Know any “Moms of the Revolution”? Well, you do now: Liz Snyder, who was awarded that title by Kiwi Magazine because of her Full Circle Farm project, which is organic, sustainable, and educational. Also very educational is Collective Roots, a nonprofit …

Somewhere in the mid-2000s, a disturbance was caused in American culture when a Sesame Street character, Cookie Monster, became aware of the childhood obesity epidemic. Famous for his exclusive preference for cookies, he switched gears and began eating …

Any obesity-conscious person will encounter the artificial sweetener dilemma, and anybody who looks into it will probably decide to stay away from the stuff, if at all possible. The trouble is, it’s in more than 6,000 food products, as we mentioned bef …

There are plenty of things parents can stop doing. Obesity is bad enough; a kid doesn’t need nagging too. But today, we’re talking about things that parents can actively do. Aracelly Clouse is a personal fitness trainer in California, who also writes a …

  Childhood obesity is a tough problem, and when parents look for answers, the answers might depend on the attitudinal states of various family members. Maybe you realize that your child has a problem, but he or she refuses to acknowledge this. Or …

Did some little thing ever catch your eye and entice you into a more thorough investigation of a subject? It was just a tiny paragraph in Entertainment Weekly, written by Keith Staskiewicz, about the second volume of memoirs published by actress Valeri …

The Psychological Food Dependence-Addiction Paradigm is a very simple concept. People, yes, even kids, can become addicted to high-calorie, low-nutrient, hedonically engineered substances that masquerade as food. Food can be a drug of abuse, and it’s a …

Many parents have heard about food addiction, just like they have heard of other theories and discoveries in the childhood obesity field. And, for some, there is a compelling reason not to think about the food addiction paradigm as it applies to the li …

We have been thinking about not thinking, specifically about why some parents avoid thinking about childhood obesity in general, and about food addiction in particular. Part of the problem is that even if the latest theories about obesity are correct, …

Yes, we have talked before about why a lot of parents just don’t want to hear about food addiction. But there are so many reasons! Some parents don’t believe that food addiction exists. Some may accept the new paradigm in a general sort of way, and be …

A disturbing aspect of childhood obesity is that, in an attempt to avoid it, children are ingesting large amounts of aspartame (marketed as Equal, NutraSweet, Canderel, Equal-Measure, Spoonful, Benevia, etc.) and other sweeteners that have really bad h …

We looked yesterday at the difficulties faced by the editors of the forthcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM-5, as explained by Gary Greenberg, who also talks about the currently favored method of considering an array of symptoms. Until a mor …

The psychological food dependence-addiction lens is a new and still somewhat unpopular paradigm, because it has to do with addiction to food as the cause of much obesity. Looking through that lens, we see that while legislative measures are useful, wha …

Here is Kelly Osbourne, looking much different than she used to, on the cover of the February issue of British edition of Cosmopolitan, with an article inside, titled “I was an emotional eater.” Reporter Kara Gause says, [… S]he’s at once Madonna circa …

Yesterday we discussed the difficulty, for parents and health professionals concerned about childhood obesity, in having a positive effect, or making any impact at all, on the production, advertising, or availability of junk food. Call it less-than-opt …

Yes, it’s the Childhood Obesity Perfect Storm… again. What — did you think it was over just because we have reported on it so relentlessly? If only! No, the sad fact is, we’re still in the midst of the tempest. The “perfect storm” is an appropriate fi …

Sometimes we get information overload fatigue, and we just don’t want to hear about one more thing that’s bad for us. We get tired of hearing bad news and just start filtering it out. Or we pick one bad thing to worry about, and let the other nine go a …

It’s always a pleasure to discover another person who endorses the view that there is such a thing as food addiction; who, in other words, looks at the childhood obesity epidemic through the psychological food dependence-addiction lens. The medical pro …

How gracious of Zoë Harcombe to send flattering words out into the world, in her review of Overweight: What Kids Say! For any author, the good opinion of a respected peer is a substantial reward. When that reviewer puts as much attention into the matte …

When people are concerned about health, and especially about obesity, and they talk about food labeling, there are a couple of different things they might mean. Fast food restaurants with more than 20 branches now have to give the calorie count on thei …

“Is food addiction real?” This question is posed by Jennifer LaRue Huget in The Washington Post, and it is a question relevant to numerous other journalists, health professionals, educators, bureaucrats, researchers, parents across the nation, and, yes …

At the point in time when only a few municipalities had adopted the idea that restaurants should reveal the calorie counts of their dishes to the customers, a bunch of young people voiced their opinions at Weigh2Rock. This website has published a serie …

Many people believe that at least some obesity (PDF) could be prevented if only we were really aware of everything we ate. Awareness of why we are eating is always helpful, of course. It’s always a good idea to ask ourselves questions like, “Am I reall …

We know that kids in America and all over the world are miserable about their excess body weight. We know that obesity in the young can lead to the early onset of severe medical conditions that used to mainly afflict adults. We know that, for many peop …

Many people realize that childhood obesity is a serious and growing problem, and many even ask, “But what can we do about it?” For parents, a great, big, wonderful answer is: Grow veggies! We’re looking today at a recent opinion piece in the The Wall S …

It’s great to be an employed professional, out in the world of work, and it’s even greater to have a life to go home to. But in between all that, how do you keep up with developments in your field? If you’re busy looking after the needs of a school ful …

It’s a trick title, of course, made from the two of 2010’s enormous-selling nonfiction books, as announced by Nielsen BookScan just the other day. Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love was #2 (and also #4 in a different version, the “movie tie-in trade p …

We have talked about the Childhood Obesity Perfect Storm before, and its various components such as the existence of cleverly engineered highly pleasurable foods, the ubiquitous availability of those foods to kids, and the way the products are marketed …

The following is a guest post by Dr. David L. Katz, director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center. The article was originally published on Prevention.com, and has been modified and updated for Childhood Obesity News. Comedian Kenan Thompson …

Dr. Pretlow’s December 20 post, “Childhood Obesity Science Conflicts of Interest,” set off an interesting chain of reactions. It expressed concern about the objectivity and impartiality of the new magazine, Childhood Obesity, which is a peer-reviewed s …