A generalization that can truthfully be made about food corporations is that they are powerful. Although many of their products are meretricious, the enormous profits enable the companies to buy as many congresscritters as they need, to make or refrain …

What’s this about a $3 million deal between the United States Conference of Mayors and the American Beverage Association (ABA)? Actually, it’s a grant program, the 2012 Childhood Obesity Prevention Awards Program (link is PDF), and the ABA is giving aw …

WebMD offers a plethora of articles related to childhood obesity, and “Talking about Weight with Your Child” by Mary Jo DiLonardo is one of them. The writer specializes in education and family matters, and her work can also be found in Parents magazine …

A couple of days ago, we looked at the state of Georgia’s childhood obesity billboards, but, believe it or not, they are only the tip of a very large iceberg, consisting of what some see as a national trend that is headed in exactly the wrong direction …

Playground: The Mostly True Story of a Former Bully was written by the musician 50 Cent for young adults (age 12+). The protagonist, Butterball, is definitely a bully, although he is at the same time a 13-year-old fat kid. Los Angeles Times reporter Su …

The world just keeps on getting weirder. Now there is a chain of amusement parks designed like miniature cities, where children can pretend to hold jobs, buy airplane tickets, follow traffic rules, open bank accounts, and assume other adult responsibil …

Here’s a little gem of a post from the Weigh2Rock website, written by a teenage girl named Sara: I’m 270 pounds and feel awful. Plus I have 2 familys on my dad’s and mom’s side that are so critiSIZEing. They always find a way to say im fat in different …

Since First Lady Michelle Obama’s mission is to end childhood obesity, it’s interesting to note that cookies, trail mix, and “White House M&Ms” were the trick-or-treat goodies distributed at the presidential Halloween celebration, which apparently …

For a parent, what is the most difficult subject to bring up with a child? This article’s title pretty much tells the story: “Birds and Bees Are Kid Stuff: New National Study Reveals Weight a More Difficult Talk Between Parents and Teens than Sex, Drug …

In the area of childhood obesity, what is news? First, the reporting of current research — the hard facts about obesity — that are communicated to the public by various media. Often, that includes translating the research into something the average p …

People say, “How can food be called addictive? We need to eat.” But “food” covers a lot of territory, so it’s a difficult case to prove. When you narrow it down to one particular substance, however, the idea can be seen in a different light. Especially …

Poor old Halloween! It has been criticized for years on other grounds. More recently, the anti-Halloween sentiment centers around the health aspect. Even people who don’t want to abolish Halloween would like to radically change its nature. In Edmonds, …

Sugar Addiction Awareness Day is coming up pretty soon now, on October 30, and everything you need to know about it is spelled out at EndSugarAddiction.com! The title of a piece that caught our eye is, “Why a personal trainer is making himself obese… o …

Jeff O’Connell, author of Sugar Nation, has explored the depths of this variety of food addiction. He writes, Researchers at Princeton University have studied the effects of sugar on the brain chemistry of rats, and what they’ve found is that their sub …

The variety of Halloween costumes available for babies is amazing. Here are only a few of the food items a baby can be disguised as: taco, banana, chili pepper, hamburger, hot dog, pizza slice, lobster, roast turkey, ketchup packet, gingerbread man, To …

October 30 is Sugar Addiction Awareness Day, so this is pretty much going to be Sugar Week. You are invited to absorb what it’s all about, at EndSugarAddiction.com, and then follow along for a sick-making ride through food addiction hell. And this migh …

There is overweight, and then there is perception of overweight. This is one of the areas investigated by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) program which, under the auspices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, …

We know Robert Pretlow, M.D., as a pediatrician and childhood obesity expert, director of Weigh2Rock.com, writer of many articles (most recently, an important one published by the journal Eating Disorders), and author of Overweight: What Kids Say. As w …

Dr. Pretlow has developed an iPhone application with interesting potentialities in the area of childhood obesity. Below, he describes the impetus behind the innovation and retraces the thinking that inspired it: Charleston Children’s Hospital came to u …

Of course, kids and teens are crazy about social networking. The need for social approval and interaction is deeply ingrained. Its dark side may show up as the type of unwholesome peer pressure that can lead to undesirable behavioral outcomes. But the …

Not done yet? Nope, there is always plenty more to say about sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and the machinations going on around them. The soda pop industry is up to all kinds of mischief, and a lot of concerned health professionals are devoting thei …

Surely, nobody thought we were done with the subject of SSBs? Not hardly. Those initials stand for “Self-Sabotage in a Bottle.” Just kidding. They stand for sugar-sweetened beverages, and that’s shorthand for all of them, whether fizzy or non-carbonate …

As we mentioned, WebMD recently published a comprehensive article by Salynn Boyles on this very subject, which is of great interest because, of course, evidence piles up every day of the undeniable and unwholesome relationship between childhood obesity …

Why does the poor, old soda pop come in for so much verbal abuse? Is evidence of a link between sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and childhood obesity really so overwhelming? And what exudes from the witch’s cauldron shown here? Could it be… Boiled-dow …

We talked about Coca-Cola’s Vitamin Water sports drink. What’s not to like about it? Everything. The whole sports drink scene in general is no model of professional restraint. Some of those concoctions may as well be brewed in cauldrons by witches. But …

Did we mention that Coca-Cola manufactures 3,500 different beverages? Earlier this year, the company was scolded for how it marketed the drink called “Vitamin Water.” The labels are so plain and subdued in design, the product appears to be bottles of I …

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture says the average American eats 150 pounds of sugar per year (see illustration). People who care about the childhood obesity epidemic never run out of things to say about sugar. William Dufty’s classic Sugar Blues was publi …

Dr. Pretlow was extensively quoted by Marsha McCullouch, R.D., who interviewed him as one of the main sources for an article titled “Is Your Child Overweight?” in the print publication LiveRight. The topics are stress and food cravings in children, and …

The vast Coca-Cola empire comprises 450 different brands and a stunning number of products, including 3,500 separate and distinct beverages. Imagine that! If you tried a different Coca-Cola brand every day, at the end of a year there would still be alm …

Not long ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a policy statement titled “Children, Adolescents, Obesity, and the Media,” which addressed those subjects with the organization’s usual thoroughness. The Introduction begins, Obesity represe …