Category: Food Addiction

In the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel,” a child is captured by a witch who feeds him so he will be nice and plump to cook and eat. The story has analogs in many cultures. The website TV Tropes gives more than 30 examples of stories (including a Simpsons …

Here is the confluence of two trains of thought. The first concerns the omission of food addiction from the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The other is the quality of life experienced by an obese child – not a …

Hector Garcia called himself “the worst-case scenario” for reasons clear to anyone familiar with the thorough and revelatory account of his last four years on earth, as compiled by San Antonio Express-News staffers Jessica Belasco and Lisa Krantz. Garc …

Once they have become obese, children may experience a diminished quality of life for many reasons, some of which are more obvious than others. A lot of things in the material world are too small for their comfort — clothes, school desks, airplane seat …

When 600-pound Hector Garcia died in December, his life had been documented for several years by a team from the San Antonio Express-News. His mother told the reporter that “if she tried to refuse his requests for food, her son would get angry.” Dr. Pr …

Can a mother make her child morbidly obese? Mothers are easily blamed for anything, rightly or wrongly, for reasons that seem obvious to those who do it. Childhood Obesity News related the tragic story of morbidly obese Texan Hector Garcia, who died la …

Sunset in San Antonio Reporter Jessica Belasco and photographer Lisa Krantz spent four years documenting the life of a morbidly obese man for the San Antonio Express-News. Last month, the task culminated in a lavishly-illustrated story after Hector Gar …

The “lizard brain,” the primitive tenant in a person’s skull, is easily fooled into thinking that just because something feels good, it is actually beneficial. As writer Jim Dickey (25 years sober) says: While the concept is no longer fully embraced by …

Under the current model (as set forth in the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) for what used to be known as addiction, unhealthy dependency has become measured on a graduated scale. “Substance Use Disorder” is rated by degrees rangi …

“The artist formerly known as Prince” changed his name to this symbol.   The human brain’s pleasure/reward center likes three things: dopamine, serotonin, and noradrenalin. Upon receiving those molecules, the pleasure center translates them into g …

For members of the Task Force concerned with the conceptual evolution of DSM-5 (Regier, Narrow, Kuhl, and Kupfer), the primary goal was “to produce diagnostic criteria and disorder categories that keep pace with advances in neuroscience.” This is where …

As Childhood Obesity News has discussed before, the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual managed to omit recognition, in any way, shape, or form, of the reality of food addiction. What causes this ongoing delay? The medical establish …

Recently, Childhood Obesity News talked about the advantages and pitfalls of self-reporting as a research tool, and there is more to say on the subject. More was, in fact, said at the most recent European Childhood Obesity Group meeting, where Session …

People who get hooked on nicotine, alcohol, and street drugs all have something in common: they are also likely to be addicted to food. As food addiction expert Phil Werdell says: They often come to Overeaters Anonymous or one of the other food–related …

When interviewed by Marc Maron, Saturday Night Live cast member Julia Sweeney revealed how alcoholism  affected some members of her family, but not her: Sometimes I think I’m so lucky that my drug was food, actually, because you can survive that. Unles …

Many health professionals believe that all addictions are one addiction. Furthermore, some believe that all addictions are symptoms. The addiction is not the problem, but the outward and visible sign of the problem. And unless the problem is eliminated …

In the old days, it was clear what the addictors or addictogens were: heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, alcohol, and nicotine. Then came the recognition of unhealthy and counter-productive attachment to activities that had seemed neutral or even benign, a …

People have trouble grasping the idea that all addiction is one phenomenon, expressed in various ways. Perhaps that might be because there is no recognized word for “an addictive thing” whether that thing is food or gambling, nicotine or Internet use, …

Recently, Childhood Obesity News looked at a fascinating study in which alternative high school students – with at least one behavioral “strike” against them – were interviewed three years after going through a drug abuse prevention project. The resear …

Kudzu takes over Spartanburg There has been a lot of public discussion about how to classify obesity, compulsive eating, and food addiction. It is the kind of talk that proliferates like kudzu, which would be fine if we had nothing better to do than si …

Childhood Obesity News has been comparing and contrasting the basic qualities of the “red-headed stepchild,” food addiction, with various other conditions that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) recognizes as real and legitimate. One of the …

With the determination to understand what the members of the DSM-5 Work Group (who invented the definitions) were thinking, Drs. Henrietta Bowden-Jones and Luke Clark tackled the subject when the book was still being assembled. They wrote of the simila …

Childhood Obesity News has been examining the premise that food addiction, in some form, under some nomenclature, should have been recognized in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5). Okay, maybe calling food an addictive …

Recently, Childhood Obesity News has considered how food addiction is not recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), while similar maladies are granted official recognition. It seems as if the compilers of the manu …

In a couple of Childhood Obesity News posts last week, we asked the following question about the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5): while other, similar disorders are included in the manual, how did foo …

Childhood Obesity News recently began discussing the fascinating evolution of the definition of pathological gambling according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, commonly known as DSM-5. The definition has changed over the years as a result of …

In a Rudyard Kipling poem so infamous we won’t even link to it, the poet concludes that “the Colonel’s Lady an’ Judy O’Grady/ Are sisters under their skins!” In other words, despite appearances, a respectable high-society wife and the wife of a lowly e …

As a doctoral student at the University of Würzburg in Germany, Adrian Meule was influenced by Dr. Pretlow’s “Addiction to Highly Pleasurable Food as a Cause of the Childhood Obesity Epidemic: A Qualitative Internet Study” in Eating Disorders: The Jour …

Exploring the definitions for eating disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) is an Alice-in-Wonderland type of experience, full of surprises and contradictions. Many hundreds of professionals worked tirelessly to formulate the book’s …

Childhood Obesity News has discussed the change that took place in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which now places Binge Eating Disorder (BED) in its own category, under Feeding and Eating Disorders. (The others are Pica, …