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Other Expenses, Like Shame and Blame

Pat Hartman March 31, 2026 No Comments

We have been discussing the fiscal costs to society (namely, us) of obesity. But what are the psychological costs of shame and blame, and who should bear those costs? Who should be held responsible for the friction — the administrators of a particular school, the parents, the voters, the students, or all or none of them?

Psychology is a tricky subject, because definitions of responsibility and of psychological damage vary from place to place and even within a single community. Furthermore, every related expanse, to whatever degree it originates in the mind, contains the possibility of costing real dollars eventually, especially when a publicity-attracting event like a lawsuit or the firing of an administrator comes along.

When the “shame and blame” bills come due — as they inevitably will — dollars will be demanded, and paid. First in line to empty their wallets are parents, who might pay for “fat camp;” for the services of a mental health professional in person or online; for two entire sets of clothing for a child whose weight fluctuates wildly; for pricey “health foods” in hopes that a change of diet will do the trick; or who entertain the mistaken belief that a child’s away-from-home food consumption can be controlled.

On the public stage

The example might be cited of an obese child soaking up public money in order to try losing weight, and what a disgrace it is, because the funds could have been used instead for some other child who is fighting a serious infection. How unacceptable it would be for one to suffer because limited resources are being used for the other! A crudely unsympathetic adult might wonder why a kid who got fat by greedily eating everything he could get their hands on should receive help, to the detriment of a poor, innocent child who suffers an illness that she or he was not responsible for contracting.

Is that fair? Aren’t the wrong sort of people depleting public resources that more rightfully belong to the more deserving? (Apologies to the reader, but some folks do see it this way.) But to mention that view is an effective segue into the topic of blame and shame, and how much those impulses influence the entire field of obesity in myriad ways.

West Coast discontent

This issue was recently the cause of public censure when a teacher’s actions were investigated because of exam questions that some critics deemed “inappropriate.”

Lowell High School, part of the San Francisco Unified School District, is known in one context
“one of the highest performing public high schools” in California. Math teacher Tom Chan composed some exam questions that were deemed “inappropriate” because of content that struck critics as being sexist and fat-shaming. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, students were tasked with calculating “[…] how much it would cost to pay for dinner for girls who weigh 120 versus 220 pounds.”

Worse yet, another quiz question was said to be titled “Mr. Chan vs. The Fat Kid (part 2).”
The entire school system has an anonymous system known as “See Something, Say Something,” through which concerned participants can bring questionable actions to the attention of trusted adults.

Judging by its informative website, Lowell High appears to be an outstanding institution. Its language department encompasses eight languages, and the Visual and Performing Arts Department is said to be exceptional. Whopping 27 sports are practiced by 32 teams; 100 clubs and service organizations are active; and the institution boasts programs that specialize in Wellness, Peer Resources, and CSF Tutoring.

Most importantly,

Lowell endeavors to create a just and equitable society where individual responsibilities are clearly defined and personal rights guaranteed. It endorses the concept of an integrated school where cultural and social diversity enrich the lives of all students.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Lowell teacher investigated due to reported ‘inappropriate’ exam questions,” SFGate.com, 03/03/26
Source: “Lowell High School,” sfusd.edu, undated
Image by tanrica/Pixabay

How Childhood Obesity May Be Reshaping the American Dream

Tatyana Meshcheryakova March 27, 2026 No Comments

For generations, the idea of the American Dream has rested on a simple promise: Every child has the opportunity to build a better life than their parents. But emerging research from Rutgers suggests that a growing health crisis of childhood obesity may be quietly undermining that promise in ways that extend far beyond physical well-being.

Childhood obesity has long been associated with increased risks of chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and mental health challenges. Now, a new study published in the Journal of Population Economics reveals that its impact may also stretch into lifetime earnings and financial mobility.

According to the research, children who experience obesity are significantly less likely to climb the economic ladder as adults. In fact, their income ranking can fall about 20 percentile points below that of their parents, compared to peers who maintained a healthy weight in childhood.

As study co-author Dr. Yanhong Jin explains,

Childhood obesity isn’t just a health crisis — it is an economic mobility crisis.

The study draws on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a large-scale, long-running dataset that has tracked more than 20,000 Americans from adolescence into adulthood over several decades. This rich dataset allowed researchers to examine not only health outcomes, but also education, income, and even genetic factors tied to body weight.

By incorporating genetic data, the researchers were able to isolate the effects of obesity itself, separate from influences such as family income or neighborhood environment. The findings were striking: Even when controlling for these factors, childhood obesity remained strongly linked to lower economic mobility.

