Although “7 Worst Supermarket Rip-Offs” was first published by Men’s Health, authors David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding make it clear that they are passing along wisdom found in Eat This, Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide and Cook This, Not That! Wha …

When we are stressed, depressed, lonely, downhearted, or suffering from any other kinds of bad feelings, we often tend to self-medicate with comfort food, in hopes that it will cheer us up. But comfort foods are so often laden with sugar, fat, carbohyd …

A Chance to Heal is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation that originated in the mind of Rachel Silver. As a 17-year-old, Silver needed help to treat her eating disorder, and her position in life was such that money was no object. But not everyone is in suc …

In “Solving the Problem of Childhood Obesity Within a Generation: White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity Report to the President” (available online as a PDF file; link is ours), the section called Chemical Exposures starts on page 17. One of the c …

In a time of limited resources, to look at different independent studies with some kind of system or organizing principle in mind is a very economical use of information. The data is already paid for. It’s even possible that some error might be discove …

In the realm of discourse about childhood obesity, people who think about it at all tend to think about it a lot. People who have opinions about it often have very strong opinions. A whole area of dialogue stems from neither thought nor opinion, but fr …

Grown-ups and kids are different in some ways, and one of them appears to be how they react to atypical antipsychotics. These drugs are also known as second-generation antipsychotics, and they have pretty much replaced first-generation antipsychotics. …

In America, among kids ages four to 17, about 8% are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD.) They have a hard time sitting still, following a train of thought, being regimented, staying quiet, and settling down. And even though …

Marion Nestle wears an awful lot of hats for one head. She’s a professor in the field of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, a job that includes teaching nutrition to doctors and medical students. Molecular biology is only one of her areas of e …

There are disquieting hints everywhere that if we really were honest about discovering the causes of childhood obesity, we might not be happy about the answers. We might wish we had never asked. For example, some people believe our entire culture is wa …

Many live-in addiction treatment centers include food addiction in their agenda, and a place called Shades of Hope, located in Buffalo Gap, Texas, specializes in “eating disorders and co-occurring addictions.” Oprah Winfrey is profiling this center in …

Politically and medically significant, it’s a public health issue and also a very personal and extremely emotional one. There is more to be said about breastfeeding, babies, and childhood obesity, so here are a few interesting items from around the Int …

“Our fitter kids are the envy of the planet.” That statement is quite a brag, a real attention-getter, and the title of a piece by Emma Palmer. Let’s see how they back it up. And who are they, anyway? They are the schools of South West Essex, formerly …

The Guide to Culinary Schools is a clearinghouse of vital information for professionals and students designed to connect people with schools and courses, and vice versa. And it offers some great value-added supplementary material, such as its list of 5 …

We talked about garden-based nutrition education, also known as garden-based learning, or GBL. We made connections between the benefits that kids derive from GBL, and the ways in which children can avoid falling prey to a crippling dependency on hedoni …

We have been looking at some ideas about kids and gardening, schools, and childhood obesity, and the relationships between them. Many people are upset about school lunches, which sometimes involve such undesirable elements as vending machines, fast-foo …

Way back in 1959, almost no one (except its inhabitants) spared a thought for Harlem, the festering black ghetto of New York City. Warren Miller’s novel The Cool World was startlingly different. A 14-year-old gang member gets into serious trouble and i …

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 Busines …

The Let’s Move! program and First Lady Michelle Obama have plenty of ideas about ending childhood obesity, and one of them is the importance of breastfeeding. Yesterday we brought up some of the problems encountered by the FLOTUS (First Lady of the Uni …

We learn from Lynn Sweet’s bio that, “In 1990, she was among the first journalists in the nation to analyze political ads for accuracy.”(That is a useful talent, equal to a talent for analyzing hedonic food ads, which tend to have an elevated baloney c …

Know any “Moms of the Revolution”? Well, you do now: Liz Snyder, who was awarded that title by Kiwi Magazine because of her Full Circle Farm project, which is organic, sustainable, and educational. Also very educational is Collective Roots, a nonprofit …

Any obesity-conscious person will encounter the artificial sweetener dilemma, and anybody who looks into it will probably decide to stay away from the stuff, if at all possible. The trouble is, it’s in more than 6,000 food products, as we mentioned bef …

There are plenty of things parents can stop doing. Obesity is bad enough; a kid doesn’t need nagging too. But today, we’re talking about things that parents can actively do. Aracelly Clouse is a personal fitness trainer in California, who also writes a …

  Childhood obesity is a tough problem, and when parents look for answers, the answers might depend on the attitudinal states of various family members. Maybe you realize that your child has a problem, but he or she refuses to acknowledge this. Or …

Did some little thing ever catch your eye and entice you into a more thorough investigation of a subject? It was just a tiny paragraph in Entertainment Weekly, written by Keith Staskiewicz, about the second volume of memoirs published by actress Valeri …

The Psychological Food Dependence-Addiction Paradigm is a very simple concept. People, yes, even kids, can become addicted to high-calorie, low-nutrient, hedonically engineered substances that masquerade as food. Food can be a drug of abuse, and it’s a …

Many parents have heard about food addiction, just like they have heard of other theories and discoveries in the childhood obesity field. And, for some, there is a compelling reason not to think about the food addiction paradigm as it applies to the li …

We have been thinking about not thinking, specifically about why some parents avoid thinking about childhood obesity in general, and about food addiction in particular. Part of the problem is that even if the latest theories about obesity are correct, …

Yes, we have talked before about why a lot of parents just don’t want to hear about food addiction. But there are so many reasons! Some parents don’t believe that food addiction exists. Some may accept the new paradigm in a general sort of way, and be …

A disturbing aspect of childhood obesity is that, in an attempt to avoid it, children are ingesting large amounts of aspartame (marketed as Equal, NutraSweet, Canderel, Equal-Measure, Spoonful, Benevia, etc.) and other sweeteners that have really bad h …