Jennifer Walker is an actor, photographer, and writer of lively posts online. Walker realized that she was addicted to sugar, and partway into a monthlong sugar fast, reflected on the mind-body connection: From what I’ve read, I need to find something …

Food can be addictive, and especially sugar. Over the years, many brave medical professionals fought the tide of prevailing opinion and asserted the addictiveness of food, especially sugar. And their number has been growing over the years. Childhood Ob …

Last time, Childhood Obesity News caught up with the continuing influence of the archetype of celebrity weight fluctuation, Oprah Winfrey. Erika Nicole Kendall, author of A Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss, remarked on an episode of Oprah’s show about …

In one of the most attention-getting books on food and nutrition to have been published in the last decade, The End of Overeating, Dr. David Kessler puts forth the idea that even though the individual ingredients in food might not be overwhelmingly att …

The EarlyBird Diabetes Study, even though technically still in progress, has already reported on a number of interesting findings, and different people have gotten interested in different aspects. When attempting to predict whether a baby is at risk fo …

Defending a corporation is a bit like showing “sympathy for the devil,” as the Rolling Stones song phrased it. But just for the sake of discussion, let’s pretend that maybe even an international business conglomerate might not be wrong all the time. Be …

Surveys of the habits of American youth between the ages 13 and 17 find that half of them use social media on a daily basis. The American Heart Association (AHA), in a statement that will be published in the January issue of its journal, Circulation, r …

Childhood Obesity News has looked at some of the “Key Findings from EarlyBird,” many of which are unexpected, counter-intuitive, and/or controversial. Some of the underlying premises of the whole Let’s Move! program are challenged by the EarlyBird obse …

Last time, Childhood Obesity News mentioned the upcoming documentary film (scheduled for release in June 2013) which Dr. Pretlow will appear in, titled Sweet Nothing: America’s Addiction to Sugar. These are by no means the only voices raised against su …

20K Films is an independent outfit that makes low-budget, high-quality documentaries, with Laura Zinger as producer and director. One of their previous works is about sickle cell anemia, and the current project is Sweet Nothing: America’s Addiction to …

As Childhood Obesity News has discussed, the EarlyBird Diabetes Study, being conducted in Great Britain, has been recording the physical attributes of about 300 children over a period of several years. They are zeroing in on the problem of insulin resi …

Childhood Obesity News has discussed the many variables involved in scientific studies, and how difficult it can be to satisfy the results-oriented patrons who are paying for the studies. Whether funding comes from the public or from a corporate entity …

I’m guessing that you remember my friend who played hand drums. You know, the one who got neuropathy in his feet, from Type 1 diabetes. Please don’t have nightmares, because your mom will be mad enough to super-glue me to a chair or something. But gues …

We were talking about diabetes and what a stone cold bummer it is when somebody has it. Okay, so I sound like a grandma — what would you say? I think you know what a stone bummer means, in grandma-land. If you want to school me about modern words, go …

I was hanging out with an old friend the other day, a percussionist, who always played hand drums — you know, congas and djembes and doumbeks and all that good stuff. He was in a bunch of bands and had a ton of hot girlfriends. The bad news is, he gre …

The EarlyBird study and others like it are important because they’re about preventing the preventable kind of diabetes, Type 2. Prevention is, of course, the best way, if it can be done. And if Type 2 develops, and is diagnosed, it can in many cases be …

The EarlyBird Diabetes Study has been going on for 12 years, keeping an eye on the same cohort of healthy kids, and it intends to continue until they are 16 years old. They are looking mainly at the causes and effects of insulin resistance. The website …

It’s National Diabetes Month, 2012. In the effort to solve diabetes and childhood obesity, why do we look at research based on data collected in 2005 and even farther back in time? Because to a certain extent, that’s how it is in any kind of study. It …

When generalized statements are made about diabetes, it pretty much means Type 2, because 9/10ths (maybe more) of the patients are afflicted by Type 2. A recently released study by the Centers for Disease Control found that in some American cities, dia …

In the realm of childhood obesity research, one of the big perplexing mysteries is the relationship between childhood obesity and diabetes. What exactly is going on there? How do cause and effect apply? Is it a vicious cycle? Take the United States. “D …

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and keep this post in mind when dinner is over, and the next day. At this traditional American celebration, people tend to eat too much and eat the wrong things. It all contributes to both adult obesity and childhood obes …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at some of the controversial theories of Dave Asprey relating to obesity, insulin, and inflammation. One of his theories is not so controversial, and is in fact now pretty well-accepted — that foods can be addi …

The National Diabetes Month continues, and citizen scientist Dave Asprey reports back from the far fringes of diabetes research, tying that subject up with his belief that, in the human body, as much as one-third of what appears to be fat could be swel …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at the ideas of Greg Critser, who sees three main causes for the ongoing childhood obesity epidemic. One big factor is prenatal care, because almost anything a prospective mommy does will have some effect on the …

Greg Critser knows two things are true — childhood obesity is real, and there are no simple answers. Despite talk of food deserts and the dire transportational straits of many city dwellers, he points to two studies (published in Social Science and Me …

The National Diabetes Month is almost not long enough to look at the various facets of this all-too-prevalent disease. The family-oriented, Spanish-language educational TV channel Discovery Familia is making use of the month to shed light on diabetes. …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at the reportage done by Daniel Engber for Slate, on the subject of lab mice. An experiment is designed to compare the effects of an environment, regime, or chemical upon a group of mice, whose reactions are the …

Last time, in tune with National Diabetes Month, Childhood Obesity News looked at the discoveries made by Harvard University’s Dr. Barbara Kahn in regard to the importance of human fat cells getting enough sugar. In pursuance of her experiments, Dr. Ka …

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) announced that fat cells might prevent diabetes, which sounds totally counter-intuitive. But, in the human body, the balance of blood sugar and insulin is partly controlled by the fat cells. Medical News Tod …

We are still in National Diabetes Month, and for The Atlantic, Brian Fung gave a very clear basic explanation of that condition: These days, when people talk about diabetes, they mean the kind that goes hand-in-hand with obesity. The kind you get when …