The study highlights several key reasons why children with obesity may face economic disadvantages later in life. One is lower educational attainment. Children with obesity may encounter barriers in school, from absenteeism to social stigma, which can impact academic success.

Then there are ongoing health challenges. Chronic health conditions can limit productivity, career choices, and long-term earning potential. Also, think about the workplace disadvantages. Adults who were obese as children reported higher levels of job discrimination and were more likely to end up in lower-paying occupations.

Together, these factors create a compounding effect that can make it harder to achieve upward mobility.

Where you grow up also matters. The research also found that individuals who experienced childhood obesity were less likely to live in economically thriving neighborhoods as adults. They were more likely to reside in areas with lower average incomes and higher poverty rates, further limiting access to opportunity.

Interestingly, the economic impact of childhood obesity was not evenly distributed. Girls experienced a larger economic penalty than boys. Not surprisingly, children from low-income families were more affected. And those raised in the South and Midwest faced stronger long-term impacts. These disparities suggest that childhood obesity may amplify existing inequalities, making it even harder for vulnerable populations to break cycles of poverty.

Traditionally, efforts to address obesity have focused on treatment, helping people lose weight after the condition develops. But this research points to the importance of early prevention.

Intervening during childhood — before obesity takes hold — could yield benefits that go far beyond improved health. It may also enhance educational outcomes, expand career opportunities, and increase the likelihood of upward mobility.

As co-author Man Zhang notes, tackling childhood obesity isn’t just about reducing healthcare costs. It’s about investing in the future economic potential of the next generation.

This study challenges us to think differently about childhood obesity. It is not only a medical issue or a lifestyle concern — it is also a social and economic one.

As science writer and researcher Sanjana Gajbhiye writes for Earth.com,

Preventing obesity early can improve both health and future opportunities. It can support better education, stronger careers, and higher income levels.

Protecting the promise of the American Dream may require expanding how we view public health challenges and recognizing that the well-being of children today is deeply connected to the economic vitality of tomorrow.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Childhood Obesity Makes It Harder to Climb the Economic Ladder, Study Finds,” Rutgers.edu, 3/18/26
Source: “Childhood obesity may lower a child’s chances of moving up in life,” Earth.com, 3/19/26
Image by Towfiqu barbhuiya/Pexels

Additives and Advertising

Pat Hartman March 26, 2026 No Comments

In discussing the causes of childhood obesity, we can start with the alphabet, and two very similar words that begin (in English, anyway) with the same sound: additives and advertising. They are fatefully connected. Probably, many substances that get into food ought to be outright banned — in which case, those particular products would either be discontinued or have their recipes changed, so in either case we would not need to worry about how they were advertised.

Similarly, if the advertising of any food containing suspicious additives were to be forbidden, that would also help a lot. However, for better or worse, we live in a society proud of its freedom, although good arguments might be made to the effect that maybe, in some cases, freedom is worse than the alternative.

Over the years, at least 1,000 chemicals found in food (or in the packaging that embraces it) have been identified as obesity-inducing, while in very few of those cases has the worrisome substance been banned from inclusion. Because obesity is notoriously multi-factorial, once these substances get inside the body it is not easy to definitively pin down which chemical does what. But there are some very shady suspects.

Salt of the earth

“The salt of the earth” has, since Biblical times, been a colloquial description for someone who is trustworthy, honest, genuine, and reliable. To be identified as having saline qualities is a great compliment. But then, during a few recent decades, things changed, and salt itself came under suspicion for apparently somehow aiding and abetting obesity.

Then, about a decade ago, a series of experiments on the body chemistry of a group of Russian cosmonauts took place, which threw all the previously assumed knowledge about salt into doubt. The more diligently the scientists investigated, the more their comfortable certainty evaporated. One of them, Dr. Melanie Hoenig, told The New York Times,

I suspect that when it comes to the adverse effects of high sodium intake, we are right for all the wrong reasons.

Around that time, a page no longer available quoted Associate Consumer Analyst Ryan Whittaker as saying,

Emulating the UK’s salt reduction program is a strong strategy. Without being overly prescriptive, this strategy brought manufacturers, action groups, and other interested parties together and achieved an 11% reduction in salt consumption. Achieving similar results with sugar, without complex legislation, would be a success for both public health bodies and the food and drink industry.

So, that would be good news — if indeed it turns out that salt reduction actually is a factor in obesity prevention. A very current article aimed at the average weight-conscious American presents an overview of current thinking on the subject, as expressed by Lauren Manaker, M.S. The author says,

While eating salt doesn’t directly cause weight gain in the form of body fat, there is evidence to suggest that consuming it in excess may not be best if you are focused on weight management.

