Category: Food Addiction

The ability to think rationally and the ability to rationalize are quite different. Rational thinking starts with observing the world, before drawing conclusions about it. Conversely, rationalization starts with conclusions that a person has already co …

We already had racism, faith-based bigotry, and several other varieties of divisive doctrines. Wasn’t that enough to deal with? Apparently not, because now fat-shaming has become a “thing.” One of the weird aspects of this type of prejudice is that obe …

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” That saying has been around since before the year 1500. Such proverbs live so long in the human consciousness because they are adaptable to many situations. For instance, a paraphrase could be, “In …

In a recent Huffington Post article, Johann Hari discussed what he calls “the essential mystery of addiction:” What causes some people to become fixated on a drug or a behavior until they can’t stop? How do we help those people to come back to us? He s …

In his paper written for the journal Eating Disorders, Dr. Pretlow stated that today’s youth appear to be “victims of boredom, stress, and depression in an addictive, comfort food environment” and added: Accordingly, a perfect storm may be contributing …

Lance Dodes, M.D., whose latest book is The Heart of Addiction, seems to have rethought the field from the ground up and arrived at some conclusions that can only be described as heretical. For instance, when a person seeks a rehab facility, scenery sh …

In the struggle to reverse the childhood obesity trend, one of the most pervasive tropes about junk food is to “tax it like tobacco.” In 2008, at the National Childhood Obesity Congress, Dr. Pretlow met Steven K. Galson, who was at the time the acting …

Regard de Kurt Ehrmann In olden times, crusaders ransacked a continent looking for the Holy Grail, and alchemists competed to rediscover the Philosophers’ Stone that could turn base metals into gold. In more recent centuries, humankind has labored to f …

Available both online and in the print edition of the journal Childhood Obesity is Dr. Pretlow’s paper, “Treatment of Child/Adolescent Obesity Using the Addiction Model: A Smartphone App Pilot Study.” As Dr. Pretlow says: This publication signals anoth …

Stress triggers the fight-or-flight reflex, and it doesn’t even require a stressor as obvious as a pinched tail. Boredom is a little-recognized and under-appreciated stressor, which many children and adults intuitively self-medicate by chewing gum. The …

Stress triggers the fight-or-flight reflex. Laboratory rats can’t flee, and have reasons of their own for not fighting, but they still want to feel better. Given the opportunity, they will take drugs or use food as a drug. For the most part, stressed-o …

On happiness scales, obese patients have rated their quality of life as being similar to that of cancer patients on chemotherapy. So why don’t they just stop overeating? Because overeating is not really the cause of their obesity, but rather the sympto …

[montage of junk food]This site covers the social, political, economic, and health impacts of childhood obesity. A common thread that runs through our site is the exploration of food addition. Food addiction remains a controversial topic; many are in d …

Yesterday’s subject was the decreasing tolerance shown by companies for risky health practices among their employees. For her report for CNN, Katherine Reynolds Lewis consulted several experts, including Jim Winkler of the consultancy firm AON Hewitt. …

A website called Experience Project contains a personal history titled “I Am Fat and Have Been Almost My Whole Life.” The writer describes herself as five-foot-three, 298 pounds, and 13 years old. Her day starts with 3 tubs of ice cream, then Mom cooks …

It might be instructive to listen to someone who lost 140 pounds, 30 years ago, and sustained that loss. Such a person is self-described food addict William Anderson, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor who specializes in eating disorders, addictions, a …

A few years back, someone posted a video online that featured a toddler, still on the bottle and quite chubby, who smoked 40 cigarettes a day. It went viral, accumulating 27 million views and inspiring a huge number of disapproving comments as people s …

It becomes more and more evident that all addictions are one. Apparently, whichever addictogenic behavior or substance gets to a person first will lay claim to an addiction-prone person, and if that addiction is ostensibly cured, another one will step …

Some addicts specialize in substances, some in behaviors, and some engage in both. Addiction can involve a substance like cocaine or a behavior like gambling. An eating disorder can result from a certain type of food acting as an addictor for a particu …

Last week, Childhood Obesity News explored the four individual stories of obese kids from the film Bite Size: Emily, Moy, Davion, and KeAnna. Guess what just happened over at iTunes? Bite Size has arrived there. We have said this before, but it is wort …

Addiction guilt is one of the facets of Dr. Pretlow’s investigation of childhood obesity, and today we look at what several experts say about guilt, and the subtle differences between guilt and shame. These observations include an assertion that might …

Comedian Doug Stanhope has an un-cordial relationship with his sister-in-law. In one of his bits, for a Showtime Special, he characterized her as a “humorless ____” with the second word being a very rude term indeed. But she should not have been offend …

The topic of meal size versus meal frequency has not yet been exhausted. Neither has the thin or possibly nonexistent line between frequent small meals and snacks. Many authorities have opinions for or against snacking, and many researchers have garner …

Not long ago, Childhood Obesity News considered two of the major structures under which medical professionals sort diseases. Many healers are not totally on board with either of these taxonomical schemes, but insurance companies and other bureaucracies …

With one of the major eating festivals on the horizon, Childhood Obesity News looks to Scientific American’s Ferris Jabr for information on the toxicity (or not) of sugar. This topic also fits into the “everything you know is wrong” niche for contested …

On this page is a link to a free chart that spells out the differences between physical (real) hunger and emotional (bogus) hunger. A book* called Constant Craving, by Doreen Virtue, introduced the chart with these words: Emotional and physical hunger …

Mardis Gras Childhood Obesity News is exploring the idea that for a large part of the Western world, the religious season of Lent has served as a trial run for quitting sugar. For some, it has no doubt been inspirational, and led to permanently sugar-f …

Last time we talked about how, since sugar is one of the cheapest and most widely available worldly pleasures, it has historically been a popular substance for Christians to give up during the penitential season of Lent, which varies from 40 to 47 days …

Dr. Pretlow was one of the professionals interviewed on camera by Sabrina Register, of television station KCTS in Seattle, on the subject of childhood obesity.  The show mentions his W8Loss2Go smartphone app, and visits his very popular Weigh2Rock webs …

2014 was a big year for what William Anderson calls “weight loss quackery,”  with the government making four companies promise $34 million in refunds to customers. Their previous promises, made on behalf of their products, involved the fast and effortl …