Low-quality sleep affects organisms like low-quality food. It can keep a creature alive and functioning, but it is not capital-L Life.

With TV, it’s not just the noise or the disturbing subject matter or the commercials for sugar-sweetened beverages and junk food that lead to childhood obesity.

Could sleep-disruptive shifts in light negatively influence eating behavior, and even promote addiction? Some studies point out the link to obesity.

We’ve been discussing how TV noise might affect the sleep of the young, especially small children and first-year college students.

Sleep corrupted by a constant barrage of noise is low-quality sleep, liked to obesity and harmful to both children and adults.

A continued discussion of a weight-related struggle that affects college students, plus how screen use, like a TV in a bedroom, contributes to obesity in kids.

Transitioning from high school and hometown to higher education proves to be traumatic for many. Need we mention the fabled “freshman 15”?

Unlike many other factors suggested as obesity villains, assortative mating has increased rapidly and recently.

Whether because of identical habits or shared microbial populations, married couples come to resemble each other in terms of weight, size, and fitness level.

Celebrity chefs or obesity villains? You decide. Over the years, a number of “niche” obesity causes have been mooted, some of them pretty weird.

Many substances have been suspected of contributing to childhood obesity, and antacid medications are among them. Grilling is also said to be problematic.

Well over 100 substances, practices, and societal conditions have been blamed for contributing to the growth of childhood obesity.

Is there is more to obesity than the traditional calories-in, calories-out paradigm that has become so taken for granted?

Inactivity or overeating? For kids, which is the bigger obesity villain? Research shows that physical activity may not be enough to deal with childhood obesity.

The only point where there is consensus is that overweight adults probably started out as overweight children, so childhood obesity prevention is crucial.

Finding ways to exercise is especially important when many Americans are constrained by circumstances from using the facilities they were accustomed to.

For the benefit of their cardiovascular systems and bone density, children need an hour of movement each day, and most kids don’t have that.

Parents are going crazy, at a time they most need to keep their heads. For some, their circumstances are really rough, and it’s about day-to-day survival.

Take a terrifying pandemic, add in a bunch of people with emotional and psychological problems, and you’ve got present-day reality.

It rarely takes more than one sentence to bring the subject around to obesity’s destructive twin, COVID-19.

The point of all this rumination about a popular TV series, The Mindy Project, is to answer a profound question: Does fat acceptance serve the greater good?

Does the acceptance factor in The Mindy Project promote and encourage fatness, or does it give women permission to accept themselves? The jury is still out.

Having considered Parks and Recreation, where obesity is handled in a light-hearted manner that still conveys a message, let’s look at more media offerings.

The very popular TV comedy Parks and Recreation makes fun of the dysfunctional government and greedy companies responsible for the obesity epidemic.

Add the fact that most of the children who have caught COVID-19 already suffered from a co-morbidity such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or obesity, and the future appears dim.

Coronavirus and obesity have teamed up to become the scourge of humanity, all around the globe. And now that younger people are getting sick too, it’s a mess.

For a while, COVID-19 got away with disguising itself as the type of predator that mainly seemed to prefer older humans. But looking back at how the virus has been treating America’s people, it is obvious that the big, major trend over the past few mon …

The young are very much in the COVID-19 news lately. It’s a race and an economic inequality thing, and also a big risk for people who are overweight or obese.

The American Rescue Plan provides $130 billion to make schools safe, and there’s a concern for children who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.

Anything that increases a child’s feeling of being loved and valued will hold at bay some of the emotional states that can lead to eating disorders and obesity.