If people were taking their water straight, that would be one thing. But the main contemporary problem is the very strong tendency, especially among the young, to drink sugar-sweetened beverages. The salty food leads directly to the sugary drinks, and oops, somebody just chugged a few hundred thirst-slaking calories. A bit further down the road, there are knock-on effects:

Ultra-processed foods and meats are linked to higher levels of inflammation, and inflammation is associated with weight gain.

As always, we are urged to bear in mind that sodium is necessary for health. But it causes fluid retention, which is not fat per se, but which does add bulk to the figure. Also, its link with ultra-processed foods is regarded with great suspicion.

The recommended fix is home cooking, where the consumer retains at least a semblance of control over the proceedings. Concerning the quest for flavor, the most highly recommended suggestion is to explore the vast availability of genuine herbs. Of course, when buying groceries or eating in restaurants and other venues, be informed about the meaning and consequences of eating ultra-processed foods, and remain vigilant.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Why Everything We Know About Salt May Be Wrong,” NYTimes.com, 05/08/17
Source: “Does Salt Make You Gain Weight?,” EatingWell.com, 03/10/26
Image by JUTUBE/Pixabay

Cost Covers a Lot of Territory

Pat Hartman March 24, 2026 No Comments

Aside from prices that everyone ultimately shares, like super-size airplane seats (or better yet, heavy-duty hospital beds), other obesity-related costs are apt to be distributed amongst various members of society. Some of the people who pay in one way or another are teachers; some are medical professionals, others are parents, and many are children.

Often, the expense borne by the public due to the existence of obesity is a formal tax, of the sort that buys scales for schools. On other occasions, there seems to be an informal, unlegislated sort of a tax, which nevertheless involves expense and hassle.

At the edge of awareness

What could be called the obesity tax shows up in many guises. It needs to be further explored, starting with some of the ways by which the price of obesity is collected from members of the public on a depressingly regular basis. We probably all do need to be reminded, now and then, that there are other options besides eternally paying.

Obesity has been allowed to take over and affect every American indirectly, even if the individuals themselves are not overweight. But fate does not have to land this way, nor does changing the general consciousness need to be cruel or divisive.

There is no need for society to be sucked down into the quicksand of cruelty and blame. There are ways up, and ways out; and just to see this clearly, and acknowledge the truth of it, is a dynamic starting move.

The dark side

Society has accepted that people with reduced mobility need allowances made for them, like the occasional wheelchair ramp, and on a normal day, it’s no big deal. The fate of an obese person is slightly different. Some fellow humans apparently simply cannot help feeling insulted by the existence of the overweight. From their point of view, it appears that obese people know good and well how offensive their corpulence is, and savor their awareness of being so annoying.

Even without access to overweight people’s confidential medical records, many folks on this continent still find it very easy to assume that some of our fellow Americans are using their large frames to express hostility. Their bulk is a weapon they purposely acquired and enjoy brandishing in a way that implies peremptory hostility toward society.

Just kidding!

Of course none of that is true. But some folks act as if it were a proven, immutable, and universally accepted fact that fat is not just uncomfortable and inconvenient and unattractive, but actually a subcategory of evil itself, which must be fought vigorously and without compassion.

Childhood Obesity News has explored a number of ways, in addition to physical and psychological tolls, in which the public pays the price of obesity. But why such incessant harping on crass old dollars? Shouldn’t this be a more elevated conversation?

No, not entirely, not exclusively, and here is why: Because everything that costs parents money has the indirect consequence of depriving their children of some other thing they could have had instead. New shoes, a professional clown at the birthday party, dental braces, a pet, a trip to Disney World, an adequate college fund. It’s even the difference between a summer at fat camp or at music camp. Which one is a child going to feel better about admitting to, come autumn?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by geralt/Pixabay

The D-Word Makes Itself Felt

Pat Hartman March 19, 2026 No Comments

The previous post, “The D-Word Makes an Appearance,” introduced Kevin Hall, one of the professionals questioned by Dhruv Khullar in pursuit of the meaning and significance of hyper-processing as it relates to food. Hall, an expert from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was principal investigator for the study about which Dr. Khullar wrote The NewYorker piece, “Why Is the American Diet So Deadly?” The word “deadly” in that title is, of course, what brought some unfavorable attention from the industry to its author. More aspects of that piece of journalism are discussed below.

At a conference in 2015, Hall ran into some Brazilian nutritionists who were very accusatory about the excessive processing of food. However, he found the “processing = bad” theory so unlikely that it would need to be vigorously investigated and thoroughly discredited. Just then, the NIH added a new facility, a “metabolic ward” designed to focus on the study of diet and exercise, with Hall as the administrator.

