As with any other subject important to humans, personal testimony carries (excuse the expression) a lot of weight. Today’s peek at social networking includes examples of individual stories meant to hearten and encourage others who have had enough of ob …

We talked about the Internet & American Life Project from Pew Research Center, which found that online social networking has generally good effects on people. Of course, it would not be at all surprising if obese people excelled at electronic commu …

Dr. Pretlow sees two main issues in dealing with the childhood obesity epidemic. To fight it, we need to: 1) Get obese kids unaddicted to highly palatable foods; and 2) Prevent healthy kids from becoming addicted to start with. We have been looking at …

The overall mission of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project is to explore the impact of the Internet on children, families, and communities. Last month, they released the report “Social networking sites and our lives.” The 85- …

A reader who wanted to be anonymous wrote by email: So many doctors and parents are quick to run for that medicine cabinet! My niece is on so many prescriptions, it is startling, to say the least. Gross amount, seriously! All of them for ‘behavior’ pro …

If you are in the United Kingdom, you’re in the midst of the National Childhood Obesity Week (July 4-10), originated by a group called MEND, which stand for “Mind, Exercise, Nutrition… Do it!” Events planned for this year included a new MEND Olympics p …

Back in the hunting-and-gathering days of humankind, the only really delicious things to eat were fruits like berries, and honey. Even those were not available at all times or in all climes. Honey and berries advertise their rewards right up front and …

A meme is like a mental gene, a little packet of information that carries a cultural idea from one mind to another. The “perfect storm” meme illustrates a truth that has been around forever, in an original way that can be adapted to many situations. Bo …

The word “fasting” may call up visions of a strict religious practice or some elaborate health-oriented routine involving a carefully calibrated number of ounces of fresh juice per day. A person might think, “I don’t know anybody who does that.” Maybe …

Entertainment writer Jennifer Graham Kizer composed a splendid history of actress Kirstie Alley’s second career as an obese person: Showtime’s 2005 funny-but-short-lived scripted series, ‘Fat Actress,’ loosely chronicled the Emmy winner’s travails as a …

Actress Kirstie Alley is a wild woman who has freely admitted to an interviewer, “It was the greatest thing in the world getting fat.” But being fat? Not so much. Still, if there is one public figure (besides Oprah Winfrey) whose every ounce of gain an …

We told you. Didn’t we tell you? Now, here is Alicia Chang saying the same thing, a propos of a Harvard University study which appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine. Its title is “Changes in Diet and Lifestyle and Long-Term Weight Gain in Wom …

A while back, we mentioned that Dr. Pretlow’s latest paper was due to be published by Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention. The future has become the present, and the document is now online. (The print version of Volume 19 #4, July …

As we mentioned before, the definitions of compulsive eating, compulsive overeating, and binge eating are a bit slippery, depending on whom you ask. One clue to the problem is the nature of the food in which people tend to overindulge. Zoe Harcombe, wh …

The thing about compulsive overeating is, there are a lot of things about it. It’s a very hefty subject with many fascinating areas of inquiry. For women, the hormones involved in the monthly cycle are implicated as compulsive-eating triggers. But male …

Last time, we looked at the aims of the STOP Obesity Alliance, starting with the encouragement of more physical activity on general principles, because of the overall superiority of fitness over unfitness. The Alliance is in favor of “different approac …

Housed at the School of Public Health and Health Services at George Washington University, a group is looking for innovative and practical ways to end the obesity epidemic. Its purpose statement says, The Strategies to Overcome and Prevent (STOP) Obesi …

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 …

I have always found it strange that the medical profession does not recognize this problem. I would say the majority of my patients are sugar addicts too, although most only become aware of it when they try to stop it. Those are the words of Frank Lipm …

Every now and then, some part of the food industry proves to be head and shoulders above the rest. In the realm of addictiveness, for instance, one of the unquestioned leaders is Starbucks. Back in 2006, The Wall Street Journal reporter Janet Adamy too …

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 kid …

In the food area, the addiction that people most readily admit to is sugar. The easiest way to convince a person that food addiction is real is to challenge them to quit sugar for a month — in all forms, including high fructose corn syrup and artifici …

The magazine Childhood Obesity used to be known as Obesity and Weight Management, until its focus became more defined. It seems to be getting off to a faltering start. After an announced debut date of June 2010, the first issue did not appear until Sep …

The more you look into the number one addictive substance behind childhood obesity, the more people you find who have seemingly devoted their entire lives and careers to the specific mission of warning us about it. Take Nancy Appleton, for instance. He …

One amazing feature of the childhood obesity epidemic is that so many things correlate with it. When that happens, it’s always very tempting to assume a cause-and-effect relationship. Sometimes the relationship exists, other times not. Of course, poor …

Marching down the left-hand side of the homepage at My Addiction, there is a list of nearly 30 possible addictions. Sugar addiction is not lumped in with food addiction or eating disorders. No, sugar addiction is in a category all its own. And if there …

How evil is sugar? Let us count the ways. Or rather, sing along as Gary Taubes counts them. Taubes is an independent investigator in health policy, connected with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is of course deeply concerned with the obesity …

We are looking at the basic components of the controversy over taxing soda pop. Last time, we talked about why sugar-sweetened drinks, or SSDs, are particularly being singled out as childhood obesity villains, and how different jurisdictions have handl …

Every time the idea of a tax on soda pop is mentioned, the debate grows lively and centers around some basic issues: Why pick on soda? Will people stand for it? Will food corporations put up with it? Has a soda tax actually been shown to reduce childho …

It has been a bad year for infant cereal. On the last day of 2010, Eryn Brown of the Los Angeles Times reported that a good time to start worrying about a baby’s obesity potential is about nine months. And then, on February 14, Childhood Obesity News g …