About

David S Ludwig, MD, PhD, is an endocrinologist and researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital. He holds the rank of Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Ludwig is the founding director of the Optimal Wellness for Life (OWL) program, one of the country’s oldest and largest clinics for the care of overweight children. For 25 years, he has studied the effects of diet on metabolism, body weight, and risk for chronic disease, with a special focus on low glycemic index, low carbohydrate, and ketogenic diets. He has made major contributions to the development of the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model, a physiological perspective on the obesity pandemic. Dr. Ludwig is recognized as an “obesity warrior” by Time Magazine and has fought for fundamental policy changes to improve the food environment. He has been Principal Investigator on numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health and philanthropic organizations totaling over $50 million and has published over 200 scientific articles. Additionally, he has served as a Contributing Writer at JAMA for 10 years and currently serves as an editor for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Dr. Ludwig is also an author of three books for the public, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Always, Hungry? Conquer Cravings, Retrain your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Endocrinology
• Internal medicine
• Computer Science
• Biology
• Chromatography
• Statistics
• Mathematics
• Chemistry
• Intensive care medicine
• Virology
• Materials science
• Physical medicine and rehabilitation
• Applied mathematics
• Psychology
• Macroeconomics
• Economics

Selected publications

• Confusion about energy and energy density in a 3-week trial of ultra-processed food

  Cell Metabolism · 2026-01-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Endogenous innovation and change: community agency in two case studies in Ghana

  Open MIND · 2026-01-01

  article

  Agricultural innovations have often been framed within a narrow, modernist narrative of technological modernisation and yield improvements – economic targets that often do not take the needs and knowledges of local communities into account. We therefore propose to re-define the term as ‘endogenous innovation’ to emphasise community agency and epistemic empowerment, in analogy with endogenous development processes. We analyse case studies in Ghana in the Upper East and Bono East region, where we find empirical examples of endogenous innovations in the making. These require endogenous infrastructure that create decision-making spaces for farmers, mediators who bridge diverse knowledges, and epistemic justice. The notion of endogenous innovation therefore disrupts the vision of who counts as an ‘innovator’ in innovation processes by highlighting the epistemic agency of communities and opens up new ways of thinking about change that is more aligned with the needs and perspectives of local communities.

  DOI

• Saving the Olive Trees? Ontological Politics and Plant Disease Governance in Apulia, Southern Italy

  Geoforum · 2026-02-15

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In Apulia, everyone wants to “save the olive trees”—yet what is to be saved is far from clear. Since 2013, the spread of Xylella fastidiosa and Olive Quick Decline Syndrome (OQDS) has devastated Southern Italy’s groves and triggered a highly contested phytosanitary crisis. This paper argues that the controversy cannot be reduced to technical uncertainty, knowledge disagreement, or economic interests alone; it is also an ontological conflict—a struggle over the nature of the entities at stake. Drawing on qualitative interviews, documentary analysis, and ethnographic observation, the study follows two domains of contestation: the olive tree and the plant disease. Olive trees appear as relational beings, productive assets, or landscape elements to be preserved; the disease is variously enacted as a pathological invasion, a socio-ecological syndrome, or a political construct. Situating the case within broader debates on ontological politics, the paper brings conversations typically centred on extractivist and Indigenous settings to the governance of a plant disease in Southern Europe. Moreover, it advances two additional arguments to rethink political ontology engagement with socio-environmental conflicts. First, political ontology does not stop where science starts: ontological plurality runs through scientific practices in similar ways it does between science communities and other stakeholders. Second, ontology does not reduce to politics: disease claims still require robust empirical research and evidence from—to be constructed with—the natural sciences. The paper concludes with implications for plant-health governance in biocultural landscapes, including procedures that surface and negotiate ontologies and instruments that recognise cultural landscapes as collective goods.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction: Bringing African Philosophy and Food Systems Together

