Food Addiction — a Fertile Field

June 27, 2012
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Recently, Childhood Obesity News has been focusing on food addiction, and it seems there is still more to reveal. The subject is… addictive. Here are some philosophical words from William Leith, author of The Hungry Years: Confessions of a Food Addic …

Food Addicts’ Stories, Continued

June 26, 2012
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Scott McCann of the website AnonymousOne relates the stories of a couple of very serious food addiction cases personally observed by him. The first: A man of 50 went into rehab to rid himself of addictions to two different hard drugs. Apparently, this …

More Food Addicts Tell Their Stories

June 25, 2012
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My name is Jessica, and I’m a processed food addict. A little dramatic, yes… but lately I’m kind of feeling like I need AA for high fructose corn syrup… The rest of Jessica’s blog post is a fairly ordinary declaration of good intentions, but that f …

Food Addicts Tell Their Stories

June 22, 2012
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The idea that food can be addictive has been gathering momentum for some time now. For a website focused on addiction, Jessica Fargen collected some frightening stories, like the one from a woman whose typical breakfast was a couple of sausage and egg …

Catching Up With Food Addiction, Part 2

June 21, 2012
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Last time, Childhood Obesity News mentioned cross-heritability, a human trait that results in the tendency of people who shed one addiction, only to pick up another one. Apparently, addiction has more to do with the individual than with the substance o …

Catching Up With Food Addiction, Part 1

June 20, 2012
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Last time, Childhood Obesity News considered the story of Natasha Harris, a New Zealander whose death was attributed to her Coca-Cola addiction. In the comments appended to that story, a couple of really scary ones alluded to children. A woman addicted …

Death of a Coke “Addict” Spurs Revelations

June 19, 2012
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Childhood Obesity News is very much about the existence of actual, literal addictiveness in manufactured food-like substances. Another favorite topic is Coca-Cola. This irresistible headline combines both: Coca-Cola Addiction a Factor in Woman’s Death …

Kids and the Preparation of Food, Part 2

June 18, 2012
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Recently, Childhood Obesity News discovered that some very smart people consider the ability to prepare nutritious meals as more valuable knowledge for young people than algebra or the works of Greek playwright Euripides. Small children, we pointed out …

Kids and the Preparation of Food

June 15, 2012
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“Cooking classes” is the term found in the titles of many articles about how schools can help in the struggle against childhood obesity. Linguistically speaking, “cooking classes” is a term that signifies defeat before the battle even begins. Who says …

An Ounce of Childhood Obesity Prevention

June 14, 2012
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Childhood Obesity News has been considering the different reasons why parents would do well to center their activities in the kitchen and include their children as much as possible. Katherine Workman, for instance, brings up the matter of “investment.” …

Home Cooking and Childhood Obesity

June 13, 2012
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Nearly from birth, American kids are inundated with ads for foods that send their taste buds into overdrive but don’t do them any nutritional favors. Parents can’t do much about that. Closer to home, parents have some say about what their kids are serv …

Globesity Rolls On

June 12, 2012
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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 …

How Goes Globesity?

June 11, 2012
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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 …

How Fat Are We, Anyway?

June 8, 2012
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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 …

Mysteries of the 10 Fattest U.S. Metro Areas

June 7, 2012
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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 “Vogue” Child Diet Scandal

June 6, 2012
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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 and Violence

June 5, 2012
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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, …

Childhood Obesity: A Book and Two Games

June 4, 2012
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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 …

Schoolgirl’s “NeverSeconds” Blog Grows

June 1, 2012
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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 …

Strategic Distraction

May 31, 2012
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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 …

Fathers and Childhood Obesity

May 30, 2012
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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 …

Health Professionals and Parents, Part 2

May 29, 2012
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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 …

Health Professionals and Parents

May 25, 2012
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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 …

Broaching the Childhood Obesity Topic

May 24, 2012
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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 …

Public Policy and Childhood Obesity

May 23, 2012
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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 …

“W8 Loss 2 Go” iPhone App Meets the World

May 22, 2012
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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 …

Dr. Pretlow and the 19th European Congress on Obesity

May 21, 2012
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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 …

Childhood Obesity Classics: Supersize Me

May 18, 2012
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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 …

Clear Channel vs. Childhood Obesity

May 17, 2012
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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 …

Culture, Economics, Ethnicity, and Childhood Obesity (Part 2)

May 16, 2012
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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 …

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Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Obesity top bottom

The Book

OVERWEIGHT: What Kids Say explores the obesity problem from the often-overlooked perspective of children struggling with being overweight.

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Dr. Robert A. Pretlow is a pediatrician and childhood obesity specialist. He has been researching and spreading awareness on the childhood obesity epidemic in the US for more than a decade.
You can contact Dr. Pretlow at:

Presentations

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the American Society of Animal Science 2020 Conference
What’s Causing Obesity in Companion Animals and What Can We Do About It

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the World Obesity Federation 2019 Conference:
Food/Eating Addiction and the Displacement Mechanism

Dr. Pretlow’s Multi-Center Clinical Trial Kick-off Speech 2018:
Obesity: Tackling the Root Cause

Dr. Pretlow’s 2017 Workshop on
Treatment of Obesity Using the Addiction Model

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation for
TEC and UNC 2016

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the 2015 Obesity Summit in London, UK.

Dr. Pretlow’s invited keynote at the 2014 European Childhood Obesity Group Congress in Salzburg, Austria.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2013 European Congress on Obesity in Liverpool, UK.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2011 International Conference on Childhood Obesity in Lisbon, Portugal.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2010 Uniting Against Childhood Obesity Conference in Houston, TX.

Food & Health Resources