Here is further proof that feeding does not equal nourishment. The Austin nonprofit group House the Homeless surveyed the health of people experiencing homelessness and found 66% of the participants to be overweight according to BMI measurements. This …

Spiegel reporter Catherine Cheney interviewed Carolyn Banfalvi, who guides tourists around Hungary on gourmet tours. This expert, in a position to know exactly what the local diet consists of, is quoted as saying: Hungarians are really into desserts… …

When British chef Jamie Oliver came over to America to spend several years as an ambassador for better eating, he brought along high hopes of saving lives in his own, kitchen-based way, and found, not surprisingly, that this is one of the unhealthiest …

Really, it’s a situation that a being from another planet might have trouble wrapping its head around, if it had a head. On Earth, 15% of the humans exist in a state of hunger, while 20% are overweight. Conceptually, it looks a bit like the sculpture s …

Back in 2006, Raj Patel raised consciousness with his book, Stuffed and Starved, pointing out what journalist Simon Butler calls a “bizarre paradox” about the people of planet Earth: In the poverty-stricken global South, the poorest cannot afford to fe …

Childhood Obesity News has looked at various pitfalls of temptation and cravings, such as holidays, church activities, and school vending machines. In regard to schools, people sometimes forget, parents need to think about more than just what goes on d …

Childhood Obesity News has discussed how the birth of a craving can either be internal, from some chemical prompt, or external, from seeing a billboard or whatever. Also, people are like cats. They like to watch something in motion. A certain kind of m …

Elaborated Intrusion (EI) theory was the topic, and we were examining the idea that food cravings can be quelled by diverting the mind in a couple of different ways. In the overwhelming majority of cases, a craving, or as the researchers characterize i …

Inside the mind is a spatial sketchpad that can form a picture, and very often the image it forms is an item of food or drink that the person craves. Like the old Etch-A-Sketch toy, the mental screen can only hold one picture at a time. If you take the …

As Childhood Obesity News has mentioned before, a large part of the human race seems to have lost the instinct that tells a healthy animal what to eat and what to avoid. This instinct needs to be recovered or recreated, similar to what Dr. Pretlow writ …

Jeffrey Norris recently reported for the University of California, San Francisco, on work done by researchers at that institution, on the subject of the stress hormone cortisol, and deep belly fat, the kind that surrounds and encases the internal organ …

The Wall Street Journal’s Melinda Beck brings news of another way to help people recover from obesity. For years, deep brain stimulation (DBS) has introduced astonishing change into the lives of patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Going by the …

It appears that the origins of cravings are both physical and psychological. Laboratory research strongly indicates a chemical basis for at least some food cravings. Additional conclusions have been drawn by scientists in other fields, who observe huma …

Take obesity… please. Standup comic Greg Giraldo made fun of the media for hyping the obesity epidemic as if it were as frightening and destructive as the polio epidemic of the early 1950s. (Five-minute video, adult material.) And he had a point. Compa …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking at the various efforts toward craving reduction that have been suggested by different people. A mention, of course, doesn’t imply that Dr. Pretlow necessarily recommends the measure for any particular patient. It …

The wry motto of Eartha’s blog is, “Trying Fitness — because you’ve tried everything else.” She recommends switching grocery stores, cooking at home, choosing snacks wisely, and stocking healthful snacks in a cooler in one’s car. That’s a great idea f …

Dr. Pretlow equates food cravings to withdrawal symptoms, and, as he repeatedly points out, the vast majority of Weigh2Rock kids really want to know how to resist cravings. Young people are at a disadvantage because they don’t always have control over …

Suzanne Robin, a registered nurse who writes extensively on medical topics, looked into the research done on, of all things, carrots, and found a childhood obesity connection. Parents are always asking, “How do I get my kids to eat vegetables?,” and it …

The main thing to know about food cravings is, this is not some kind of sideshow act. The topic is front and center, the star of the whole childhood obesity epidemic. It appears that food cravings have emotional, biological, and mental origins. Feeling …

A ScienceDaily piece, called “The Psychology of Food Cravings,” discussed the work of two scientists from Flinders University in Australia, Eva Kemps and Marika Tiggemann. They wanted to figure out why humans are plagued by intense desires to eat certa …

From the outside of a person, a temptation (and there are thousands of them) will trigger a craving. As if that weren’t troublesome enough, all too often a craving arises spontaneously from inside. But why? We all know that emotions have a lot to do wi …

Childhood Obesity News has remarked on how some things will never change, one of them being the human tendency to celebrate happy occasions with food and drink. In the human psyche, good times are inseparable from feasting. That’s okay, as long as the …

Childhood obesity is very much connected with the mental and emotional condition of wanting something. Often, that something is detrimental to a child’s health. Often, the something is all too easy to get hold of, thanks to the many factors that make u …

What’s the difference between a craving and a temptation? A craving is self-generated. It’s intrinsic. It comes from within. You’re sitting around, minding your own business, and suddenly realize you want something sweet or crunchy, or salty. So you go …

Here’s a really interesting list, titled “25 Facts You Should Share for School Lunch Week,” and although School Lunch Week was in October, there is no point in waiting until next October to become informed about these matters. Of course, consulting the …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking at schools and the problems connected with their ability to impact the childhood obesity epidemic. Since this became a national concern, several interesting side issues have arisen, and perhaps the most shocking …

Childhood Obesity News has been talking about holiday problems, including the superabundance of food in many households. A mom/hostess might fix lots of healthy snacks, but a bachelor uncle will probably stop off at the Chocolate-Covered Bacon Shack fo …

Childhood Obesity News has talked before about how so many different cultures have been similar, all over the globe and throughout history. Human societies mark important days with food. If resources allow it, holiday food is richer and sweeter than pl …

When healthcare professionals publish articles about childhood obesity, online commentaries sometimes throw back a strange knee-jerk response. Every now and then, an indignant parent will exclaim, “No child should be on a diet!” There seems to be a def …

Treena Wynes knows all about the emotional-eating cycle and how to conquer it. Formerly a bulimic teen who fought a years-long battle with compulsive eating, she became a social worker and weight-loss counselor, specializing in emotional dependency on …