By 2008, fitness was catching on in China, and the country had well over 160,000 gyms with, in the words of Megan Shank, “spinning, yoga, step, salsa and even pole dancing — anything to entice office workers.” Depending on the usual factors that influ …

In China, as elsewhere in the developed world, there is a very strong correlation between people spending most of their time with a TV or computer and people whose bodies don’t fit into clothes or airplane seats. With kids, the situation is especially …

China’s solution to childhood obesity starts with a network of dangerously strict “fat camps,” backed up by a nationwide profusion of Internet-addiction rehab centers designed to extirpate habits that are seen as the main cause of overweight. Years ago …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News discussed a Chinese study linking obesity with Internet addiction. That country is very conscious of the strong correlation between too much screen time and excessive body weight, and takes very literally the idea of a …

Chinese scientists collected data on 1,150 middle school and high school students in the city of Xiangtan. Their report says: The height and body weight of human body were measured and the obesity state was judged according to BMI value and the Working …

In Britain they have a thing called the National Obesity Observatory (NOO) through which the government publishes the results of research concerning overweight and obesity. To gather information, the NOO operates the National Child Measurement Programm …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at the possibility that Russia might be winning the War on Obesity, because of the widespread prevalence of small garden plots where people grow a large proportion of the nation’s food supply. New readers are in …

“War on childhood obesity” is a phrase that has been bandied about in the media for some time now. One example is a short interview that Fox Business recorded with Jake Steinfeld, chairman of the National Foundation for Governors’ Fitness Councils. Wha …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News discussed a Contemporary Pediatrics article in which Dr. Pretlow was generously quoted. The substantial piece, by Lisette Hilton, went on to examine an aspect of treatment that’s not often mentioned — the difficulty d …

As Childhood Obesity News has been discussing, the city-state of Singapore is quite serious about lowering its childhood obesity rate, and is pursuing that goal with a two-pronged strategy. One prong is more physical fitness for all citizens — regardl …

KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Singapore identifies the primary causes of childhood obesity as environmental: An abundance of food allows for excessive intake of food from all food groups, especially fats. A diet high in fat is associated with i …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at some of the programs implemented by the government of Singapore over the past few years to prevent childhood obesity. We also got a glimpse of the future plan slated to begin in the new year, a physical educa …

In 2010, the Asian Journal of Exercise & Sports Science published a lengthy report authored by eight experts titled “Obesity Prevention in Singapore: Collaborative Efforts Among Government, Health Professionals and the Community.” The authors ident …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking at Singapore’s 15-year experiment that ended when a government that is often perceived as oppressively authoritarian made a surprising reversal. Under the “Trim and Fit” (TAF) program, the policy had been to clos …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News discussed the Trim and Fit program that had been in place in Singapore schools since 1992, in which overweight children were required to do extra physical education activities and have their caloric intake monitored wh …

GuideMeSingapore.com tells us that the island city-state contains more than 4,500 food and beverage establishments, “from hawker stalls to fine dining restaurants.” About 14% of tourist expenditure winds up in the bank accounts of these eateries. Forme …

Harvard University’s School of Public Health has definite ideas about what it calls the toxic food environment in the United States, and it sees food marketing as one of the major problem areas. A huge amount of money is spent each year by corporate in …

The first thing to know is that “ED” stands for Emotional Disturbances, and the second thing is that there is a standardized test called the SAED, which stands for Scale for Assessing Emotional Disturbance. Researchers from Australia’s Monash Universit …

Still celebrating Childhood Obesity Awareness month by taking an overview of the mixed messages dispersed since last September, we note the arrival of a new thing on the scene. An organization started by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) got up …

We’re still in Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, and have been looking at the spectrum of news coverage over the past few months, which although it has not exactly inspired roller-coaster emotions, has tended to fluctuate. In the wake of the CDC repor …

Okay, so it’s been established that at the beginning of the year, the Centers for Disease Control study was a major big deal. Writer Lori Abbot focused on the comparison between New York City and Los Angeles, America’s two gigantic opposite-coastal met …

Tracking headlines over the past year or so, it’s hard to know what to think about the status of childhood obesity. Last summer, it was revealed that in some pockets of California — Alameda and Contra Costa counties — the problem seems to have gotten …

The Yale Rudd Center has made a series of videos about weight bias, and the nature and extent of this prejudice. At its mildest, weight bias can be described as a negative attitude toward obese people. It’s a form of stereotyping whose expression can b …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking at various news articles in which doctors express regret that they are not qualified to educate their patients about obesity. They are right, but for the wrong reasons. In their view, their lack of education in t …

Last month, the American Medical Association (AMA) declared obesity a disease. According to Melissa Healy and Anna Gorman, LA Times, this is “a move that effectively defines 78 million American adults and 12 million children as having a medical conditi …

Last week the American Medical Association (AMA) voted to call obesity a disease, which is basically a medical condition requiring treatment. In the most simple terms, they’re saying that 12 million American kids need to go to the doctor. According to …

Yikes! The Devil’s Candy, again! Really, the subject is worthy of attention. Dr. Pretlow once mused: Could this one substance be bringing down our whole society? Why not? There is a school of thought saying lead poisoning from the water pipes brought d …

Childhood Obesity News was looking at how the debate between Big Corn and Big Sugar became a battle of dueling experts, with one side claiming that the human body can’t tell the difference between corn sugar and cane/beet sugar, and a large number of d …

Childhood Obesity News has been reviewing the recent history of the substance formerly known as High Fructose Corn Syrup (fondly abbreviated to HFCS) and now going under a variety of different names. Several years ago, the Corn Refiners Association (CR …

So, we’ve been following the life story of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) over the last couple of years. In the fall of 2011, the activist group PennPIRG revealed that each American was being taxed $7.36 per year to subsidize corn farmers, which is no …