Category: Food Addiction

Stress triggers the fight-or-flight reflex, and it doesn’t even require a stressor as obvious as a pinched tail. Boredom is a little-recognized and under-appreciated stressor, which many children and adults intuitively self-medicate by chewing gum. The …

Stress triggers the fight-or-flight reflex. Laboratory rats can’t flee, and have reasons of their own for not fighting, but they still want to feel better. Given the opportunity, they will take drugs or use food as a drug. For the most part, stressed-o …

On happiness scales, obese patients have rated their quality of life as being similar to that of cancer patients on chemotherapy. So why don’t they just stop overeating? Because overeating is not really the cause of their obesity, but rather the sympto …

[montage of junk food]This site covers the social, political, economic, and health impacts of childhood obesity. A common thread that runs through our site is the exploration of food addition. Food addiction remains a controversial topic; many are in d …

Yesterday’s subject was the decreasing tolerance shown by companies for risky health practices among their employees. For her report for CNN, Katherine Reynolds Lewis consulted several experts, including Jim Winkler of the consultancy firm AON Hewitt. …

A website called Experience Project contains a personal history titled “I Am Fat and Have Been Almost My Whole Life.” The writer describes herself as five-foot-three, 298 pounds, and 13 years old. Her day starts with 3 tubs of ice cream, then Mom cooks …

It might be instructive to listen to someone who lost 140 pounds, 30 years ago, and sustained that loss. Such a person is self-described food addict William Anderson, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor who specializes in eating disorders, addictions, a …

A few years back, someone posted a video online that featured a toddler, still on the bottle and quite chubby, who smoked 40 cigarettes a day. It went viral, accumulating 27 million views and inspiring a huge number of disapproving comments as people s …

It becomes more and more evident that all addictions are one. Apparently, whichever addictogenic behavior or substance gets to a person first will lay claim to an addiction-prone person, and if that addiction is ostensibly cured, another one will step …

Some addicts specialize in substances, some in behaviors, and some engage in both. Addiction can involve a substance like cocaine or a behavior like gambling. An eating disorder can result from a certain type of food acting as an addictor for a particu …

Last week, Childhood Obesity News explored the four individual stories of obese kids from the film Bite Size: Emily, Moy, Davion, and KeAnna. Guess what just happened over at iTunes? Bite Size has arrived there. We have said this before, but it is wort …

Addiction guilt is one of the facets of Dr. Pretlow’s investigation of childhood obesity, and today we look at what several experts say about guilt, and the subtle differences between guilt and shame. These observations include an assertion that might …

Comedian Doug Stanhope has an un-cordial relationship with his sister-in-law. In one of his bits, for a Showtime Special, he characterized her as a “humorless ____” with the second word being a very rude term indeed. But she should not have been offend …

The topic of meal size versus meal frequency has not yet been exhausted. Neither has the thin or possibly nonexistent line between frequent small meals and snacks. Many authorities have opinions for or against snacking, and many researchers have garner …

Not long ago, Childhood Obesity News considered two of the major structures under which medical professionals sort diseases. Many healers are not totally on board with either of these taxonomical schemes, but insurance companies and other bureaucracies …

With one of the major eating festivals on the horizon, Childhood Obesity News looks to Scientific American’s Ferris Jabr for information on the toxicity (or not) of sugar. This topic also fits into the “everything you know is wrong” niche for contested …

On this page is a link to a free chart that spells out the differences between physical (real) hunger and emotional (bogus) hunger. A book* called Constant Craving, by Doreen Virtue, introduced the chart with these words: Emotional and physical hunger …

Mardis Gras Childhood Obesity News is exploring the idea that for a large part of the Western world, the religious season of Lent has served as a trial run for quitting sugar. For some, it has no doubt been inspirational, and led to permanently sugar-f …

Last time we talked about how, since sugar is one of the cheapest and most widely available worldly pleasures, it has historically been a popular substance for Christians to give up during the penitential season of Lent, which varies from 40 to 47 days …

Dr. Pretlow was one of the professionals interviewed on camera by Sabrina Register, of television station KCTS in Seattle, on the subject of childhood obesity.  The show mentions his W8Loss2Go smartphone app, and visits his very popular Weigh2Rock webs …

2014 was a big year for what William Anderson calls “weight loss quackery,”  with the government making four companies promise $34 million in refunds to customers. Their previous promises, made on behalf of their products, involved the fast and effortl …

In the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel,” a child is captured by a witch who feeds him so he will be nice and plump to cook and eat. The story has analogs in many cultures. The website TV Tropes gives more than 30 examples of stories (including a Simpsons …

Here is the confluence of two trains of thought. The first concerns the omission of food addiction from the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The other is the quality of life experienced by an obese child – not a …

Hector Garcia called himself “the worst-case scenario” for reasons clear to anyone familiar with the thorough and revelatory account of his last four years on earth, as compiled by San Antonio Express-News staffers Jessica Belasco and Lisa Krantz. Garc …

Once they have become obese, children may experience a diminished quality of life for many reasons, some of which are more obvious than others. A lot of things in the material world are too small for their comfort — clothes, school desks, airplane seat …

When 600-pound Hector Garcia died in December, his life had been documented for several years by a team from the San Antonio Express-News. His mother told the reporter that “if she tried to refuse his requests for food, her son would get angry.” Dr. Pr …

Can a mother make her child morbidly obese? Mothers are easily blamed for anything, rightly or wrongly, for reasons that seem obvious to those who do it. Childhood Obesity News related the tragic story of morbidly obese Texan Hector Garcia, who died la …

Sunset in San Antonio Reporter Jessica Belasco and photographer Lisa Krantz spent four years documenting the life of a morbidly obese man for the San Antonio Express-News. Last month, the task culminated in a lavishly-illustrated story after Hector Gar …

The “lizard brain,” the primitive tenant in a person’s skull, is easily fooled into thinking that just because something feels good, it is actually beneficial. As writer Jim Dickey (25 years sober) says: While the concept is no longer fully embraced by …

Under the current model (as set forth in the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) for what used to be known as addiction, unhealthy dependency has become measured on a graduated scale. “Substance Use Disorder” is rated by degrees rangi …