David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD

David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD, is a practicing pediatrician 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 Founding Director of the Optimal Weight for Life (OWL) program at Children’s Hospital, one of the country’s oldest and largest multidisciplinary clinics for the care of overweight children. He also directs the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Children’s Hospital. His research focuses on the effects of diet on hormones, metabolism and body weight.  In particular, he developed a novel “low glycemic load” diet (i.e., one that decreases the surge in blood sugar after meals) for the treatment of obesity and prevention of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. This work has been cited as providing a scientific basis for numerous popular diets, including The South Beach Diet, The Zone, SugarBusters, and The Glucose Revolution. In addition, he conducted some of the original observational and interventional studies linking sugar-sweetened beverages and fast food to obesity.

Described as an “obesity warrior” by Time Magazine, Dr. Ludwig has fought for fundamental policy changes to restrict food advertising directed at young children, improve quality of school nutrition programs and increase insurance reimbursement for obesity prevention and treatment programs.  Dr. Ludwig is a fellow of The Obesity Society and recipient of the E.V. McCollum Award (2008) of the American Society for Nutrition. He is Principal Investigator on numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health, has published over 150 scientific articles, and presently serves as Contributing Writer for Journal of the American Medical Association.  Dr. Ludwig is author of the book Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently (2016). He appears frequently in national print and broadcast media.