Childhood Obesity News mentioned how Australia achieved some success in quelling the smoking habit thanks to “plain packaging” (actually festooned with garish photos of horrible medical problems). The effort has certainly garnered attention, and in the …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at the United Kingdom, where the idea of taxing junk food and sugar-sweetened beverages has been tossed around but has met with little enthusiasm. Other countries also struggle with these issues, including Irela …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at Denmark’s attempt to institute a fat tax, and how its failure affected other countries. The United Kingdom also struggled with the issue. Early in 2013 a movement was afoot to tax soda, pop, sugar-sweetened b …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking back over debates about tax, in recent years, and some of the attempts to implement taxes on soda and junk food to offset the enormous costs of public health care. Around the world, various countries have tried t …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking back at how the anti-tobacco model has influenced the idea of taxing junk food and sugar-sweetened beverages. Alcohol and tobacco are heavily taxed, with the revenues supposedly going to help pay for the medical …

Childhood Obesity News is looking back over the last 5 years, at how different factions in America think about taxation in the context of obesity prevention, and at various efforts that have been made both here and abroad. Probably, by the year 2030, n …

In our last post, Childhood Obesity News took a brief look at a couple of things that went on in the United States in 2011 with regard to taxing junk food and sugar-sweetened beverages. What was happening in Europe at the same time? Catherine Cheney pr …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking back at some of the attempts to curb obesity by making it more expensive, a tactic that seems to have had success with smoking. There are obvious differences between the two behaviors. Nicotine is a substance tha …

In the struggle to reverse the childhood obesity trend, one of the most pervasive tropes about junk food is to “tax it like tobacco.” In 2008, at the National Childhood Obesity Congress, Dr. Pretlow met Steven K. Galson, who was at the time the acting …

The government is supposed to protect us. If people are jumping off a certain bridge, the authorities strengthen the fencing and paint the whole structure a bright color, to discourage suicidal ideation. But when other threats tempt us from the path of …

Following the activities of Coca-Cola can be a fascinating pastime. Even if the company’s antics don’t show up on one’s radar immediately, looking back on the corporation’s woefully misguided application of its expertise is just as much fun. That is, i …

Photographer Zac Zellers says, “Coca-cola discreetly delivers some coke to our school cafeteria in the humblest of ways.” The U.S. government first contributed to the rise of childhood obesity by tinkering with the rules surrounding sugar production an …

Throughout America, states and cities scramble to fund anti-obesity campaigns. Do they work? It all depends, and it is feared that the wrong kind of message can do more harm than good, as well as wasting a lot of money and other resources. Some experts …

From the moment any child is born, the main factor determining that child’s quality of life is the chief caregiver, often the mother. When this works out well, everybody wins. But the planet is full of less-than-perfect parents. Sometimes governments a …

Guess what happened during the busy and distracting month of December? After more than a year of foot-dragging, the United States Senate confirmed a new Surgeon General. Dr. Vivek Murthy had made the mistake of tweeting that guns are a health care issu …

In the summer of 2013, about 30,000 Boy Scouts and leaders attended a 10-day jamboree at the Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve in West Virginia. The jamboree was planned as an “on foot” event (no motor vehicles allowed), and the new venue of …

Childhood Obesity News has been thinking about product liability issues, and has found some very informative reportage from the website Law360 concerning events of last year, when several food companies and the Corn Refiners Association were sued on be …

Despite the failure of the “Cheeseburger Bill” to become federal law, the notion that Big Food is innocent of blame for the obesity epidemic flourished in several states, which have passed their own versions. Had the idea not spontaneously occurred to …

Last time, we learned from mental health counselor William Anderson how the big five American cigarette manufacturers were found guilty of… …racketeering, conspiring to lie to the public about the health dangers and addictive quality of their produ …

Here is an interesting observation from Dr. Pretlow, an insight gleaned from the pilot studies of the W8Loss2Go smartphone app: We initially thought that processed food wasn’t that much of a problem for obese kids, that it was mainly excessive amounts …

King Henry VIII of England Last time, Childhood Obesity News remarked on the proposal made by UK health groups to put the struggle against childhood obesity on something of a military footing. There is always a question of how much strong-arming the po …

Last time, Childhood Obesity News wondered out loud what can be done about the basic problem of childhood obesity, or what at least some researchers have identified as the basic problem — a weak bond between mother and child. The younger the child, t …

What should be on the front of a food package? Ideally, some kind of easy-to-grasp breakdown of the item’s nutritional value. After a prolonged period of consideration, Australia and New Zealand have both decided to use the health star rating (HSR) sys …

Kellogg World Headquarters in Battle Creek, Mich.Previously, Childhood Obesity News considered the strange split personality of Kellogg. The corporation has donated money and support to a lot of good causes. For instance, FoodCorps (part of AmeriCorps) …

A few years ago, European countries tried something that seemed to work for a moment in time, then fell apart. Kellogg was one of the giant companies, along with Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, that made a voluntary pledge to not market unhealthful food prod …

USDA StandardsIn 2012, the journal Pediatrics published the results of a study of the effect of “competitive foods” in schools. Those are snacks and drinks available from vending machines and snack bars, which compete with the meals provided by the sch …

Tom Philpott reported for Mother Jones on how, since the early 1990s, public schools have been selling “pouring rights” to corporations, with Pepsi and Coke being the biggest players. In this arrangement, the company in question buys the exclusive righ …

In many places, there are strong movements to improve school cafeteria meals; to restrict vending machines to healthful items or even ban vending machines altogether; and even to extend the junk food ban to nearby retail establishments. Dr. Pretlow say …

Some news stories remain current and relevant for a long time. For instance, one branch of the United Nations is the Food and Agriculture Organisation, whose mission is “to make sure people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active …

Cheese appears to be addictive because of the casein it contains, and it definitely contains a lot of fat. So why does the government collude with corporations that want to stuff more of it down our throats? In a 2003 article, Dr. Neal Barnard traced s …