We told you. Didn’t we tell you? Now, here is Alicia Chang saying the same thing, a propos of a Harvard University study which appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine. Its title is “Changes in Diet and Lifestyle and Long-Term Weight Gain in Wom …

A while back, we mentioned that Dr. Pretlow’s latest paper was due to be published by Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention. The future has become the present, and the document is now online. (The print version of Volume 19 #4, July …

The thing about compulsive overeating is, there are a lot of things about it. It’s a very hefty subject with many fascinating areas of inquiry. For women, the hormones involved in the monthly cycle are implicated as compulsive-eating triggers. But male …

Last time, we looked at the aims of the STOP Obesity Alliance, starting with the encouragement of more physical activity on general principles, because of the overall superiority of fitness over unfitness. The Alliance is in favor of “different approac …

We left off last time suggesting that maybe it’s time to accept the fact that the widely rumored and much discussed Gateway Drug, spoken of in addiction medicine, is actually sugar. A baby needs to love sugar for survival. Imbibing that liquid, whether …

I have always found it strange that the medical profession does not recognize this problem. I would say the majority of my patients are sugar addicts too, although most only become aware of it when they try to stop it. Those are the words of Frank Lipm …

In Chapter 5 of Overweight: What Kids Say, Dr. Pretlow discusses some conclusions drawn from what is said by obese kids when they talk anonymously amongst themselves. This happens, for instance, on the message boards of the Weigh2Rock website. It seems …

The illustration on this page could be read in a couple of ways: one person might see a delicious Mother’s Day treat made specially for Mom. Which is probably what the photographer intended. Someone with a darker imagination — and you can picture this …

Parents want to know what to do about childhood obesity. The answers are difficult ones because most of them involve a change in philosophical outlook and/or everyday behavior — a change made by parents, that is. When we parents set out to fix our kid …

Cars and clothes are two of the things most dear to the hearts of Americans. People actually believe such nonsense as “You are what you drive.” And “Clothes make the man (or woman).” So, imagine how unpleasant it must be to weigh 300 pounds in a societ …

In his book Possible Side Effects, Augusten Burroughs shares childhood memories of avoiding all of his mother’s efforts to feed him a healthy diet. Children can be cunning little people, as he proves in the essay called “The Wonder Boy.” Burroughs writ …

Kids have a natural talent for identifying baloney. They love to compare what parents say on Monday to what they say (or do!) on Tuesday, and if it doesn’t match up, look out! The average child possesses a highly developed critical sense that is consta …

A complete list of things that parents can do to avoid childhood obesity would probably contain 7,000,000 items, but fortunately it’s not necessary to know all of them. One thing a parent can do is to be aware of a child’s priorities. A little kid is p …

As parents, we have endless opportunities every day to guide our kids, and it would be a shame not to pick up on at least a few of them. Coach Ed Poirier of Attleboro, Massachusetts, recently published a piece called “Letting free range kids do their t …

In the food area, the addiction that people most readily admit to is sugar. The easiest way to convince a person that food addiction is real is to challenge them to quit sugar for a month — in all forms, including high fructose corn syrup and artifici …

It has become obvious that diet and exercise are not the only factors contributing to obesity. There are some physiological states that can make a dangerous difference. Dr. Pretlow says, Such conditions as Cushing’s syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome, and …

Hormones control metabolism, growth, development, the function of tissues, and a person’s mood. We have specialized organs for the production of hormones, and, just to keep things interesting, other organs can also secrete hormones as their second job. …

There is a type of journalism that discourages the public from thinking about certain things. In a print newspaper, a sensitive piece of news can be buried in the third or fourth section. If an announcement might provoke a lot of dissent, it can be hel …

It has been a bad year for infant cereal. On the last day of 2010, Eryn Brown of the Los Angeles Times reported that a good time to start worrying about a baby’s obesity potential is about nine months. And then, on February 14, Childhood Obesity News g …

In advanced cases of overweight, up to and including morbid obesity, in teenagers and adults, the answer becomes clear. Many, many people are addicted to food in the same way an alcoholic or cocaine addict is hooked. They can only help themselves throu …

We’ve been looking at various proposed answers to the childhood obesity problem. A small percentage of babies could be helped by making sure that their bottle-feeding phase does not extend for much over a year, and should certainly be finished by age t …

In the Journal of Pediatrics, Brigid Huey begins by explaining this particular aspect of the childhood obesity puzzle: Experts agree that obesity prevention should begin before children enter school. But due to a lack of conclusive data, health care pr …

Kathleen Blanchard, a Registered Nurse and freelance health author, reports for EmaxHealth on a study compiled by the Cardiovascular Center at the University of Michigan, which says it is extremely rare to find a genetic basis for childhood obesity. Bl …

Does anything work to prevent childhood obesity? Once it has taken hold, can anything pull a child loose from its clutches? As many thousands of years as humans have been on earth, you’d think we would have figured this thing out by now. What kind of n …

The Weigh2Rock website has invited kids aged 18 and under to download the PDF version of Dr. Robert A. Pretlow’s book, Overweight: What Kids Say, for free. Since then, kids residing in countries like Great Britain, Canada, and Australia, as well as the …

Everybody wants to know: Is there anything that works to prevent childhood obesity? And if so, what is it? The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation wonders, too, and not only in a general, curious way. The Foundation has a specific goal, to reverse the growi …

Most anti-childhood obesity programs, whether they are prevention-oriented or cure-oriented, have one thing in common: they need money. Whether the source of funds is the government, a foundation, or an eccentric millionaire with a mattress full of lar …

Because of concern about childhood obesity, a bill was introduced in Virginia that would require elementary and middle schools to offer 150 minutes of physical education per week. In her story about it, Rosalind S. Helderman included an extensive list …

What can help end the childhood obesity epidemic? That question includes a lot of other sub-questions. Two of them are “What can prevent kids from growing overweight in the first place?” and “What can help kids who are already overweight?” So when we a …

The online magazine Slate asked its readers for their best ideas about how to shrink childhood obesity. A dozen submissions were picked, reporter Christy Harrison tells us, half of them by the readers themselves. Six more were chosen by a panel of judg …