The obesity epidemic can be relied on to occasionally add a useful new word to the language. We’ve got fatsploitation, globesity — and now, leanwashing. Like many other made-up words, this one harks back to a previously coined term, greenwashing — wh …

Childhood Obesity News mentioned the discouraging report from Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University, on how the school had to change its policy when the compulsory physical fitness program was fiercely criticized. The authors of this paper also commented o …

We have been reflecting on such old sayings as, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” and “No good deed goes unpunished,” and looking at the virtual slaughter of obesity messengers. Disney World tried out an interactive anti-obesity feature …

CALPIRG, also known as the California Public Interest Research Group, issued a report titled, “Apples to Twinkies: Comparing Federal Subsidies of Fresh Produce and Junk Food.” As described by P.J. Huffstutter of the LA Times, the report “makes the case …

In the interest of fairness, since Childhood Obesity News has mentioned Coca-Cola on numerous occasions, today it is PepsiCo’s turn. Apparently, the soft drink and junk food giant engages in a whole lot of pro-childhood obesity lobbying activities. In …

Adverse criticism led to the shutdown of a Disney World attraction that had barely even opened. At the same time, Georgia’s Strong4Life advertising campaign drew criticism from far and wide, partly for the ridiculous reason of being too ethnically dive …

We were tracing the story of the state of Georgia’s aggressive Strong4Life ad campaign against childhood obesity. In early February, the Fierce, Freethinking Fatties website published news from one of its members, about correspondence with the National …

Sophocles wrote, “No one loves the messenger who brings bad news,” and, according to folklore, the occasional emperor or general has executed the courier who delivered an unfavorable dispatch. Childhood Obesity News has been looking at the closing of a …

Holy guacamole, did Disney ever step in it! Up to the neck! All they did was open up a new attraction called Habit Heroes, where kids could fight characters who symbolize their own bad habits, and the fertilizer hit the air-circulation device. Everybod …

A few days ago, Childhood Obesity News mentioned the thoughts of some food policy experts rounded up by The New York Times, but did not yet mention Diane M. Gibson, who is an associate professor at Baruch College, as well as Director of the NY Census R …

The Weigh2Rock website collects comments from children and teens, of a kind that would not be possible if they were not anonymous. It strains credulity, that there could be a 16-year-old girl walking around out there weighing 560 pounds, yet this was p …

Epcot Center in Florida, part of the Disney kingdom’s Eastern branch, made news with the debut of a new feature, which turned out to be more of a beta test, and not a very successful one. For the Orlando Sentinal, Marni Jameson reported on the hopeful …

Well, of course Maggie has legs. Not only does she have them, they’re too big, along with the rest of her. Or so thinks the insecure 14-year-old protagonist of a work of poetical fiction by Paul M. Kramer, who has also written children’s books about di …

In the tobacco industry, a certain amount of accountability has been achieved, at least on paper, through some lawsuits. Would increased accountability in a legal, financially responsible sense, do anything to slow down the childhood obesity epidemic, …

Bloomberg stringers Michael Wei and Margaret Conley reported the astonishing news that acceptance into the Chinese branch of McDonald’s Hamburger University is harder to attain than admission to Harvard University. What they meant was, the ratio of app …

Is there anything sadder than Britain’s fattest man? Yes, the former fattest man. When Nick Harding interviewed Barry Austin in 2009, he had lost his title and was sinking fast. The reporter perceived him as: […] bedridden, fighting infections…, st …

McDonald’s is a McMetaphor, for all that is cheap and ticky-tacky, and soullessly franchised, a stand-in for all the mass-produced necessary evils of our age from McJobs to McMansions. It’s a McMeme. The company’s symbolic spokesclown, Ronald McDonald, …

Forbes magazine staffer Kashmir Hill explored the phenomenon of the McDonald’s Twitter fiasco, described by some as “social media trashing” and a “social nightmare.” What happened was: Last week, McDonald’s launched a Twitter campaign using the hashtag …

What? Time to check in with the McDonald’s empire again? Yes, because those rascals just won’t stay out of the news. They seem to operate on the Water Balloon Principle of Ethics. You can squeeze a water balloon in one area and some of the water will m …

An onion can make people cry but there’s never been a vegetable that can make people laugh. Will Rogers said that. What does it have to do with childhood obesity? Nothing. It’s just an example of one type of funny, something that brings on a giggle bec …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking at some of the unintentional humor caused by the beverage industry’s empty promises. The comedy continues, with the ridiculous spectacle of a world where millions of kids are both fat and insufficiently fed at th …

Childhood Obesity News has been talking about how the beverage industry promised to mend its ways, and the hilarious hijinks that have ensued. The beverage industry has this concept called self-policing, and it’s the most humorous thing since (insert h …

Joe Rogan is a standup comic who also produces podcasts. In one of them, he talks about working in a nightclub where a very hefty young woman was in the audience, so he skipped over a “fat chick joke” that would otherwise have been part of his routine. …

Want to hear something funny? The American Beverage Association’s statement is pretty darn hilarious. Issued on the anniversary of First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” program, it contains the following gems of humor: Two years ago today, we proudl …

Did we not, very, very recently, just get finished discussing Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and other winter celebrations, and their relationship to childhood obesity? Now here comes another holiday, and this one doesn’t even have any cranberrie …

Way back in 2003, Dr. Neal D. Barnard wrote about the cheese industry’s awareness of its product’s addictive qualities. He said that strategies are carefully crafted by the marketing staff to lead “cheese cravers” into further involvement with their pr …

Childhood Obesity News has been talking about different ways that parents, teachers, and health care professionals have found of listening to kids and putting the information to useful work. A nonprofit group called ACTIVE Life attempts to fight obesit …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking at the good things that can happen when grownups listen and pay attention to kids. In the Pacific Northwest, government agencies have joined with health workers in the tribal community to address the problem of p …

In the struggle against childhood obesity, listening to kids and paying attention to what they say is tremendously important. Dr. Pretlow has learned this from years of watching the results come in to the Weigh2Rock website, which was created primarily …

Recently, Childhood Obesity News mentioned research indicating that children in Pakistan are more likely to be overweight and more at risk for obesity if they have few or no siblings, and if their parents are wealthy and educated. Around the time that …