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 …

Health writer Amanda Gardner recently wrote about a report completed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America’s Health. As Gardner reminds us in Business Week, Obesity is one of the biggest public health crises in the country. Ri …

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 …

Everything you know is wrong, including the fact that everything you know is wrong. It used to be said that advertisers should be able to get by, spending only half as much, because 50 percent of all advertising is wasted. Only problem — nobody knew w …

Nancy Churnin of the Dallas Morning News recently interviewed three doctors about keeping kids healthy, and the very first suggestion she lists concerns childhood obesity:  Get an early start. For instance, high fructose corn syrup should be a no-no, r …

Liz Snyder is full of ideas for healthier families, and she shares several of them in her fascinating article about kids and food. Snyder has a Master’s degree in nutritional anthropology, and she describes herself as a food activist. Snyder’s special …

The childhood obesity epidemic is a problem that looms so threateningly that a large variety of methods must be sought to deal with it. That’s why Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative came up with 70 recommendations. A great many of them, of cours …

Here’s an interesting phrase: “spontaneous recovery.” It sounds like it should mean something good, but this is counter-intuitive, because in addiction medicine the term doesn’t mean anything good. It means someone who seemed to have gotten better, but …

Film Journal International brings us Frank Lovece’s comprehensive review of a dramedy called Lbs. The subtitle is “Heavyweight human drama of a food addict going cold turkey.” The reviewer is especially impressed by the dialogue between two friends who …

In a nicely balanced report for the Houston Chronicle, Kim Morgan explores the question of whether food addiction is real. She interviews a counselor who has his doubts, and a counselor who leads food addiction recovery support groups modeled after Alc …

The bad news: childhood obesity is on the rise in many places around the globe. The good news: it’s not exclusively an American problem. And if that is what we’re willing to settle for in the good-news department these days, we’re in deep chocolate pud …

Maybe you thought that yesterday’s post, on tools for dealing with childhood obesity, was the end of covering this subject, but, no — let’s look at a few more ideas. First, a general observation. It’s useful to bear in mind that practically everyone h …

First, let’s look at one of the wrong ways to eat, as demonstrated by the dinosaurs called sauropods, who are, incidentally, now extinct. According to an uncredited article at Alpha Galileo, researchers at the University of Bonn, Germany, unraveled a c …

Michelle Obama has adopted the overcoming of childhood obesity as her special project, which may turn out to be helpful, or not. We will see why in a minute. In any case, there is no doubt of the First Lady’s good intentions, nor does anyone question t …

Mark Morford’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle takes on several weight- and food-related topics, such as the effect of obesity on the U.S. military, freshness expiration dates, and the unholy alliance between a certain well-known anti-cancer fund …

Huffington Post blogger Jan Shepherd, who had lost 200 pounds and kept it off for nearly 10 years, talks about handling addictive behaviors: As addictive behaviors go, ones dealing with food and eating are among the most complicated and complex. I’m no …

One of the foundations of Dr. Pretlow’s philosophy is the principle that the kids themselves are the experts, and they are worth listening to. In fact, we’d better listen to them, or we will wind up spending a lot of resources on programs that are doom …

We recently commented here on an article titled “Bacon as a Weapon of Mass Destruction,” by Arun Gupta, one of The Indypendent’s founding editors. Democracy Now host Amy Goodman was impressed by that essay too, and consequently invited Gupta to be on h …

Titled “Bacon as a Weapon of Mass Destruction,” this classic examination of a food fad was published by The Indypendent, of which author Arun Gupta is also a founding editor. Gupta notes the increasing proliferation of pork fat in the diets of so many …

In the AlterNet article titled “Poop is the most important indicator of your health,” author Anneli Rufus learns about the human intestine from Mitch Klaper, and passes the knowledge on to us. The vegan physician rhapsodizes over the exquisite function …

This profile on CNN Health turns a sociological eye upon the life of an overweight child named Claudia Garza. Actually, Garza is a grownup now; a citizen journalist who recounted her story for iReport, the section of CNN generated by the public. Then h …

Extreme measures are needed to deal with the childhood obesity epidemic, there’s no doubt about it, but is taxation a step that would help? For purposes of this discussion, let’s define junk food as whatever the kids find most difficult to resist — th …

In Overweight: What Kids Say, Dr. Pretlow writes, What is really needed is a cultural shift in regard to highly pleasurable food, so that overeating is ‘not cool’ and so that junk food is ‘yuck.’ If the culture is moldable, these are the very people to …

When considering the obesity epidemic, more and more people are making the mind/body connection. David M. Dunkley, assistant professor in the Psychiatry department at McGill University, is also a clinician and researcher at the Jewish General Hospital …

When the body is considered as nothing more than a physical entity, all the answers are so easy, and everyone knows them. To lose weight, burn more energy and stoke the machine with higher-quality fuel, and less of it. Ta-dah! Or not. Except in the cas …

Linda Spangle, R.N., is an expert on heart hunger, the emptiness that leads to emotional eating, which is pretty much the same as comfort eating. Her website, Weight Loss Café, offers several helpful articles about emotional eating. Today we’re looking …