Food Addiction

Two years ago, a childhood obesity study made big news by confirming that all waistlines are not created equal. For Clinical Psychiatry News, Kate Johnson summarized: Extreme obesity is on the rise in children and adolescents, and certain ethnic/racial minorities face a higher risk than do others… [M]ore than 6% of subjects aged 2-19 years [...]

The importance of family meals was a recent topic here, because many health care professionals believe that having dinner together is a crucial piece of the childhood obesity prevention puzzle. Life is very complicated, and sometimes it’s difficult to separate the strands and understand the cause-and-effect sequence. Sometimes it’s hard to know for sure where [...]

The Pediatric Academic Societies met in Boston not long ago and, as so often happens when health professionals gather, the subject of the childhood obesity epidemic was on the table. Dr. Rachel Gross of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine told the group about the study she had led. The city’s Bellevue Hospital is vital [...]

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM-IV, there are six substance-abuse criteria, and if a patient has three out of six, he or she has an addiction. Childhood Obesity News has previously enumerated the “top six reasons why food addiction falls within the already established criteria for addiction,” and today we take another [...]

Claire Bates is one of the many health writers who has noticed the tendency of childhood obesity studies to indict parents. If children are to make lifestyle changes, their chances are much better if it’s a family affair. Bates says: Researchers found that obese youngsters were far more successful at shedding the excess pounds if [...]

Childhood Obesity News was talking about the discovery of several genes, including two particularly significant ones, that appear to influence childhood obesity in kids of European ancestry. The full report, by the Early Growth Genetics (EGG) Consortium, is available online from Nature Genetics. The NIH (National Institutes of Health) was one of the funding sources [...]

Although they are not discussed as often as other organs such as the heart, the intestines are very important. Jill Escher mentions them, when dismissing the theory that sugar is just empty calories: No, no calorie is empty — each bit of digestible stuff we put in our mouths will have some biochemical impact on [...]

“Why is my kid fat?” is the question asked by many parents. In some cases the answers are obvious, but in others, not so much. There are many theories, and no matter what else may or may not be going on in genetics, manufacturing, or the environment, there is solid evidence that food addiction is [...]