The reader will enjoy Dr. Pretlow’s account of his experiences at the 2009 ECOG  scientific meeting, where he conducted a plenary session and introduced the idea that the childhood obesity epidemic is caused by emotionally driven comfort eating, which …

Fat-shaming is trying to make someone feel guilty and “less than” because of their weight. It can include many implications and shades of meaning, like “Aren’t you ashamed to have health conditions that will cost the taxpayers a fortune?” and “How dare …

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 …

We looked yesterday at the difficulties faced by the editors of the forthcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM-5, as explained by Gary Greenberg, who also talks about the currently favored method of considering an array of symptoms. Until a mor …

We’ll get to the obesity relevance in a minute, but meanwhile, here is an interesting detail about the upcoming revised edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The Roman numerals are being dropped in favor of Arabic number …

Childhood Obesity Science Conflicts of Interest If a tobacco company were to fund an anti-smoking scientific journal, most people would point out the glaring conflict of interest. Yet, a new peer-reviewed, scientific journal, Childhood Obesity (Mary An …

Sarah Palin has been accused of being an addictive substance, in such headlines as (the following links in headlines are ours): “Why is Sarah Palin the crack cocaine addiction of the liberal party?” and “America’s addiction: Sarah Palin,” in which writ …

Glenn Cook is an editorial writer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and when he gets interested in a subject, that subject goes under the microscope for thorough examination. Recently, Cook got to thinking about the reasons for the childhood obesity ep …

Obesity can be bad enough, but obesity in front of millions of people, whose eyes are glued to every ounce you gain, that’s a real recipe for distress. The struggle against food addiction is difficult for anyone. For a woman who is not only a celebrity …

Childhood obesity is a worldwide problem. Not long ago, Stephanie Nebehay reported for Reuters on the latest World Health Organization guidelines. A WHO spokesperson, Timothy Armstrong, is quoted as saying, The rate of increase in the developing world …

Some people in Scotland think that junk food advertising now needs to be completely eliminated from television. Since 2007, such ads have been banned from appearing during children’s programs, but now, […] health campaigners say kids are still suscepti …

HFCS lobby was a sponsor of the Obesity Society 2008 scientific meeting. (Part One of a Two-Part Post)(View Part Two) by Robert A. Pretlow, M.D. Why Does The Obesity Community Reject Addiction? In September 2009, I conducted a plenary session presentat …