The Sultanate of Oman is next to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and a couple of bodies of water. As of the year 2000, reportedly 99% of the population had access to health care services, and the following year its health care system was …

Port of Spain was the location of a recent meeting of the Caribbean Public Health Agency executive board, after which Health Minister Dr. Fuad Khan gave a press conference. Unlike the United States, where obesity is said to have plateaued in the last 1 …

There is a person in charge of comparing the obesity rates of Florida with Minnesota, and so on. It’s Captain Heidi Blanck, Ph.D., who works for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — specifically, for the Division of Nutrition, Physic …

Trying to form an understanding of the prevalence of obesity in the United States can be a slippery proposition, in part because different institutions come at it from different angles. To begin with a demographic group or a state, can result in a stud …

The April issue of Vogue magazine was its annual “Shape” theme issue — but aren’t they all about shape, every month? A New York City “socialite” named Dara-Lynn Weiss wrote a piece about her daughter Bea’s struggle against obesity, and it made a bunch …

Childhood Obesity News and about a million other websites have rung the alarm bells over and over about the causative relationships between obesity in the child’s early life and the astonishing number of maladies that start to kick in sooner or later, …

The Tale of Two Athletes: The Story of Jumper and The Thumper is the title of another new children’s book whose purpose is to help kids either avoid or escape the trap of overweight. The authors are a married couple who have a real-life practice. M. Ch …

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. That old saying is usually attributed to Mark Twain, but a zealous researcher finds that the man who said it was Charles Dudley Warner. The point is, it often seems like “Everybody w …

Sometimes a book title just grabs your attention. How about this one? The Taming of the Chew, by Denise Lamothe, who is a psychologist and speaker as well as an author. The allusion is, of course, to the Shakespeare play The Taming of the Shrew, which …

A while back, Childhood Obesity News mentioned some research on the physical side, which seemed to indicate that a child is more likely to be overweight or obese if the father is, than if the mother is. In general, fathers get far less attention, possi …

We were talking about relationships between kids, their parents, and the people designated to monitor children’s health. There are certain things that should be known by every professional whose practice concerns childhood obesity — and whose does not …

When Dr. Pretlow was interviewed about childhood obesity by KGO Radio host Joanie Greggains, he made a remark that was perhaps tongue-in-cheek, and perhaps not: The ideal health professional is the health professional that has been overweight and has l …

There are several different ways to compile and compare obesity statistics, and even different ways to measure obesity. Often a researcher will zero in on a particular group. In general, something like 16% of 2-19 year-olds are in serious need of diffe …

This news is brand new! Only a few days ago (May 17), ChangeLab Solutions became the new name of the national nonprofit organization formerly known as the Public Health Law & Policy. Either way, childhood obesity is a major concern. By the old name …

If everyone who needs it could sign up for the very best kind of help for their problem, at an affordable price, the world would be a wonderful place. That world isn’t here yet. In the case of an obese child, the ideal solution might be a highly specia …

The world’s youth are inundated with social media, and barring a lethal solar flare, that’s not going to change. Accusations of frivolity and sheer time-wastingness are justified. But social media’s dark side is strongly counterbalanced by the positive …

The film Super Size Me really hit a nerve, and also has won a major award at the Sundance Film Festival when it was released. Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald’s food for a month and documented the results. His mission was to make some points ab …

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 ste …

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 ar …

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 …

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, …

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 mat …

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 …

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. …

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 …

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 helpfu …

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 an …

The Pediatric Academic Societies met in Boston not long ago and, as so often happens when health professionals gather, the subject of the childhood obesity epidemic was on the table. Dr. Rachel Gross of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine told the …

A while back, Singapore was getting some good PR for keeping its kids thin. As Childhood Obesity News discussed, a comparison was made between the childhood obesity rate in Southeast Asia, which was 23%, and the rate in Singapore, less than half that n …

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM-IV, there are six substance-abuse criteria, and if a patient has three out of six, he or she has an addiction. Childhood Obesity News has previously enumerated the “top six reasons why food add …