A while back, Singapore was getting some good PR for keeping its kids thin. As Childhood Obesity News discussed, a comparison was made between the childhood obesity rate in Southeast Asia, which was 23%, and the rate in Singapore, less than half that number. Reports talked about mental health literacy, in connection with a bulimia [...]
The Challenge to Parents — Facing the Facts
April 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment
The challenge? In the struggle against childhood obesity, there are a hundred challenges. It’s like the mythological Hydra, the beast with many ferociously fanged heads, and every time a hero would cut one off, it would grow back. Some days are like that, right? One of the hardest things for parents is fessing up that [...]
Is “Thin” a Four-Letter Word?
April 27, 2012 By 2 Comments
Childhood Obesity News has been exploring the idea that “fat” is a four-letter word, not literally, but in the sense of being forbidden, vulgar, and offensive. Sometimes it seems as if “thin” is equally reprehensible, because people object to the idea of children being told that thin is better than fat. This is partly an [...]
Is “Fat” a Four-Letter Word?
April 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Dr. Pretlow teaches that obesity is not a matter of poor willpower or lack of exercise, rather it is an addictive brain disease involving certain highly palatable problem foods. It is substance dependency, and attributing it to a direct biochemical effect on brain chemistry seems unnecessary and overdone. As he says: Fast sensory signals, e.g. [...]
Packaging, Photography, and Presentation
April 20, 2012 By 2 Comments
Childhood Obesity News has been exploring the art and science of food porn (or foodporn), including the ways in which food is visually enhanced, sometimes for the purpose of advertising, and sometimes just because. An entire enormous genre of photography is focused on the depiction of food. Photoshop and its brethren may have made the [...]
Blaming Parents for Childhood Obesity
April 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Is there no end to the things parents can be blamed for? Strollers! The Canadian Paediatric Society released a report about toddlers, ages one and two, claiming that 80% of them spend half their outdoor time in strollers. This represented only a fraction of the 1,000 children age five and below who were studied. In [...]
Whatever Happened to the “Cheeseburger Bill”?
February 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment
In the tobacco industry, a certain amount of accountability has been achieved, at least on paper, through some lawsuits. Would increased accountability in a legal, financially responsible sense, do anything to slow down the childhood obesity epidemic, if such accountability were demanded of the food industry? Major food corporations, of course, do not want increased [...]
Academia, Government, and McDonald’s
February 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Bloomberg stringers Michael Wei and Margaret Conley reported the astonishing news that acceptance into the Chinese branch of McDonald’s Hamburger University is harder to attain than admission to Harvard University. What they meant was, the ratio of applications to acceptances is under 1% at Shanghai’s corporate training center, whereas Harvard magnanimously takes in around 7% [...]
The Comedy Continues
February 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment
An onion can make people cry but there’s never been a vegetable that can make people laugh. Will Rogers said that. What does it have to do with childhood obesity? Nothing. It’s just an example of one type of funny, something that brings on a giggle because even though you never thought of it that [...]
Paying Attention to Kids
February 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Childhood Obesity News has been looking at the good things that can happen when grownups listen and pay attention to kids. In the Pacific Northwest, government agencies have joined with health workers in the tribal community to address the problem of preventing and treating childhood obesity. Over the past 10 years, type 2 diabetes has increased [...]