Twenty participants were recruited to spend a month as guinea pigs, eating exactly what was on offer, all the while under close observation that aimed to track every calorie that went in and every calorie that came out. They spent two weeks ingesting minimally processed foods, then two weeks with maximally processed fare.

That took a turn

Eventually, a surprised Kevin Hall “ended up refuting his own hypothesis.” Against all odds, these experiments made a believer of him because, as it turned out…

When participants were on the ultra-processed diet, they ate five hundred calories more per day and put on an average of two pounds. They ate meals faster; their bodies secreted more insulin; their blood contained more glucose.

Conversely, unexpectedly, and with a different sort of food, a different sort of consequence occurred:

When participants were on the minimally processed diet, they lost about two pounds. Researchers observed a rise in levels of an appetite-suppressing hormone and a decline in one that makes us feel hungry.

So, no need for a doctor’s prescription or a pharmacy. Expressed in a rather flippant, pop-culture manner, just by eating “these” foods instead of “those” foods, people can internally manufacture their own diet pills. The fact was revealed: If weight loss is the goal, ultra-processed foods are bad, and minimally processed foods are good. It was just that, as yet, no one knew why. (The illustration on this page is of one sort, cravenly trying to pass as the other sort.)

Worse and worse

Meanwhile, the “obesity epidemic” was estimated to contribute to almost three million deaths every year, and the simple ability to enumerate calories could still not account for it. Another nutritionist, Dariush Mozaffarian, said of the new discovery, “It’s the biggest change to human biology in modern history. But we still don’t have a good handle on why.”

Dr. Khullar then consulted with microbiome researcher Katherine Maki, who is absorbed by such questions as why a basically helpful bacterium that has always been a good tenant of the microbiome suddenly decides to eat the linings of our intestines. Also, why are our innards so particularly vulnerable to, and easily damaged by, artificial sugar substitutes?

One of the big arguments against highly processed edibles is that the taste receptors become desensitized and worn out, so we are trapped in futility, “chasing the dragon,” trying to grab the intense sensations we crave, but can’t recapture. Practical experience should teach us that doing the thing less often would probably make it seem more delicious and memorable each time, but it doesn’t work that way. We are pretty good at remembering basic concepts that we like, and forgetting other ones.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Why Is the American Diet So Deadly?”, Archive.is, 01/06/25
Image by MabelAmber/Pixabay

Pediatric Health Coaching Could Transform Prevention

Tatyana Meshcheryakova March 18, 2026 No Comments

Despite decades of research on prevention and treatment, many families still receive only brief advice about nutrition and exercise during routine pediatric visits. While doctors understand what interventions can help, the healthcare system often lacks the structure and resources needed to support families through meaningful, long-term lifestyle changes. A growing group of experts believes that pediatric health coaching could help close this gap, offering continuous support to children and their families while strengthening the healthcare workforce.

Recent research has also revealed troubling trends in pediatric diabetes. An analysis of children enrolled in public insurance programs found that diabetes prevalence rose steadily between 2016 and 2021. Even more concerning was the sharp increase in cases of type 2 diabetes, a condition once considered almost exclusively an adult disease.

These findings are significant because public programs such as Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program insure nearly half of the country’s children. Health trends in these populations often reflect broader national patterns. Although physicians and pediatric specialists understand how lifestyle habits affect long-term health, clinical visits rarely provide enough time to address the complex factors influencing a child’s behavior.

Typical pediatric appointments last about 15 minutes. In that short window, clinicians must evaluate growth, address medical concerns, discuss vaccinations, and offer general health advice. Conversations about diet, physical activity, sleep patterns, stress, and family dynamics are often limited.

As a result, families may leave appointments with recommendations such as “eat healthier” or “exercise more,” but without the ongoing guidance needed to implement those changes. This creates what researchers call an implementation gap — a disconnect between medical knowledge and real-world behavior change.

Healthy lifestyle changes are rarely as simple as they sound. Daily habits are shaped by a wide range of social, environmental, and emotional factors.

Families may struggle with busy schedules and limited time for home-cooked meals, financial stress, limited access to healthy foods, school environments that restrict physical activity, cultural traditions around food, emotional relationships with eating, and more.

As Dr. Arielle Levi explains, behavior change requires addressing more than just diet or exercise:

Health coaching goes deeper than simply encouraging behavior change. We’re looking at mindset, family dynamics, and the stories families carry about health. When we work with children, we’re really coaching the entire family.

