Childhood obesity, adult obesity, food addiction, processed food, chemicals, and corporations… all these things and more are inextricably entwined, and their relationship gives rise to many questions. Like, are they putting stuff in food to make it add …

A lot of creativity goes into persuasion, as in advertising and marketing fast foods, and a lot of originality goes into efforts to deal with the obesity epidemic. A great deal of creative energy is found in the projects of Public Matters, an organizat …

What do we know about the chemical commonly known as salt? According to David Kessler, the former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, over-eating might be due to… the combination of fats, sugars and salt used by food manufactures to …

Addict Nation: An Intervention for America is a book which examines the country’s leading addictions. Not surprisingly, food addiction is #2. (The other most prevalent addictions are prescription pills, crime and punishment, shopping, and technology.) …

Relatively speaking, one of the disadvantages of food addiction is that obesity often follows. Plenty of alcoholics are able to hide their condition. People who are hooked on street drugs or prescription meds are often able to function in society witho …

Carnie Wilson’s dysfunctional relationship with her world-renowned musician father was, she feels, the root cause of her lifelong struggle with eating disorders. Then in 1993, her own singing group broke up. A couple of years later, Wilson admitted tha …

This episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show aired a while back, but it’s a classic. Oprah invited some formerly obese teens, a couple of parents, and a couple of doctors — including Dr. Mehmet Oz, who hangs out in the audience contributing medical illumina …

We talked last time about the validation given by the recent Yale study, to the idea that food addiction is a reality for some people. Of course, the story was immediately picked up and expanded on by numerous other media, all with their own particular …

Well, better late than never! Dr. Robert A. Pretlow, numerous other medical professionals, and very many obese people (whose experiences were previously dismissed as “anecdotal evidence” and “non-validated data”) have been saying for years that food ad …

In “Weight Loss Surgery, Part 4,” we looked at the experiences of some grownups with bariatric surgery. But what about the kids? Is weight loss surgery (WLS) recommended for obese children and youth? Dr. Laurie Barclay discussed this for Medscape not l …

We have been exploring the different kinds of surgery designed to help an obese person lose weight by having part of their stomach either removed or shut off, and the other bits reconnected in different ways. The various weight loss surgery (WLS) proce …

There are a lot of different opinions about how much responsibility the government should take for controlling obesity. When there is agreement that the government should do something, the easiest place to make an impact on large numbers of young and p …

In part one last week, we basically outlined the different kinds of bariatric surgery. But do they work, and how well? Thanks to WebMD, any morbidly obese person who is considering such an operation can get a basic idea of what to expect. Adjustable ga …

We have speculated before on why highly pleasurable food gets such a hold on people that they let it impair their well-being, to the point where surgery is then necessary to control their overeating and restore health. We have suggested that any habit …

Although “7 Worst Supermarket Rip-Offs” was first published by Men’s Health, authors David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding make it clear that they are passing along wisdom found in Eat This, Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide and Cook This, Not That! Wha …

When we are stressed, depressed, lonely, downhearted, or suffering from any other kinds of bad feelings, we often tend to self-medicate with comfort food, in hopes that it will cheer us up. But comfort foods are so often laden with sugar, fat, carbohyd …

A Chance to Heal is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation that originated in the mind of Rachel Silver. As a 17-year-old, Silver needed help to treat her eating disorder, and her position in life was such that money was no object. But not everyone is in suc …

In America, among kids ages four to 17, about 8% are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD.) They have a hard time sitting still, following a train of thought, being regimented, staying quiet, and settling down. And even though …

Marion Nestle wears an awful lot of hats for one head. She’s a professor in the field of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, a job that includes teaching nutrition to doctors and medical students. Molecular biology is only one of her areas of e …

There are disquieting hints everywhere that if we really were honest about discovering the causes of childhood obesity, we might not be happy about the answers. We might wish we had never asked. For example, some people believe our entire culture is wa …

Many live-in addiction treatment centers include food addiction in their agenda, and a place called Shades of Hope, located in Buffalo Gap, Texas, specializes in “eating disorders and co-occurring addictions.” Oprah Winfrey is profiling this center in …

Politically and medically significant, it’s a public health issue and also a very personal and extremely emotional one. There is more to be said about breastfeeding, babies, and childhood obesity, so here are a few interesting items from around the Int …

“Our fitter kids are the envy of the planet.” That statement is quite a brag, a real attention-getter, and the title of a piece by Emma Palmer. Let’s see how they back it up. And who are they, anyway? They are the schools of South West Essex, formerly …

The Guide to Culinary Schools is a clearinghouse of vital information for professionals and students designed to connect people with schools and courses, and vice versa. And it offers some great value-added supplementary material, such as its list of 5 …

We talked about garden-based nutrition education, also known as garden-based learning, or GBL. We made connections between the benefits that kids derive from GBL, and the ways in which children can avoid falling prey to a crippling dependency on hedoni …

We have been looking at some ideas about kids and gardening, schools, and childhood obesity, and the relationships between them. Many people are upset about school lunches, which sometimes involve such undesirable elements as vending machines, fast-foo …

Way back in 1959, almost no one (except its inhabitants) spared a thought for Harlem, the festering black ghetto of New York City. Warren Miller’s novel The Cool World was startlingly different. A 14-year-old gang member gets into serious trouble and i …

New research comes along every day, and breastfeeding is currently a topic of much concern (we have been exploring some of its angles on this blog). The latest interesting findings come from the Colorado School of Public Health, reported on for Busines …

The Let’s Move! program and First Lady Michelle Obama have plenty of ideas about ending childhood obesity, and one of them is the importance of breastfeeding. Yesterday we brought up some of the problems encountered by the FLOTUS (First Lady of the Uni …

We learn from Lynn Sweet’s bio that, “In 1990, she was among the first journalists in the nation to analyze political ads for accuracy.”(That is a useful talent, equal to a talent for analyzing hedonic food ads, which tend to have an elevated baloney c …