Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at some of the pros and cons of the “food desert” doctrine, one of the bases of the Let’s Move! program sponsored by presidential wife Michelle Obama. Her detractors deny the existence of food deserts. But many …

Who would have guessed there would be so much to discover about food deserts? And so much to disagree about. Especially when the term only came into public consciousness in relatively recent years. Americans are now so familiar with it because of First …

Two major questions are involved. The first, as been discussed extensively by Childhood Obesity News — if there are such things as food deserts, does their existence impact childhood obesity one way or another? The branching sub-questions attached to …

Ever since first lady Michelle Obama introduced the concept of the food desert, there have been grumblings, as Childhood Obesity News noted yesterday. Earlier this year, the grumblings flared up into something of a brushfire when The New York Times pub …

Last time, Childhood Obesity News looked at the concept of the food desert, as publicized by Michelle Obama and the Let’s Move! program. Many critics were and are full of scorn for the very idea. Diane Medved wrote a particularly stern essay, “Veggies …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking at the history of the Let’s Move! program initiated and promoted by First Lady Michelle Obama, as it has unfolded over the last couple of years. It announced four objectives: to educate and empower parents, provi …

One American contribution to the London Olympics was the presence of First Lady Michelle Obama, who headed the presidential delegation to the events. She also appeared before 1,000 schoolchildren for a Let’s Move! event. As Rajiv Narayan points out, th …

Not long ago, Dr. Pretlow was asked a series of questions by a young student whose area of interest is the impact of childhood obesity on the overall development of a child. Quite logically, she first inquired about the leading cause of obesity today, …

F as in Fat, the exhaustive report published by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, tells us that children need to keep moving — for all kinds of reasons directly or indirectly connected with childhood obesity (PDF). …

Childhood Obesity News has looked at many angles of the PE-in-schools debate. In some places, they’re trying to get more of it, in others, to reduce the amount they already have. And nobody seems able to prove incontrovertibly that it does anything to …

Last time, Childhood Obesity News looked at fitness guidelines and recommendations for children in elementary, middle, and high school, and how little power anybody has, apparently, to make schools offer physical education. States can make their own ru …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at the positive effects of recess for grade school children. Even brisk exercise may or may not directly influence their weight. But it does seem to have side effects that help them become the kind of kids who a …

There is a strong push in many American communities to either strengthen or institute physical education programs in public schools. Will all these efforts make any difference to the childhood obesity epidemic? There are both positive and negative indi …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking at different aspects of the schools-and-exercise controversy. To really think about the subject, it’s necessary to go all the way back to the basic question of whether exercise is useful in combating childhood ob …

How much exercise should children get on the way to school and in school? These are huge questions, and entire communities have mobilized around controversy over them. Most proponents of physical activity take it for granted that exercise alleviates ch …

Childhood Obesity News has been talking about what some call physical literacy, especially as it applies to school curricula. This is from researchers at the Georgia Health Sciences University, by way of ScienceDaily. The team wanted to look at a batch …

Physical education, recess with opportunities for activity — does any of it help? Does all this motion do any good at all? Does letting or making children play outside, or inside, make a difference to childhood obesity? Many authorities say yes, accor …

When the Walt Disney Company promised to do better in the matter of curbing its advertising of minimally nutritious foodstuffs to children, in order to help alleviate the childhood obesity epidemic, big questions came up. What will the other mega-corpo …

Childhood Obesity News was looking at the Walt Disney Company’s decision to change its advertising habits and start rating food for nutritional sufficiency. Is the company embracing innovation, or just bowing to the inevitable? Some say that within two …

Last month, the Walt Disney Company held a press conference in the nation’s capital with First Lady Michelle Obama. By now, everyone who cares to state an opinion on the matter has had the opportunity. It’s all about what kind of advertising will accom …

Last time, Childhood Obesity News discussed a Canadian publication called Developing Physical Literacy (a downloadable PDF file) which carries very specific recommendations. It promotes the idea that, just as there is an optimum age for a child to soak …

Childhood Obesity News is looking at the idea of kids biking to school, and specifically at incidents in Michigan, where 64 high school seniors were harshly treated (before the judgment was reversed) and New York, where one boy’s insistence on riding h …

Bicycles, students, and the routes to and from school — those are the three intersecting topics important to anyone who sees increased exercise as a good thing. Whether or not a person is convinced that exercise is the cure for the childhood obesity e …

Exercise is a hot topic in the childhood obesity discussion, and one of the major subtopics within it is bicycle riding, and under that, a big subheading concerns riding bikes to school. Some people talk about the danger, but others say “get real”, eve …

  Childhood Obesity News has talked about exercise, which may not be The Answer to childhood obesity, or even a big factor. But weight loss aside, physical motion and exertion are beneficial to the body and mind and yes, even the emotions. Dr. Col …

When childhood obesity is seen through the psychological food dependence-addiction lens, it becomes obvious that diet and exercise are not all-important. They are necessary conditions to health, but they may not be sufficient conditions to health. The …

David L. Katz, M.D., is the director of both the Yale University Prevention Research Center and Griffin Hospital’s integrative Medicine Center. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Childhood Obesity, whose recent issue celebrated the second anniversary …

Without necessarily endorsing any of them, Childhood Obesity News is looking at treatments for obesity. Since food addiction is such a major component of the obesity picture in both adults and children, programs that are based on the addiction paradigm …

Childhood Obesity News has been talking about the importance of awareness, specifically, awareness of the phenomenon of food addiction. Such organizations as National Public Radio, to give but one example, have worked hard to raise consciousness of the …

Over the past couple of years, despite resistance to the food addiction paradigm, many different researchers have been making the connection between obesity and addiction. In a series of programs about addiction, National Public Radio brought listeners …