Addressing these factors requires time, trust, and consistent communication, resources that traditional clinical settings often lack. Pediatric health coaching focuses on helping families create sustainable lifestyle habits through structured, ongoing support. Rather than simply instructing patients what to do, coaches work collaboratively with families to identify achievable goals and develop personalized strategies for reaching them.

Key components of health coaching often include motivational interviewing to explore readiness for change, family-centered goal setting that involves parents and caregivers, habit-building strategies that focus on small, sustainable steps, regular check-ins between clinical appointments, and coordination with physicians and care teams.

The goal is to empower families to take ownership of their health decisions while maintaining accountability and encouragement along the way.

In an interview with The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC), Dr. Thea Runyan, DrPH, MPH, NBC-HWC, and cofounder and CEO of the Pediatric Health Coach Academy, emphasizes that these programs already have strong evidence behind them:

We know intensive lifestyle behavior change works. It’s recommended by national clinical guidelines, yet many families can’t access these programs because they aren’t covered by insurance.

One of the biggest barriers to implementing health coaching is the lack of reimbursement. Although intensive behavioral programs are recommended by organizations such as the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and the American Academy of Pediatrics, many insurance plans do not cover coaching services.

This leaves a major gap in care. Dr. Runyan notes:

The services we’re promoting — including one-on-one health coaching — often aren’t covered. That creates a huge access gap for families who could benefit from sustained behavioral support.

Expanding the pediatric health coaching workforce could help fill this void. Trained coaches could support families between clinical visits, helping them implement lifestyle changes that physicians simply do not have time to manage.

Health coaching may also help address disparities in child health outcomes. By working closely with families over time, coaches can identify barriers that clinicians may not see during short office visits. These might include transportation issues, financial constraints, limited access to healthy foods, or high levels of household stress.

Because coaching emphasizes collaboration and cultural understanding, it can help families develop solutions that work within their specific circumstances. This personalized approach may be particularly valuable for underserved communities where rates of obesity and metabolic disease are often higher.

New medications for obesity and diabetes, particularly drugs known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, have attracted significant attention in recent years. While these treatments can be effective for some patients, experts caution that medication alone cannot solve the broader childhood obesity crisis.

Lifestyle habits, environmental factors, and family dynamics still play a critical role in long-term health outcomes. Without consistent behavioral support, even effective medications may fail to produce lasting results. Health coaching could serve as a complementary strategy, helping families maintain healthier habits that reinforce medical treatments.

Dr. Levi highlights the importance of engaging children in ways that feel motivating and positive:

When health coaches are properly trained, kids genuinely look forward to meeting with them. That engagement is incredibly powerful because meaningful change happens when children actually want to participate.

The steady rise in childhood obesity and pediatric diabetes signals that traditional approaches may no longer be enough. While medical research continues to advance, the challenge of translating knowledge into everyday behavior remains one of the biggest barriers to improving child health.

Ultimately, preventing chronic disease may require more than clinical expertise — it may require reimagining how healthcare supports families in their daily lives.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “How Health Coaching Could Help Close the Behavior-Change Gap in Pediatric Obesity,” AJMC, 3/10/26
Source: “White Paper: A Workforce Strategy for Pediatric Obesity and Chronic Disease Prevention,” Pediatric Health Coaching, undated.
Image by cottonbro studio/Pexels

The D-Word Makes an Appearance

Pat Hartman March 17, 2026 No Comments

Check out that headline: “Why Is the American Diet So Deadly?” The adjective isn’t “detrimental” or even “dangerous,” but a much more loaded d-word: deadly. Who wrote this thing, anyway? Some show-offy apprentice reporter who thinks that it’s cool to shock the reader? But wait, the “deck” or subhead injects an element of intrigue:

A scientist tried to discredit the theory that ultra-processed foods are killing us. Instead, he overturned his own understanding of obesity.

Of course, no one here suggests that anyone who writes about any topic under the sun must be a professional in that field. Still, it is reassuring that this author possesses credentials up to here. Dhruv Khullar is a practicing physician trained at the Yale School of Medicine and Massachusetts General Hospital, and also holds a master’s degree in public policy, and serves as an associate professor, and a director, and an associate director, and a fellow, and a journalist, all with different institutions.

So, what’s the bad news?

The bad news is contained within a prodigious magazine article, with a word count of 6,393 and a 46-minute listening time. The question: Why does the American diet cause people “to gain weight and develop chronic diseases at such staggering rates?” The author interviewed a man who was taking part in a month-long program designed to shed light on that topic. In order to preserve the strict routine that accounted for every morsel of food taken in, and for each and every unit of expended energy, no patient enrolled in the study was allowed to leave the premises unsupervised.

