I did. This question has become more urgent as I raise children in a food environment that looks different, often worse, than the one I grew up in, and childhood obesity rates tick up all over the world. I’ll explore what I’ve learned in future stories and newsletters.

Ok, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading this far. Again, feel free to reach out any time and look forward to more exchanges soon.

All the best, Julia

Ps. You can contact me here, or through my Twitter @juliaoftoronto, Mastodon @juliaoftoronto@masto.ai or Facebook profiles.