Childhood Obesity News has been talking about what some call physical literacy, especially as it applies to school curricula. This is from researchers at the Georgia Health Sciences University, by way of ScienceDaily. The team wanted to look at a batch …

Physical education, recess with opportunities for activity — does any of it help? Does all this motion do any good at all? Does letting or making children play outside, or inside, make a difference to childhood obesity? Many authorities say yes, accor …

When the Walt Disney Company promised to do better in the matter of curbing its advertising of minimally nutritious foodstuffs to children, in order to help alleviate the childhood obesity epidemic, big questions came up. What will the other mega-corpo …

Childhood Obesity News was looking at the Walt Disney Company’s decision to change its advertising habits and start rating food for nutritional sufficiency. Is the company embracing innovation, or just bowing to the inevitable? Some say that within two …

Last time, Childhood Obesity News discussed a Canadian publication called Developing Physical Literacy (a downloadable PDF file) which carries very specific recommendations. It promotes the idea that, just as there is an optimum age for a child to soak …

A typical headline reads, “Despite Obesity Concerns, Gym Classes Are Cut.” And there are plenty more like it. Dr. Pretlow would like schools to require Physical Education classes, and this is a perfectly logical position, even if exercise is not ranked …

Childhood Obesity News is looking at the idea of kids biking to school, and specifically at incidents in Michigan, where 64 high school seniors were harshly treated (before the judgment was reversed) and New York, where one boy’s insistence on riding h …

Bicycles, students, and the routes to and from school — those are the three intersecting topics important to anyone who sees increased exercise as a good thing. Whether or not a person is convinced that exercise is the cure for the childhood obesity e …

There is a person in charge of comparing the obesity rates of Florida with Minnesota, and so on. It’s Captain Heidi Blanck, Ph.D., who works for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — specifically, for the Division of Nutrition, Physic …

Childhood Obesity News and about a million other websites have rung the alarm bells over and over about the causative relationships between obesity in the child’s early life and the astonishing number of maladies that start to kick in sooner or later, …

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. That old saying is usually attributed to Mark Twain, but a zealous researcher finds that the man who said it was Charles Dudley Warner. The point is, it often seems like “Everybody w …

We were talking about relationships between kids, their parents, and the people designated to monitor children’s health. There are certain things that should be known by every professional whose practice concerns childhood obesity — and whose does not …

This news is brand new! Only a few days ago (May 17), ChangeLab Solutions became the new name of the national nonprofit organization formerly known as the Public Health Law & Policy. Either way, childhood obesity is a major concern. By the old name …

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 n …

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 th …

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 …

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 eff …

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 photograp …

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 fracti …

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, …

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 app …

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 bec …

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 p …

In the struggle against childhood obesity, listening to kids and paying attention to what they say is tremendously important. Dr. Pretlow has learned this from years of watching the results come in to the Weigh2Rock website, which was created primarily …

Spiegel reporter Catherine Cheney interviewed Carolyn Banfalvi, who guides tourists around Hungary on gourmet tours. This expert, in a position to know exactly what the local diet consists of, is quoted as saying: Hungarians are really into desserts… …

When British chef Jamie Oliver came over to America to spend several years as an ambassador for better eating, he brought along high hopes of saving lives in his own, kitchen-based way, and found, not surprisingly, that this is one of the unhealthiest …

Really, it’s a situation that a being from another planet might have trouble wrapping its head around, if it had a head. On Earth, 15% of the humans exist in a state of hunger, while 20% are overweight. Conceptually, it looks a bit like the sculpture s …

What’s the difference between a craving and a temptation? A craving is self-generated. It’s intrinsic. It comes from within. You’re sitting around, minding your own business, and suddenly realize you want something sweet or crunchy, or salty. So you go …

Here’s a really interesting list, titled “25 Facts You Should Share for School Lunch Week,” and although School Lunch Week was in October, there is no point in waiting until next October to become informed about these matters. Of course, consulting the …

Childhood Obesity News has been talking about holiday problems, including the superabundance of food in many households. A mom/hostess might fix lots of healthy snacks, but a bachelor uncle will probably stop off at the Chocolate-Covered Bacon Shack fo …