Visiting him there, Dr. Khullar observed the strict routine that recorded not only those activities but many other measurable factors. Even when the patient had a meal, his visitor had to leave the room, because being observed with the food would influence a person’s behavior, and this experiment was tight, down to the last calorie.

At this point in time, America had pretty much gotten used to the idea that sugar-filled beverages and saturated fats were at the root of the country’s obesity trend. However, the principal investigator of this National Institutes of Health study, Kevin Hall, had another villain in mind, and its name was ultra-processed food. Rather than just sugar and fat, chemical modifications and industrial techniques were beginning to look like the root of the problem.

The author consequently interviewed Hall about the work that he and others had been doing to verify their suspicions:

In recent years, dozens of studies have linked ultra-processed fare to health problems such as high blood pressure and heart attacks, and also to some problems that one might not expect: cancer, anxiety, dementia, early death.

There was even an inexplicable difference between the sexes. Women who consumed the highest amounts of ultra-processed foods had a much greater likelihood of suffering from depression, while men who overindulged in that stuff developed a noticeably increased amount of colon cancer.

Investigating the investigators

Dr. Khullar was even allowed to visit the institution’s kitchen, where cooks followed meticulous instructions designed to isolate the effect of processing. Like an Olympic race that would determine a world championship, cooking time was controlled with a stopwatch.

Consulting research that had been done in many different parts of the world, the visitor learned that it was now considered counterproductive to label individual ingredients, like saturated fat, as the villains. Around 2009, the trend toward laying the blame on processing really took off. Brazilian epidemiologist Carlos Monteiro…

[…] reasoned that something very bad had happened when industrial food systems started churning out cheap, convenient, and tempting foods. He argued that scientists should classify foods by their most unnatural ingredients and by their means of production.

In order to discuss this meaningfully, degrees of processing were delineated. Group 1 means processed minimally or not at all, like eggs and vegetables. Group 2 is the ordinary, traditional stuff that is in everybody’s kitchen: like sugars, oils, butter, and salt. Mix Group 1 with Group 2 ingredients, and you’ve got Group 3 — “processed, but not automatically unhealthy.”

But once we enter the territory where foods are “refined, bleached, hydrogenated, fractionated, or extruded — in other words, when whole foods are broken into components or otherwise chemically modified,” then ultra-processed is the applicable term.

If you can’t make it with equipment and ingredients in your home kitchen, it’s probably ultra-processed.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Why Is the American Diet So Deadly?,” NewYorker.com, 01/06/25
Source: “Dhruv Khullar,” NewYorker.com, undated
Image by Leonardoscish/Pixabay

Study: Reducing Parent Stress May Help Prevent Childhood Obesity

Tatyana Meshcheryakova March 13, 2026 No Comments

Childhood obesity has become a growing concern in the United States and around the world. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), child and teen obesity is at a record high. While experts have long emphasized healthy eating and regular physical activity as key prevention strategies, new research suggests another factor may play a critical role: parent stress.

A recent study published in the journal Pediatrics indicates that helping parents manage stress more effectively could significantly reduce the risk of obesity in young children. Researchers from Yale University found that parental stress may influence children’s eating habits, family routines, and long-term health outcomes more than previously understood.

Rajita Sinha, who led the research team, said:

It’s the third leg of the stool… We already knew that stress can be a big contributor in the development of childhood obesity. The surprise was that when parents handled stress better, their parenting improved, and their young child’s obesity risk went down.

Previous studies have shown that children with overweight parents are more likely to develop obesity themselves, but stress appears to amplify that risk. When parents are overwhelmed or chronically stressed, family habits can shift in ways that affect children’s health.

Common patterns linked to high parental stress include greater reliance on fast food or convenience meals, less consistent family routines, reduced time for physical activity, and lower levels of positive parenting behaviors, such as patience, warmth, and active listening. These factors can shape children’s eating patterns and lifestyle habits at a young age, setting the stage for long-term health outcomes.

Traditional childhood obesity prevention programs typically focus on nutrition education and increasing physical activity. While these strategies are important, they often fail to create lasting change.

The Yale research team wanted to see whether addressing parent stress directly could improve outcomes. To test this idea, researchers conducted a 12-week randomized prevention trial involving 114 parents with children between the ages of two and five who were already overweight or at risk of obesity. The families represented a diverse range of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Parents were assigned to one of two groups (both groups attended weekly sessions lasting up to two hours). The Parenting Mindfully for Health (PMH) program combined mindfulness training, behavioral self-regulation strategies, and guidance on healthy eating and physical activity. The standard health counseling group received education on nutrition and exercise only.

