One year ago, during Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, the most recent Childhood Obesity Prevention Summit was attended by nearly 300 state and local policy makers, and even some representatives of federal agencies. Other advocates of childhood obesit …

Activist Ralph Nader is still fighting the good fight against the corporate bulldozers that figuratively plow consumers into the ground under tons of misleading media. He blames “the vast fast food and food processing industry and their clever advertis …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking at the work of sociologist Philip N. Cohen, author of “The Family: Diversity, Inequality, and Social Change.” A traditional breadwinner-homemaker family is one where the father has a job and the mother stays home …

Last time, Childhood Obesity News talked about a controversial public service announcement that Dr. Pretlow discussed in an interview. Many people interpreted the PSA as zeroing in on mothers as the root of the childhood obesity problem. For simplicity …

A couple of years back, Childhood Obesity News discussed the Georgia anti-childhood obesity billboards. Created by the Strong4Life program founded by Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, they were criticized as tasteless and too judgmental. So much attent …

Last time, Childhood Obesity News looked at some of the foods available at the grocery store or even the health food store, that give a false impression of their integrity. Or maybe it’s just that we have a mistaken idea of what to expect. Dr. Julie Tw …

There is so much confusion about what is good to eat and what isn’t that it’s really hard to keep up. Many people believe their diets are pristine, while consuming foods that are “wolves in sheep’s clothing” — foods that actually undermine their ques …

Considering how many people fall prey to addiction, and considering how many potentially addictive things are in the world — including food we eat every day — it might seem as if science should know a little more about it by now. But many questions …

Last time, Childhood Obesity News looked at part of the conversation between author Michael Prager and Dr. Christopher Ochner, a researcher in obesity and nutrition. They touched upon many points, but the big takeaway from Dr. Ochner’s studies has to d …

Childhood Obesity News discussed the conversation between Michael Prager, whose field is personal sustainability, and research scientist Dr. Christopher Ochner. There are more issues that deserve attention. Dr. Ochner holds the very pragmatic view that …

Michael Prager, author of Fat Boy Thin Man, carried on a conversation throughout several blog posts with Dr. Christopher Ochner, a research scientist concerned with obesity and nutrition. One of Dr. Ochner’s accomplishments was to become, in 2009, the …

There seems to be no end to the shenanigans of Coca-Cola. Last time, Childhood Obesity News looked at an article written by Rick Docksai for Inside Philanthropy, but did not bring up every interesting facet of it. The title has a bit of an edge — “Gu …

Shouldn’t we be about finished with bashing Coke? You’d think so, but Coca-Cola is such an inviting object on which to focus. It’s the archetypal childhood obesity villain. Central Casting could not have done a better job filling the role of “corporati …

A few years ago, Coca-Cola made a six-figure payment to the American Academy of Family Physicians to underwrite “consumer education content related to beverages and sweeteners.” Some doctors protested and quit the organization. Julie Deardorff defines …

To achieve durable change and sustained weight loss, kids need a lot of buttressing, a lot of outside support, and what’s more, they need the right kind of support. Anything that sounds like nagging will be rebuffed and have the opposite effect from wh …

In the field of sociology, the social environment pretty much includes everything that isn’t nature. In the field of psychology, here is one definition: Social environment of an individual is the culture that he or she was educated and/or lives in, and …

Kellogg World Headquarters in Battle Creek, Mich.Previously, Childhood Obesity News considered the strange split personality of Kellogg. The corporation has donated money and support to a lot of good causes. For instance, FoodCorps (part of AmeriCorps) …

In his examination of the life of novelist and MacArthur Fellow David Foster Wallace, D.T. Max noted, “With the help of researchers, Wallace assembled hundreds of pages of research on boredom, trying to understand it at an almost neurological level.” ” …

The Pleasures of LifeThe website Reddit is a font of crowd-sourced wisdom, where many people pass along the lessons they learned the hard way. In the “fat people stories” sections, the obese refer to themselves by the ruefully humorous term “hamplanet, …

Depression can be caused by interpersonal difficulties, and can in turn can cause further difficulties in getting along with other people. For people prone to overeating, this can result in a vicious cycle where social malaise causes unhealthy eating p …

Richman on a featured restaurant’s wallA new TV show called Man Finds Food was set to premiere last week, but the Travel Channel has postponed it because the would-be host, Adam Richman, is in disgrace. After earning a master’s degree in fine arts from …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking at the school-based intervention program Pathways to Health, which grew out of the risk-behavior reduction program known as PATHS. Pathways to Health is all about sharpening and strengthening Executive Cognitive …

The school-based program called Pathways to Health, which is concerned with obesity prevention, developed out of an earlier program called PATHS that was designed to prevent violence and substance abuse. While they may appear to be very different probl …

Some kids are more sensitive than others and have a lower tolerance for teasing and bullying. This kind of persecution is bad enough when it originates from peers, but when a teacher or a coach says cruel things, many overweight children react by slidi …

Some news stories remain current and relevant for a long time. For instance, one branch of the United Nations is the Food and Agriculture Organisation, whose mission is “to make sure people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active …

Back in 2001, the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota surveyed 234 Girl Scouts and found that almost one-third of them were trying to lose weight. Most of these children were doing sensible things like shunning high-fat foods and eng …

For people who cope by eating the world, different emotional needs bring out different food cravings. Dr. Pretlow says: The book, Life is Hard, Food is Easy, by Linda Spangle, notes that specific types of foods are preferred to ease sadness versus stre …

A couple of years ago, Michael Pollan published a prediction in a piece for The Nation titled “How Change Is Going to Come in the Food System.” He believed that the food movement would be joined by the healthcare industry in taking on such battles as s …

Childhood Obesity News has been reflecting on the two aspects of Kellogg. Although legally they are separate entities, on a meta-level the different parts of Kellogg form a huge mythical being. With one hand, the giant collects money from people who li …

Over at Big Food Inc., “personal responsibility” is a favorite theme. Manufacturers do their best to make snacks and junk food addictive, then turn around and shake their collective finger at the public. They scold us for not accepting enough personal …