  ˜The œinternational library of environmental, agricultural and food ethics/˜The œInternational library of environmental, agricultural and food ethics · 2026-01-01

  book-chapterOpen access

  Abstract It is widely recognized that a profound food systems transformation is needed to comply with the human right to food in an environmentally sustainable and socially just manner. However, relatively limited attention has been paid to philosophical questions on food systems transformation so far. This is particularly relevant to the African continent, because the African continent continues to suffer from historical, social, and political forms of domination by primarily—though not only—the Global North, including the imposition of a Eurocentric and capitalist food system, despite its rich history of distinct culture and philosophical thought. As an introduction to the current edited volume, this chapter provides an introduction by bringing African philosophy and food systems together. African philosophy is intimately related to historical and political struggles for liberation, as it is concerned with liberation of colonial powers and colonial legacies that exist until today as a result of the unjust wars of colonization against the Indigenous people on the continent. Thus rather than thinking of this volume as the intersection of two specialised academic niches, we understand both African philosophy and food systems as central to liberation and justice across Africa. This chapter shows how African philosophy as a struggle for liberation and justice intersects with agriculture and food in various ways. The chapter concludes by providing an orientation to the volume that connects the different chapters. By addressing the ethical and epistemological issues of food systems, this volume aims to contribute to transforming agriculture and food systems towards just food systems that provide sufficient and healthy food for all.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Overcoming impasse in nutrition science

  Cell Metabolism · 2026-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Concerns over conclusions in an ultra-processed food trial

  Nature Medicine · 2026-01-06 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Endogenous innovation and change: community agency in two case studies in Ghana

  Figshare · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen access

  Agricultural innovations have often been framed within a narrow, modernist narrative of technological modernisation and yield improvements – economic targets that often do not take the needs and knowledges of local communities into account. We therefore propose to re-define the term as ‘endogenous innovation’ to emphasise community agency and epistemic empowerment, in analogy with endogenous development processes. We analyse case studies in Ghana in the Upper East and Bono East region, where we find empirical examples of endogenous innovations in the making. These require endogenous infrastructure that create decision-making spaces for farmers, mediators who bridge diverse knowledges, and epistemic justice. The notion of endogenous innovation therefore disrupts the vision of who counts as an ‘innovator’ in innovation processes by highlighting the epistemic agency of communities and opens up new ways of thinking about change that is more aligned with the needs and perspectives of local communities.

  PublisherDOI

• Are ultra-processed foods too tasty? Toward a metabolic framework for diet and obesity

  PLoS Medicine · 2026-04-03

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A recent lawsuit against "hyper-palatable" ultra-processed foods has amplified controversies over its effects on obesity-related chronic disease. Addressing this public health crisis requires a new framework, centered on the metabolic effects of food.

  PublisherDOI

• Is the experimental evidence on ultra-processed food and obesity reliable?

  Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition · 2026-05-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Public health experts have issued widespread calls to target ultra-processed foods (UPF) in nutrition policy to prevent obesity and other diet-related chronic diseases. Several short-term crossover feeding studies have examined the effects of UPF consumption on energy intake and body weight, but their findings remain inconclusive, largely due to methodological limitations and imprecision in the Nova classification used to define UPF exposure. Long-term data demonstrating the effectiveness of reducing UPF intake are lacking. Consequently, the available evidence does not establish a causal role of UPF consumption in obesity. Additional research is needed to determine whether UPF, as defined by Nova, exerts effects on energy intake and body weight beyond those attributable to established dietary factors such as energy density and nutrient composition.

  PublisherDOI

• Ultra-processed foods in research and policy

  The Lancet · 2026-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R03TW006818

  NIH · $106k · 2008

• NIH Grant R01DK072428

  NIH · $1.9M · 2010

• NIH Grant R01HL104215

  NIH · $3.0M · 2016

• NIH Grant K08DK002440

  NIH · $559k · 2002

• Effects of Diet on Hormones, Metabolism and Body Weight

  NIH · $1.6M · 2009–2019

Frequent coauthors

• Cara B. Ebbeling

  423 shared

• David Mark

  Perspectives Charter School

  205 shared

• Proofreading Carol

  205 shared

• John P. A. Ioannidis

  Stanford University

  205 shared

• Fred Furtner

  International Rescue Committee

  205 shared

• Mary E. Tinetti

  205 shared

• Alan B. Zonderman

  205 shared

• Joshua Lampinen

  205 shared

Education

• M.D.

  Harvard Medical School

• B.S.

  Harvard University