Researchers tracked several factors during the study, including parent stress levels, children’s weight changes, parenting behaviors such as patience, warmth, and communication, and children’s healthy and unhealthy food intake. Children’s weight was also measured three months after the program ended.

The results were striking. Parents who participated in the stress-management program experienced lower stress levels, improved positive parenting behaviors, and healthier food choices for their children. Most importantly, their children showed no significant weight gain three months after the program ended.

In contrast, parents in the standard counseling group did not show improvements in stress or parenting behavior. Their children also experienced significant weight increases, with researchers noting a six-fold higher risk of moving into the overweight or obesity category by the three-month follow-up.

According to Sinha, the combination of mindfulness and self-regulation tools helped parents maintain healthier family habits. She said:

The combination of mindfulness with behavioral self-regulation to manage stress, integrated with healthy nutrition and physical activity, seemed to protect young children from some of the negative effects of stress on weight gain.

The findings highlight how family dynamics and emotional well-being influence childhood health outcomes. Young children rely heavily on their parents to establish daily routines, such as meal planning, grocery shopping, physical activity, and sleep schedules. When parents are under chronic stress — from work, finances, or daily responsibilities — those routines can break down.

The study builds on ongoing work at the Yale Stress Center, an interdisciplinary research group that examines how stress affects physical and mental health.

While the study focused on a structured intervention program, its findings point to several practical strategies families can adopt to support healthier lifestyles:

Make Stress Management a Priority. Simple stress-reduction techniques, such as mindfulness exercises, deep breathing, or short daily breaks, can help parents stay calm and present.
Maintain Consistent Family Routines. Regular meal times, bedtime schedules, and family activities create structure that supports healthy habits.
Focus on Positive Parenting. Warmth, patience, and communication can improve children’s emotional well-being and encourage healthier behavior.
Model Healthy Habits. Children often mirror their parents’ behaviors, including food choices and physical activity levels.
Seek Support When Needed. Parenting can be demanding. Support groups, counseling, or community programs can help families manage stress and build healthier routines.

Looking ahead, future research will examine the long-term impact of stress-management programs like Parenting Mindfully for Health. Larger studies following families over two years are already underway.

If these findings continue to hold, childhood obesity prevention programs may soon expand beyond diet and exercise to include family well-being and stress management, recognizing that a healthy home environment can be just as important as what’s on the dinner plate.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The weight of stress: Helping parents may protect children from obesity,” Yale News, 3/6/26
Source: “Mindfulness Intervention for Parent Stress and Childhood Obesity Risk: A Randomized Trial,” Pediatrics, 3/6/26
Source: “Parents’ stress may be quietly driving childhood obesity, Yale study finds,” ScienceDaily, 3/8/26
Image by Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels

Come At It Sideways

Pat Hartman March 12, 2026 No Comments

In both scientific literature and in mass-market publications and media presentations, there are tons of articles about obesity and young people. This piece by several authors, originally published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, was also placed online by ScienceDirect.com. The full title is “Weight Stigma in Adolescents With Obesity From Low-Income Backgrounds: Qualitative Perspectives From Adolescents and Caregivers.”

It begins by affirming that “Weight stigma is a common experience for adolescents at high weight statuses.” High weight “status” sounds rather impressive, but it only means heavy. Status is a neutral word that simply indicates an individual’s standing in a ranked array. Here, it carries no connotation of being famous, influential, wealthy, etc.

The case is, in fact, exactly the opposite. As society operates today, high weight status coexists with low societal status and low economic status, and quite often with racial minority status. The information was collected from 29 adolescents who had been referred to weight management, and 26 of their caregivers.

The interesting aspect is that the material is derived from a “secondary analysis,” meaning that the subjects were not being directly or intentionally interviewed on the topic of weight stigma. Despite the fact that weight stigma was “not a focus of the interviews,” the young participants nevertheless did make a significant number of remarks incidental to the primary material of the interviews.

Double duty

In other words, two different batches of scientists plumbed the same cache of raw material for two different scholarly investigations, allowing the second group to highlight a situation without even having done the pertinent research on it; thus approaching their topic sideways, or even through the back door. PubMed said,

The present study sought to characterize weight stigma experiences and internalization in adolescents from low-income backgrounds. This was done by reporting on teen’s experiences of weight stigma in daily life and in conversations with health-care professionals, and examining the effect of internalization of this stigma.

