Pamela Peeke, M.D., is one of America’s few physicians who have completed training in nutrition science. She sees life as a journey, and her practice is a way of supporting people in the transformations they experience and cause along that journey. Pee …

In 2006, a feature film called Fat Girls was released. The story takes place in Texas, one of the worst states in America for a gay teen, especially a boy who aspires to the Broadway stage. Rodney, the main character, is played by a 20-year-old Ash Chr …

Our guest columnist today is President Barack Obama… Just kidding. Actually, what we have here is a quotation from the Presidential Proclamation that was issued on the first day of this month, to announce the first National Childhood Obesity Awarenes …

Usually we have no sympathy to spare for the fast food industry, but it seems like even when it tries to do better, things don’t work out somehow. Thanks, Yunji de Nies and Claudia Acosta of ABC News, for reporting on this. When Yum Brands introduced g …

Dr. Thomas A. Buchanan is in favor of the “minimally invasive weight-loss surgery” as the solution to the childhood obesity epidemic, and he has said as much in the Obesity journal. Reacting against his opinion, Katherine Gustafson says, Wow, now I thi …

Sophia Ayala Gettys, who has appeared on the Food Network’s Worst Cooks series, is a self-identified food addict, who talks about how food had brought her family together, and had always provided happiness and comfort on demand. It had also made Gettys …

Health columnist Melinda Beck writes for the The Wall Street Journal, and she had also formerly edited that publication’s Marketplace section. Recently, she looked into the technology of fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scanning, and how it …

Camille Noe Pagan specializes in writing about health and nutrition, and also likes to bake, so it’s no surprise that she took an interest in a study conducted by McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School on the topic of eating disorders. Pagan talked …

It’s a lens, a filter, a point of view, a set of new eyes, a new set of mind. It’s the psychological food-dependence-addiction lens. Whatever you like to call it, it is very much needed. So many children and teenagers are drowning in fat, and they’re d …

In “What is MI?,” Stephen Rollnick, Ph.D., and William R. Miller, Ph.D., talk about the spirit of motivational interviewing, which tends to downplay formal technique. The authors summarize it in seven key points, which are also briefly summed up here, …

Journalist Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent for the Telegraph, has been talking with some Israeli research scientists who believe they have found an “anxiety gene” in the course of research done at the Weizmann Institute. It appears that this gen …

As we have noted before, not every MD in history has recoiled from the food addiction paradigm. A few shining lights have gone on record, and risked being thought of as cranks, or worse. Sobriety coach Cynthia Perkins is the author of Get Sober Stay So …

This really should come as no surprise to anyone, but now it’s official: Stressed out teens are more likely to be overweight or obese, especially if they live with a mom who also feels frazzled… Fathers figure in this psychological dynamic, too, in a b …

Here’s an interesting and disturbing fact. When The Obesity Society sent out word to its members to line up speakers for its annual scientific meeting in October, abstracts were requested in four tracks or categories: Molecular Mechanisms of Obesity, N …

You’ve had your day — and you’re no longer welcome here! Three cheers for Corporate Accountability International (CAI) whose “Retire Ronald” campaign is going after this character just like they went after Joe Camel, and, in that instance, had won. CA …

Dr. Davis Liu is a family physician with the Permanente Medical Group and the author of Stay Healthy, Live Longer, Spend Wisely, which is about making intelligent choices in the healthcare system of America as we currently know it. In the piece we’re l …

Fast food and hospitals are the two concepts that should not be found together in the same sentence. And yet, their relationship grows cozier all the time. It was with some dismay that Dr. Pretlow recently noticed a TV commercial for the Blizzard Child …

Did you know that, in the United States, one out of three school districts offers its students items from a fast-food chain? It says so in a CNBC special report called “One Nation, Overweight” and compiled by Scott Wapner. The most common is a certain …

In “Behind the Shady World of Marketing Junk Food to Children,” Jill Richardson reveals that one out of every three visits to fast food eateries is the direct result of parents being nagged beyond endurance. Apparently, that’s all part of the master pl …

HealthDay reporter Steven Reinberg reminds us that one thing parents can do about childhood obesity is set boundaries for watching TV. He interviewed Susan A. Carlson, an epidemiologist at the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health P …

Jeanna Bryner, managing editor at LiveScience, interviewed Sarah Gable, a researcher at the University of Missouri, about the emotional consequences of childhood obesity: low self-esteem from being teased or bullied, depression, anxiety, and loneliness …

Here’s an irresistible invitation from Mike Adams, a fervent supporter of the documentary film All Jacked Up: Your act of watching this film is, all by itself, an act of passionate protest against the corporations that would love nothing more than to t …

Today’s source article, “Statement on Junk Food Marketing to Children,” was published in 2004. “That isn’t news,” one might say — and one would be mistaken. Every charge it makes about the childhood obesity epidemic still holds true, so what does that …

We’ve been going on and on about the difficulty of introducing the concept of food addiction. And it is in many ways an uphill push, but not a hopeless one. Today, we salute some people who have opened their minds enough to look through the psychologic …

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 …

Once the food addiction paradigm has been introduced, some conclusions follow, whether fair or not is yet to be decided. One conclusion is that parents who leave a child’s food addiction untreated, to the point of morbid obesity, are just as culpable a …

Child obesity expert Dr. Joanna Dolgoff, recently writing for The Huffington Post, provided a pediatrician’s view of a controversial legal issue. In South Carolina, the mother of a 555-pound teenager was slammed with a criminal neglect charge. Her son …

Why do many parents reject the food addiction paradigm? One reason is a plain old denial in the face of irrefutable facts, such as statistics. Of course, it takes a bit of savvy to understand statistics, and, in the interpretation of the Body Mass Inde …

We’ve talked about the question, “What is food?” We’ll be talking about it more, but today the question is, “What is addiction?” The food addiction paradigm is being taken seriously by many, such as the uncredited author of an article titled “Overcome …