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 …

“Conflict of interest” seems to be the phrase of the year as, one after another, relationships are questioned. Should the Funky Junky Candy Corp. be funding a scientific journal about childhood obesity, or enlisting as a sponsor in the government’s ant …

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 …

Not long ago we mentioned Jennifer LaRue Huget, the Washington Post reporter who began to take seriously the notion of food addiction after meeting Michael Prager. This is encouraging, because childhood obesity won’t be stopped until food addiction is …

The psychological food dependence-addiction lens is a new and still somewhat unpopular paradigm, because it has to do with addiction to food as the cause of much obesity. Looking through that lens, we see that while legislative measures are useful, wha …

Here is Kelly Osbourne, looking much different than she used to, on the cover of the February issue of British edition of Cosmopolitan, with an article inside, titled “I was an emotional eater.” Reporter Kara Gause says, [… S]he’s at once Madonna circa …

Yesterday we discussed the difficulty, for parents and health professionals concerned about childhood obesity, in having a positive effect, or making any impact at all, on the production, advertising, or availability of junk food. Call it less-than-opt …

Yes, it’s the Childhood Obesity Perfect Storm… again. What — did you think it was over just because we have reported on it so relentlessly? If only! No, the sad fact is, we’re still in the midst of the tempest. The “perfect storm” is an appropriate fi …

In December, Bruce Horovitz reported on a rather interesting event, the announcement by Frito-Lay that the corporation will start making half of its snacks from all-natural ingredients. (Frito-Lay, incidentally, is part of PepsiCo, so you know what kin …

Can food be addictive in the same way as, for instance, heroin? Many doctors believe that it can. While some people are not very addiction-prone, others are, but are too busy being junkies involving some other substance, and food doesn’t do a thing for …

Sometimes we get information overload fatigue, and we just don’t want to hear about one more thing that’s bad for us. We get tired of hearing bad news and just start filtering it out. Or we pick one bad thing to worry about, and let the other nine go a …

When people are concerned about health, and especially about obesity, and they talk about food labeling, there are a couple of different things they might mean. Fast food restaurants with more than 20 branches now have to give the calorie count on thei …

“Is food addiction real?” This question is posed by Jennifer LaRue Huget in The Washington Post, and it is a question relevant to numerous other journalists, health professionals, educators, bureaucrats, researchers, parents across the nation, and, yes …

At the point in time when only a few municipalities had adopted the idea that restaurants should reveal the calorie counts of their dishes to the customers, a bunch of young people voiced their opinions at Weigh2Rock. This website has published a serie …

Many people believe that at least some obesity (PDF) could be prevented if only we were really aware of everything we ate. Awareness of why we are eating is always helpful, of course. It’s always a good idea to ask ourselves questions like, “Am I reall …

The connection between obesity, junk food, and addiction is becoming more and obvious. Remember last year, when the news came out about the rat studies at the Scripps Research Institute? Remember when we learned that junk food could be as addictive as …

We know that kids in America and all over the world are miserable about their excess body weight. We know that obesity in the young can lead to the early onset of severe medical conditions that used to mainly afflict adults. We know that, for many peop …

In the area of childhood obesity, does genetic research lead to a light at the end of the tunnel, or a dead end? Is the whole genetic thing just a cop-out for people who are in denial about their food addiction? A couple of years ago, Maggie Fox of Reu …

Justin Stoneman recently published an essay titled “America: A Big, Fat, Stupid Nation,” in which he expressed astonishment at what he characterizes as the ridiculous prediction that by the year 2020, three out of four Americans will be overweight or o …

Full disclosure: John Foreyt, Ph.D., wrote the Foreword to Overweight: What Kids Say, and he’s a friend. In fact, so good a friend that in the Acknowledgements section of the book, Dr. Pretlow says, This book wouldn’t have happened were it not for the …

Dr. Pretlow’s December 20 post, “Childhood Obesity Science Conflicts of Interest,” set off an interesting chain of reactions. It expressed concern about the objectivity and impartiality of the new magazine, Childhood Obesity, which is a peer-reviewed s …

Childhood obesity is such a complicated problem that we need to come at it from every possible direction, and chip away at it from any angle that looks promising. Dr. Pretlow has been calling attention to the fact that food addiction is real, and needs …

You know a writer is onto something when a piece she wrote almost two years ago is even more true than on the day it was first published. Georgia Lund, a contributor to the Yahoo! Network, made a few observations about the relationship between the murk …

About three months ago, President Barack Obama made a speech to announce the National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month. He has mentioned the National School Lunch Program that currently helps keep 30 million American kids somewhat properly nourished s …

The more you follow the news about childhood obesity, the more unusual facts you learn. For instance, think of all the fruit and vegetables eaten by the Americans. An awful lot of that farm produce is grown in the “nation’s salad bowl.” Yet the San Joa …