Childhood Obesity News has discussed the importance of the quality and quantity of sleep, especially for young children and teenagers. One study showed that young teenage boys are much more adversely affected by sleep deprivation than are girls in the …

At UC Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory, a team looked into how sleep deprivation impairs the brain, specifically in regard to food choices. Twenty-three adults took part, undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging after a good night’s …

Sean Croxton is being listened to by a lot of people these days. They even wear shirts emblazoned with the letters JERF, an acronym for his slogan “Just Eat Real Food.” He promotes the idea of personal responsibility because it’s so obviously the fines …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at earlier work done by the STRONG Kids Project in its attempt to identify the main causes of childhood obesity. This research program is hosted by the University of Illinois, and its name is short for Synergist …

A while back, a Scientific American article described the work of the STRONG Kids Project, whose home is the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. The acronym stands for Synergistic Theory and Research on Obesity and Nutrition Group, a …

The Fat Acceptance Movement is one of the more puzzling and problematic societal currents of the past few years. Many strange theories are afloat. Some people think that recognizing the health hazards of obesity is the moral equivalent of condemning ob …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News contemplated some of the various discomforts and humiliations of being an obese child or teenager. It seemed like there were a lot — but that wasn’t the end. No, Chapter 3 of Dr. Pretlow’s book Overweight: What Kids S …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at the lives of two celebrities who left obesity in the past, citing very different sources of motivation. Today, let’s take an overview of the motivations named by a bunch of youngsters. They’re not celebrities …

When interviewed by Alison Rosen, actor and comedian Adam Ray revealed that he had been “a big kid … not just chubby … pretty fat.” He added, “Fat kids know the true meaning of ‘seconds.’ ‘Cause guess what, that second plate? There’s maybe seconds …

Yesterday Childhood Obesity News looked at information indicating that when teenagers lose weight, their QOL (Quality of Life) scores rise. For a lot of teens, both obesity and depression are persistent coexisting conditions, although one or the other …

“Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” is an age-old question that capsulizes the mystery of causation. One of the areas where it applies is childhood obesity. Do kids start by being in emotional pain and adopt comfort eating as a palliative measu …

This story “torn from today’s headlines” is about a young Canadian who devoted a year to losing 130 pounds. Lucas Irwin decided to surprise his parents with what the reporter characterized as “the ultimate Christmas gift,” and in this he succeeded, par …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News considered the Cracked.com perspective. Now let’s see what the much more mainstream Dr. Phil (Phillip C. McGraw) has to say about the escape from obesity. Of course, Dr. Phil is encouraging people to use his method, wh …

How many country singers does it take to change a lightbulb? Two. One to change the bulb, and one to sing about how good the old one was. Okay, how about this version? How many obese children does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one, but the lightb …

Against all odds, young actor Ricki Lake got some movie roles after Hairspray despite being overweight. But portraying an obese teen in a specific role where obesity was part of the plot was one thing, and being an obese adult actor going out for gener …

As a child of 6, Ricki Lake was taken to see the musical Annie and decided that she wanted to perform onstage. Around the same time, she was a victim of sexual abuse, which she believes contributed to her later obesity. Her subconscious reasoned that i …

In Britain they have a thing called the National Obesity Observatory (NOO) through which the government publishes the results of research concerning overweight and obesity. To gather information, the NOO operates the National Child Measurement Programm …

As yesterday’s Childhood Obesity News post noted, quality of life has been a subject of concern for quite a long time in the study of youth obesity. Sometimes, in the midst of all the journal articles and lab results and optimistically designed program …

A little over 10 years ago, research was done on the quality of life experienced by children in various life situations. The starting point was a prior study that had compared the quality of life experienced by young cancer patients with children who s …

Childhood Obesity News has been following the development course of Dr. Pretlow’s W8Loss2Go smartphone app, whose approach is based on the addiction-treatment model of withdrawal and abstinence from problem foods and large food amounts. In 2011, this p …

For the Washington Post, Marlene Cimons reported on recent studies concerning adenovirus 36, which causes increased fat and weight in various animals including mice, rats, monkeys and chickens. In humans, adenovirus 36 causes upper respiratory infectio …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at the possibility that Russia might be winning the War on Obesity, because of the widespread prevalence of small garden plots where people grow a large proportion of the nation’s food supply. New readers are in …

“War on childhood obesity” is a phrase that has been bandied about in the media for some time now. One example is a short interview that Fox Business recorded with Jake Steinfeld, chairman of the National Foundation for Governors’ Fitness Councils. Wha …

“Waiting for the tipping point” — what does that mean? According to Jacques Peretti, host of the third episode in the BBC TV series The Men Who Made Us Fat, it means that eventually the British government will realize that it is paying out more for th …

David Wallerstein worked in a movie theater, where he pioneered the concepts of the giant popcorn tub and the enormous waxed tumbler of soda pop. In Episode 2 of BBC Two’s The Men Who Made Us Fat, Jacques Peretti conveys the astonishing news that McDon …

The British Broadcasting Company made a three-part series titled The Men Who Made Us Fat, featuring Jacques Peretti, and this is about Part 1. Peretti talks about how there was a revolution in eating habits, but not the good kind of revolution. He talk …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News talked about morbid or severe obesity. Another important term is “co-morbidity.” In the realm of obesity, co-morbidities can include the well-known insulin resistance syndrome (or metabolic syndrome), Type 2 diabetes a …

The descriptive phrase “morbid obesity” seems to have been replaced by “severe obesity,” which doesn’t sound quite as deadly. The association is useful, because when a person embarks on the journey into “morbidly obese” territory, she or he will probab …

Mens sana in corpore sano — that’s Latin for “a healthy mind in a healthy body,” and to make it through the holidays, you need both. For the healthy body, getting enough sleep is paramount. Focus on such concepts as trip consolidation and creative ch …

In a Forbes article a few weeks back, Kate Harrison made a cogent point: “Halloween is our annual free-for-all, but what starts as a one-night binge can quickly stretch out into months of sugar overload.” For a lot of Americans, it’s all too true. Even …