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 before, along with other aspects of aspartame and its spawn — Equal, NutraSweet, Canderel, [...]
The “DSM-5″ and Obesity, Part 2
February 8, 2011 By 1 Comment
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 more “scientific” way can be found, the hope is to move away from either/or definitions of [...]
The “DSM-5″ and Obesity, Part 1
February 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment
We’ll get to the obesity relevance in a minute, but meanwhile, here is an interesting detail about the upcoming revised edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The Roman numerals are being dropped in favor of Arabic numbers, so the new version will actually be DSM-5. Another footnote of interest: the third [...]
Childhood Obesity Conflicts of Interest
December 20, 2010 By 7 Comments
Childhood Obesity Science Conflicts of Interest If a tobacco company were to fund an anti-smoking scientific journal, most people would point out the glaring conflict of interest. Yet, a new peer-reviewed, scientific journal, Childhood Obesity (Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.), was launched in September 2010 with a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The Kellogg Foundation’s [...]
Sarah Palin Unfazed by Childhood Obesity
December 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Sarah Palin has been accused of being an addictive substance, in such headlines as (the following links in headlines are ours): “Why is Sarah Palin the crack cocaine addiction of the liberal party?” and “America’s addiction: Sarah Palin,” in which writer EL Marr says, “Sarah Palin is the *Movie Star* of American politics”– and we [...]
When There Is Nothing to Do but Eat
October 15, 2010 By 95 Comments
Glenn Cook is an editorial writer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and when he gets interested in a subject, that subject goes under the microscope for thorough examination. Recently, Cook got to thinking about the reasons for the childhood obesity epidemic. One of them is the parenting culture we seem to have adopted, which in [...]
Oprah Winfrey’s Very Public Food Addiction Struggle
August 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Obesity can be bad enough, but obesity in front of millions of people, whose eyes are glued to every ounce you gain, that’s a real recipe for distress. The struggle against food addiction is difficult for anyone. For a woman who is not only a celebrity but an icon, a virtual mentor, a role model, [...]
Television Advertising and Childhood Obesity, Part 2
July 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Childhood obesity is a worldwide problem. Not long ago, Stephanie Nebehay reported for Reuters on the latest World Health Organization guidelines. A WHO spokesperson, Timothy Armstrong, is quoted as saying, The rate of increase in the developing world is greatest because of a rapid change in diet and physical activity patterns. Nebehay passes along the information [...]
Television Advertising and Childhood Obesity, Part 1
July 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Some people in Scotland think that junk food advertising now needs to be completely eliminated from television. Since 2007, such ads have been banned from appearing during children’s programs, but now, […] health campaigners say kids are still susceptible to seeing adverts during adult shows before the 9pm watershed and have called for a total [...]
Medical Science and Food Addiction
July 19, 2010 By 8 Comments
(Part One of a Two-Part Post)(View Part Two) by Robert A. Pretlow, M.D. Why Does The Obesity Community Reject Addiction? In September 2009, I conducted a plenary session presentation at the European Childhood Obesity Group (ECOG) scientific meeting in Dublin, Ireland, in which I proposed that comfort eating and resulting addiction to highly pleasurable foods [...]
