Here is the question of the hour: Given the criticism showered upon other other organizations that have tried to add their childhood obesity wisdom to the public discourse, will Clear Channel Media and Entertainment fare any better, now that it has stepped up to take a swing? We’re talking about advertisements, set to run on [...]
Culture, Economics, Ethnicity, and Childhood Obesity (Part 2)
May 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Childhood Obesity News has been looking at the cultural, economic, and ethnic factors that may contribute to children being overweight or obese. Those three realms of life are sometimes very difficult to discuss separately because in many cases they are intertwined. We talked a bit about the Hispanic community in the United States, and there [...]
Culture, Economics, Ethnicity, and Childhood Obesity
May 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Childhood Obesity News has been looking at how ideas about food and physical characteristics vary among people from different backgrounds. As Jerry Jeff Walker says, “Life is mostly attitude and timing.” If someone’s psyche has been marked by privation, she or he might very well believe that a chance to eat should never be neglected. [...]
Is Sleep the Childhood Obesity Answer?
May 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment
The cultural consciousness is slowly adapting to the idea that some relationship might exist between childhood obesity and sleep, but exactly “what’s up with that” is not yet clear to anyone. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has several ideas, some of which are obvious. The way they phrase one of them is, “Screen time [...]
What Else Can Parents Do About Childhood Obesity?
May 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment
There’s so much advice about childhood obesity! Everyone has ideas about how to prevent and/or cure the problem, and Childhood Obesity News has been sifting through lists of recommendations from many sources. For LA Times, Jeannine Stein summarized material from Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. These words are from Myles Faith, the organization’s [...]
It Takes All Kinds to Make an Obese World
May 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Two years ago, a childhood obesity study made big news by confirming that all waistlines are not created equal. For Clinical Psychiatry News, Kate Johnson summarized: Extreme obesity is on the rise in children and adolescents, and certain ethnic/racial minorities face a higher risk than do others… [M]ore than 6% of subjects aged 2-19 years [...]
Childhood Obesity Lit
May 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
A guy named Steve Almond published a book about sweets, and going by the clues in a review from a blogger called Kim, it sounds ambivalent, if not downright schizophrenic. The title is Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America. According to the reviewer, Steve Almond is really funny, and habitually keeps as [...]
Childhood Obesity and Family Meals
May 8, 2012 By 2 Comments
The importance of family meals was a recent topic here, because many health care professionals believe that having dinner together is a crucial piece of the childhood obesity prevention puzzle. Life is very complicated, and sometimes it’s difficult to separate the strands and understand the cause-and-effect sequence. Sometimes it’s hard to know for sure where [...]
Endless Supply of Ideas for Parents
May 7, 2012 By 1 Comment
In today’s media, it seems like one of the easiest things to find is advice on how to raise normal-weight children. The Internet is rife with bullet-point lists of suggestions. Childhood Obesity News has surveyed many such lists. How many of the helpful ideas are backed up by science? This is not yet clear. Which [...]
Culture and the Psychology of Scarcity
May 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Childhood Obesity News has been talking about societal forces that make people do what they do, and get in the way of efforts to improve conditions. This is true of many things, including childhood obesity: Some cultures or societies view body types and images in certain ways — for instance weight is seen as a [...]
