The challenge? In the struggle against childhood obesity, there are a hundred challenges. It’s like the mythological Hydra, the beast with many ferociously fanged heads, and every time a hero would cut one off, it would grow back. Some days are like th …

Childhood Obesity News has been exploring the idea that “fat” is a four-letter word, not literally, but in the sense of being forbidden, vulgar, and offensive. Sometimes it seems as if “thin” is equally reprehensible, because people object to the idea …

Dr. Pretlow teaches that obesity is not a matter of poor willpower or lack of exercise, rather it is an addictive brain disease involving certain highly palatable problem foods. It is substance dependency, and attributing it to a direct biochemical eff …

Not long ago, Dr. Pretlow was extensively quoted in an article written by Marsha McCulloch, R.D., which appeared in Live Right Magazine. The author also quoted Bruce Blumberg, Ph.D., of the University of California at Irvine, who strongly advocates goo …

Lately, childhood obesity research has been turning up a lot of results that include the word “pregnancy.” New studies appear with frightening regularity, demonstrating various kinds of harm that can be done to a fetus by parental ignorance or disregar …

Claire Bates is one of the many health writers who has noticed the tendency of childhood obesity studies to indict parents. If children are to make lifestyle changes, their chances are much better if it’s a family affair. Bates says: Researchers found …

Childhood Obesity News has been exploring the art and science of food porn (or foodporn), including the ways in which food is visually enhanced, sometimes for the purpose of advertising, and sometimes just because. An entire enormous genre of photograp …

This interesting chart, called “Regulatory Status,” is found in a document issued by the Responsible Advertising and Children (RAC) Programme, and it illustrates where things stood, as of late last year, in the international regulation of how food and …

A very unusual website, Human Stupidity, deals with food porn as applied to children. The terminology is a bit strange, defining “food porn” as junk food itself (which is equated with poison) and “child food porn” as pictures of stuff that deceptively …

A Twitter entity called “Food Porn” (with more than 30,000 followers) acts as a clearinghouse to spread around links to porny food pictures that other people have sent her or him. It does, indeed, take all kinds to make a world. What exactly is food po …

Childhood Obesity News was talking about the discovery of several genes, including two particularly significant ones, that appear to influence childhood obesity in kids of European ancestry. The full report, by the Early Growth Genetics (EGG) Consortiu …

It’s easy to see why parents are fed up with being blamed for the childhood obesity epidemic. The unconscious thought of a caring yet overburdened parent might run something like this: “It’s all too much! We’re responsible for having their teeth straig …

You’d think it was a moon landing! Everybody is all excited about a genetic basis for childhood obesity, and the headlines proliferate. It all started with an international group of collaborators known as the Early Growth Genetics Consortium, or EGG. T …

We are discussing a much-neglected topic, the intestines and their flora, the trillions of little beings who live inside us and help all our systems go. Here is a writer who has gone into the subject in depth, so to speak. For AlterNet, Anneli Rufus wr …

Although they are not discussed as often as other organs such as the heart, the intestines are very important. Jill Escher mentions them, when dismissing the theory that sugar is just empty calories: No, no calorie is empty — each bit of digestible st …

Is there no end to the things parents can be blamed for? Strollers! The Canadian Paediatric Society released a report about toddlers, ages one and two, claiming that 80% of them spend half their outdoor time in strollers. This represented only a fracti …

For a website called Mommyish, Nadia Bruno has launched a new column devoted to childhood obesity in relation to fast food and junk food. She talks about how she was raised, and how she turned out, and addresses the underlying ambivalence that causes h …

Suzanne Cullen brought to Dr. Pretlow’s attention an interesting website, Aupair.org, for professionals who take care of other people’s children, and for parents who want to take care of their own children like pros. Childhood obesity is only one of it …

“Why is my kid fat?” is the question asked by many parents. In some cases the answers are obvious, but in others, not so much. There are many theories, and no matter what else may or may not be going on in genetics, manufacturing, or the environment, t …

In the past week or so, Childhood Obesity News has looked at several medical conditions or comorbidities associated with obesity, including diabetes and the muffin top menace: Less talked about are the psychological damages children and adolescents wit …

One of the more regrettable innovations of recent years is the fashion for bare midriffs exposing not just belly button jewelry, which after all is a matter of individual taste, but mountains of puffy flesh. Perhaps even more distressing is the view fr …

Childhood Obesity News has been exploring some of the physical conditions that go hand-in-hand with overweight bodies, such as diabetes, bone and teeth problems, heart disease, and the list goes on. “Comorbid” is a word that seems to have started out w …

In Britain, the National Clinical Director for Liver Disease is worried. If present trends continue, many thousands of children are headed for a destiny of stroke, diabetes, or liver cirrhosis, arriving there by the road called “fatty liver disease.” A …

How many things can go wrong, medically, in conjunction with childhood obesity? As time goes on, more and more connections are discovered between overweight kids and a stunning array of problems, both existing and potential. Cause and effect relationsh …

Childhood Obesity News has discussed some of the things that can go wrong medically, when kids are overweight. There can be bone problems and dental problems, as we mentioned last time. As it turns out, there are even more obesity possibilities in the …

Before we get started, let’s mention the December 2011 issue of the BC Medical Journal, where a review can be found of Dr. Pretlow’s book, Overweight: What Kids Say. The reviewer is Arlene Cristall, MSc, RD, who holds the post of Program Coordinator at …

Seems like every time you turn around, another distressing medical condition is being linked to childhood obesity. We haven’t caught up with them for a while. The first entry is a piece with the depressing title, “Chronic pain is common child complaint …

The novel Justine is set in Alexandria, Egypt, in the period between the two World Wars. Author Lawrence Durrell describes certain women of that time and place: Fed in darkness on jams and scented fats they have become tuns of pleasure, rolling on pape …

This is not the first time Childhood Obesity News has talked about leanwashing, and for a lovely example of its cultural antecedents, the picture on this page will do just fine. Dating from 1950, the newspaper ad proclaims: Motorola, leader in televisi …

Styles come and go in our culture. Wasp waistlines were the style in the 1950s. (And women wore hats for decoration, not just to keep their ears warm.) There was a time when grade school kids did calisthenics to the (caution: earworm alert!) tune of “C …