Last time, Childhood Obesity News was looking at the sugar’s checkered past, in historical terms, and the current damage to taxpayers when a commodity so much in demand and so cheap to produce can still collect farm subsidies, or what some call “corpor …

Gary Taubes is an independent investigator in health policy associated with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In a New York Times article, he resurrected the memory of John Yudkin, a British professor of nutrition and dietetics who spent the 1960s ex …

Looking at the brain’s reward circuits is a hot research area, and sugar is one of the favorite substances to experiment with. Consequently, the past 12 months have been rich in sugar addiction news. At the Oregon Research Institute, researchers starte …

How many people have made a serious effort to quit sugar for a month? How many have succeeded? It has been said that trying to quit sugar for a month will make a skeptic into a food-addiction believer. That is, if the person gets through the preliminar …

New areas of research are opening up every day. Some interesting recent discoveries have been that mice with impaired cannabinoid receptors don’t like to exercise, and that some humans who use cannabis do like to exercise very much. And, surprisingly, …

Last time, Childhood Obesity News was talking about the CB1 and other cannabinoid receptors found in the brains of people and mice. The terminology is confusing, because these receptors get a lot of their input from bodily processes that don’t involve …

Every year ends the same way. Journalists look back over the preceding 12 months and make arbitrary lists — the 10 top food stories, the 5 most promising discoveries, and so on. They weigh and assess, and pick the biggest health story of the year, or …

Here is a first-person account by a not-obese woman, of an encounter at a party: The high tables were pushed together into long strips, with barstool seating along both sides. I talked a bit with the woman next to me, and then she asked if I would mind …

Childhood Obesity News has reviewed high fructose corn syrup before, and found the track record of HFCS to be unimpressive. Or too impressive, but not in a good way. A year ago we quoted early worrier Sara Novak, whose words are an example of how yeste …

Childhood Obesity News has been considering the distressing story of Vilma Soltesz, who died in Hungary recently because three airlines refused to let her travel on their planes, and then she got too sick to travel back to the United States. This story …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News began tracing the history of the singer Beyoncé as it relates to the issue of childhood obesity. Beyoncé, whose weight seems to fluctuate as much as that of her fellow celebrity Oprah Winfrey, was recruited by First La …

Consider the strange case of Beyoncé, who seems to be working both sides of the street in the childhood obesity neighborhood. Early in 2011, the world learned that the singing star, following in the footsteps of other celebrities like Jamie Oliver and …

Really? For the holidays, are we going to talk about a bummer like addiction? Yes, indeed, because at this time of year, addictions that might have lain dormant for a while have a tendency to bloom. It’s a rough season for many people and for a lot of …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …