The Gateway Drug: Sugar, Part 2
We left off last time suggesting that maybe it’s time to accept the fact that the widely rumored and much discussed Gateway Drug, spoken of in addiction medicine, is actually sugar. A baby needs to love sugar for survival. Imbibing that liquid, whether from a bottle or a breast, is the one job it has […]
How It Might Be
In Chapter 5 of Overweight: What Kids Say, Dr. Pretlow discusses some conclusions drawn from what is said by obese kids when they talk anonymously amongst themselves. This happens, for instance, on the message boards of the Weigh2Rock website. It seems that young daughters and sons are unable to talk to their parents. (Usually, the […]
Parents as Enablers and Saboteurs, Part 2
The illustration on this page could be read in a couple of ways: one person might see a delicious Mother’s Day treat made specially for Mom. Which is probably what the photographer intended. Someone with a darker imagination — and you can picture this taking place in a psychiatrist’s office — might look at it […]
Parents as Enablers and Saboteurs, Part 1
Parents want to know what to do about childhood obesity. The answers are difficult ones because most of them involve a change in philosophical outlook and/or everyday behavior — a change made by parents, that is. When we parents set out to fix our kids, we often run up against the uncomfortable truth that we […]
More Useful Things That Parents Can Do
In his book Possible Side Effects, Augusten Burroughs shares childhood memories of avoiding all of his mother’s efforts to feed him a healthy diet. Children can be cunning little people, as he proves in the essay called “The Wonder Boy.” Burroughs writes, She’d slip a carton of fresh beans or a head of broccoli into […]
Give Your Child a Baloney Detector
Kids have a natural talent for identifying baloney. They love to compare what parents say on Monday to what they say (or do!) on Tuesday, and if it doesn’t match up, look out! The average child possesses a highly developed critical sense that is constantly on the alert for adult self-contradiction, and especially for adult […]
Yes, Parents Can Make a Difference (Part 2)
A complete list of things that parents can do to avoid childhood obesity would probably contain 7,000,000 items, but fortunately it’s not necessary to know all of them. One thing a parent can do is to be aware of a child’s priorities. A little kid is pretty much hard-wired to value your attention above anything […]
Breastfeeding, Health, and Childhood Obesity
New research comes along every day, and breastfeeding is currently a topic of much concern (we have been exploring some of its angles on this blog). The latest interesting findings come from the Colorado School of Public Health, reported on for BusinessWeek by Robert Preidt. It’s one of those “bad news, good news” scenarios. The […]
A Tale of Two Michelles
It has been a little over a year since the Let’s Move! campaign, initiated by First Lady Michelle Obama, got off the ground. So far, the reviews are mixed. Some critics ignore the fact that childhood obesity is a huge problem, which has gained enormous momentum over a long period of years. Even the best […]
The Childhood Obesity Perfect Storm, Part 4
We have talked before about the “perfect storm” that Dr. Pretlow identifies as the cause of the childhood obesity epidemic. It’s a witch’s brew of at least five elements: the high-tech production of hedonic foods; their availability to kids; the increased stress kids are dealing with; the ubiquitous marketing of comfort foods; and the decreased […]