Category: Food Addiction

The food addiction paradigm is a primary cause of the childhood and adult obesity epidemic. Highly pleasurable foods, such as junk food and fast food, can be addictive. Posts in this section explore food addiction and its impact on obesity.

The Sugar Roundups Roundup

June 10, 2016
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Here is another collection of past articles that have featured sugar, a substance that inspired as much controversy as opium, nicotine, or alcohol.

How Bad Is Imprinting?

June 9, 2016
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Childhood Obesity News looks at the relationship between food companies and children — specifically advertising, packaging, and other forms of marketing.

Who’s Buying That Stuff?

June 7, 2016
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There is a childhood obesity epidemic, with food addiction being a very likely culprit, while kids are being used to push highly pleasurable foods.

The Rising Tide — Innocent Phenomenon or Conspiracy?

June 6, 2016
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Researchers find that commercials stir up cravings, not so much for any particular brand or item but for the unhealthy foods in general.

Kids and Compensatory Health Beliefs

June 2, 2016
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The idea that negative effects generated by unhealthy behavior can be neutralized by engaging in a healthy behavior is unlikely to lead to a good place. Compensatory Health Beliefs, or CHBs, seem to be pretty widespread. A typical example, “I can eat t …

Advertising and Slogans

June 1, 2016
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Even if advertising does nothing more than stimulate hunger, rather than desire for one particular brand, it is still effective in the larger sense.

Triggers and Limits

May 31, 2016
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Problem-food triggers are everywhere — stores, fast-food restaurants, food trucks, vending machines. The only solution is to make yourself a promise and keep it.

The Struggle Against Advertising

May 26, 2016
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Children don’t have the intelligence, experience, or judgment to know when a message should be ignored, so legislating advertising to kids is a good idea.

Glyphosate, Leaky Gut Syndrome, the Microbiome, and Obesity

May 24, 2016
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There are a lot of reasons to dislike glyphosate, including its link with obesity and its proclivity for promoting leaky gut syndrome.

Leaky Gut Syndrome and Obesity

May 23, 2016
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Allergies correlate with obesity. And if Bt toxin kills kidney cells, it probably can do other things that we don’t know about yet.

Emotions, Comfort and Food

May 17, 2016
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Children are unable to handle emotional turmoil and turn to comfort eating. This eating and behavior pattern increases the risk of obesity.

Emotions and Food, a Sad Legacy

May 16, 2016
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When parents punish or dismiss the sad or angry feelings of a child it leads to more sad and angry feelings, and eventually, to a crisis.

The Quit Smoking, Quit Sugar Drugs

May 13, 2016
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Drugs used to help quit smoking also seem to help people hooked on sugar, by treating the sensory addiction component of eating addiction.

Catching Up on Sugar

May 6, 2016
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Eating addiction is the more accurate term for what is widely known as “food addiction” — a combination of sensory and behavioral components of addiction.

More on Morbid Obesity in Kids

May 4, 2016
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The photographer titled this “Talk about junk in the trunk!” Food addiction has been discussed here many times. Like other popular expressions, it is an incomplete shorthand term for something that takes more than a few syllables to say. The addiction …

Rewards of Morbid Obesity

May 3, 2016
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The term “treatment resistant” has a couple of different meanings, one of which is a major cause of compassion fatigue and social worker burnout. Every now and then, someone in a helping profession encounters a patient or client who is, for all intents …

Let’s Get Morbid About Childhood Obesity

April 29, 2016
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Childhood Obesity News rounds up the posts that deal with morbid obesity in children and adults, its causes and treatment possibilities.

Always More Dots to Connect

April 27, 2016
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Obesogenic microbiota has a far-reaching influence on glucose homeostasis in diabetes and long-term obesity in general.

The Appetite Dot

April 26, 2016
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When the brain and the digestive organs communicate about appetite, hormones are involved, and the gut microbiome also intervenes.

Meet Leptin

April 25, 2016
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Why do we overeat? Childhood Obesity News looks at leptin and ghrelin, hormones connected with hunger and food cravings.

Clues to an Elusive Ghrelin-Microbiome Tie

April 22, 2016
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Childhood Obesity News keeps exploring the links between obesity, some childhood obesity “villains,” microbiomes, ghrelin, and cravings.

The Cravings Dot

April 21, 2016
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Childhood Obesity News has been connecting the dots between the role of the gut microbiome in obesity or the absence thereof.

The Autism Dot

April 19, 2016
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Childhood Obesity News looks at the microbiomes’ relationship to allergies and addiction, as well as the obesity-autism connection.

Three Obesity-Related Films and a TV Episode

April 14, 2016
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Is sugar one of the worst obesity villains? Childhood Obesity News looks at how it’s portrayed in film and on television.

The Ubiquity of Cravings

April 6, 2016
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Kids don’t need more nutrition information. They mainly need training and encouragement in how to control food cravings.

Who Has It Worse?

April 5, 2016
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Kids desperately need to learn how resist cravings. Take a look around: How many adults can do that? Going by the evidence, not many.

Emotional Eating — More Angles

April 4, 2016
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Childhood Obesity News continues to examine the cause, the consequences, and the solutions of comfort eating in children.

The Ultimate Parents’ Checklist

April 1, 2016
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Childhood Obesity News presents the April Fools’ “Ultimate Parents’ Checklist” — on what NOT to do with your kids when it comes to food.

Emotional Eating — Some Angles

March 31, 2016
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The relationship between comfort eating and obesity is not news. Health professionals are trying to figure out how to break the connection.

When It Comes to Advertising, Teens Are Vulnerable Too

March 28, 2016
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A recent study shows that, when it comes to food advertising, adolescents are vulnerable in ways we previously thought were problematic only for the very young.

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Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Obesity top bottom

The Book

OVERWEIGHT: What Kids Say explores the obesity problem from the often-overlooked perspective of children struggling with being overweight.

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Dr. Robert A. Pretlow is a pediatrician and childhood obesity specialist. He has been researching and spreading awareness on the childhood obesity epidemic in the US for more than a decade.
You can contact Dr. Pretlow at:

Presentations

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the American Society of Animal Science 2020 Conference
What’s Causing Obesity in Companion Animals and What Can We Do About It

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the World Obesity Federation 2019 Conference:
Food/Eating Addiction and the Displacement Mechanism

Dr. Pretlow’s Multi-Center Clinical Trial Kick-off Speech 2018:
Obesity: Tackling the Root Cause

Dr. Pretlow’s 2017 Workshop on
Treatment of Obesity Using the Addiction Model

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation for
TEC and UNC 2016

Dr. Pretlow’s invited presentation at the 2015 Obesity Summit in London, UK.

Dr. Pretlow’s invited keynote at the 2014 European Childhood Obesity Group Congress in Salzburg, Austria.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2013 European Congress on Obesity in Liverpool, UK.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2011 International Conference on Childhood Obesity in Lisbon, Portugal.

Dr. Pretlow’s presentation at the 2010 Uniting Against Childhood Obesity Conference in Houston, TX.

Food & Health Resources