So, again, given the broader focus of the primary study, weight stigma was not a concern of the interviews. Science is strict, of course, but as any good detective knows, people who are being questioned will often reveal the most useful information when not talking directly about the “subject at hand.” This collection of interviews turned out to be the perfect illustrative example:

However, almost all participants identified weight stigma and bias as influencing their lives and medical care. Identified themes included the following: (1) difficulty identifying preferences regarding weight-related terminology; (2) commonality of experienced weight stigma; and (3) significant effect of internalized weight bias on adolescent daily living.

In the discussion, the authors characterized the presence of weight stigma as “nearly ubiquitous” amongst the overweight low-income youth of America. Again, these authors emphasized the point: Given that weight stigma was not “a topic within the interview guide,” the discovery of so much of it was “particularly stark.” It was pointed out that attitudes characterized as almost hostile were experienced, “including in health-care settings.”

The participant demographics are described as follows:

65.5% of adolescents identified their gender as female, 34.5% male, and 0% other… 37.9% of adolescent participants identified as Hispanic/Latino, 24.1% identified as Black/African American, 24.1% identified as multiracial, 10.3% identified as non-Hispanic White, and 3.4% identified as Asian.

The authors emphasized the point again, that “nearly all adolescents in the present study identified instances of weight stigma and bias, despite no direct questions regarding this topic.”

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Weight Stigma in Adolescents With Obesity From Low-Income Backgrounds: Qualitative Perspectives From Adolescents and Caregivers,” ScienceDirect.com, May 2025
Source: “Weight Stigma in Adolescents With Obesity From Low-Income Backgrounds: Qualitative Perspectives From Adolescents and Caregivers,” PubMed.com, May 2025
Image by DeeDee51/Pixabay

More Obesity-Associated Dangers and Costs

Pat Hartman March 10, 2026 No Comments

Here is a fact about the great majority of news items that fall under the heading of dangers associated with obesity. By strange coincidence, they also belong in the category of obesity costs. For example, a story last fall was headlined, “Obese Children Face Nearly 5-Fold Higher Risk of Fractures, Study Finds.”

Nobody wants to see children suffer fractures, and everyone knows that the repair of broken bones must be paid for somehow. In the journal Scientific Reports, orthopedic surgeons published an article explaining that childhood obesity will influence the details and nuances of fracture patterns not only in specific cases, but also in relation to the overall risk of injury.

The study subjects included almost 18,000 hospitalized children classified as obese, and for comparison purposes, more than 3,000 healthy children. It comes as no surprise that, among these hefty young patients, leg fractures occur much more frequently than other kinds. But broken arms, as well as fractures in the torso and spine, happen very often, too. The least likely bone damage-causing incident for an obese child would be a head injury.

The overweight children tend to have dyslipidemia, which might be caused by heredity, lifestyle, or a combination of the two factors. Among other effects, it causes elevated cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Then, the news gets worse, because as it turns out, even the pre-born are also at risk. The researchers concluded that…

Proactive weight management and careful clinical assessment could play a vital role in safeguarding children’s musculoskeletal health.

Speaking of births…

Over the years, it has become more and more obvious that Cesarean sections lead to obesity, and vice versa. Once a pregnant obese patient’s weight is known, the medical profession is able to predict with startling accuracy the percentage of likelihood that a C-section will be needed. According to Dr. Melissa Riegel, of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine,

Failed induction of labor (IOL) is a leading indicator for cesarean delivery, and cesarean delivery is 80% more likely in patients with obesity undergoing IOL, than in normal-weight patients.

About these cases, many more details are available, but what it all boils down to is that obese mothers and their infants face unfavorable odds for a trauma-free birth experience, and the phrase “maternal morbidity and mortality” is frequently used. Dr. Riegel summed up the situation for a journalist by saying,

There is a role for translational work to investigate the specific biological changes in patients with obesity that might contribute to an increased risk of cesarean delivery and there is also a role for investigating the effectiveness of different labor induction interventions specifically in patients with obesity.

It is also very obvious that pregnant obese women need “clear counseling” (at the very least), but it is equally evident that, by the time an egg has been fertilized, the opportunity for meaningful behavioral change has pretty much passed. It also goes without saying that every stage and aspect of the pregnancy will rack up bills more substantial than those issued to mothers whose weight is in the healthy range.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Obese Children Face Nearly 5-Fold Higher Risk of Fractures, Study Finds,” MedicalDialogues.in, 08/21/25
Source: “Dyslipidemia,” MerckManuals.com, July 2025
Source: “High Cesarean Rates Persist in Obesity Despite Standardized Protocols,” SMFM.org, 03/15/24
Image by taynaraakemi/Pixabay

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