Category: Food Addiction

Childhood Obesity News has discussed how the birth of a craving can either be internal, from some chemical prompt, or external, from seeing a billboard or whatever. Also, people are like cats. They like to watch something in motion. A certain kind of m …

Elaborated Intrusion (EI) theory was the topic, and we were examining the idea that food cravings can be quelled by diverting the mind in a couple of different ways. In the overwhelming majority of cases, a craving, or as the researchers characterize i …

As Childhood Obesity News has mentioned before, a large part of the human race seems to have lost the instinct that tells a healthy animal what to eat and what to avoid. This instinct needs to be recovered or recreated, similar to what Dr. Pretlow writ …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking at the various efforts toward craving reduction that have been suggested by different people. A mention, of course, doesn’t imply that Dr. Pretlow necessarily recommends the measure for any particular patient. It …

The main thing to know about food cravings is, this is not some kind of sideshow act. The topic is front and center, the star of the whole childhood obesity epidemic. It appears that food cravings have emotional, biological, and mental origins. Feeling …

When healthcare professionals publish articles about childhood obesity, online commentaries sometimes throw back a strange knee-jerk response. Every now and then, an indignant parent will exclaim, “No child should be on a diet!” There seems to be a def …

Treena Wynes knows all about the emotional-eating cycle and how to conquer it. Formerly a bulimic teen who fought a years-long battle with compulsive eating, she became a social worker and weight-loss counselor, specializing in emotional dependency on …

The obesity epidemic contains a strange and terrible contradiction, terrible because it leads to a lot of misunderstanding and a lack of empathy. To be overfed, yet undernourished, is a thing that can happen to either a person or a country. In a recent …

In almost every field of human endeavor, funding is restricted. As a result, rather than a flood of new research, there is a phenomenon called the meta-study. Remember this Yale University discovery? Sugar-sweetened beverages have a strange effect. On …

We’ve been talking about television in conjunction with obesity, and, really, the farther this subject is looked into, the weirder it gets. Perfect example: a story by Stefanie Dazio titled “Hundreds line up outside Newark hospital to audition for real …

The trouble with eating for success, it seems like every time somebody declares, “This approach works!,” another expert comes along and announces, “No, it doesn’t.” That’s why some of the Childhood Obesity News posts are facetiously titled “Everything …

Recently, we brought news of several suggestions found in the year’s news, toward ending the obesity epidemic. Here are a few more. Pick the Right Father This is essential. Maren Kasselik reports on a childhood obesity study done by the Fathers and Fam …

Way back in 1977, visionary writer/director Eric Luke made a short science fiction film called Dark Ages, described thus, Wandering a post apocalyptic wasteland in search of adventure, a samurai and his talking Cyber spear stumble upon a quest involvin …

Deepak Chopra told The Huffington Post readers that, aside from the relatively few cases of hormonal imbalance, obesity comes from bad lifestyle habits that children can’t be expected to break unaided, so the responsibility lies with parents and school …

A generalization that can truthfully be made about food corporations is that they are powerful. Although many of their products are meretricious, the enormous profits enable the companies to buy as many congresscritters as they need, to make or refrain …

“How prevalent is “food addiction?” is the title of a paper written by Adrian Meule, a doctoral student with the Department of Psychology at Germany’s University of Würzburg. In his introduction, Meule harks back to Dr. Theron Randolph, who recognized …

As Childhhood Obesity News has been saying all along, it would be a good idea to recognize that there is such a thing as food addiction, and take it from there. The downside is, following the logical sequence of events would lead to a mixed outcome. No …

For a parent, what is the most difficult subject to bring up with a child? This article’s title pretty much tells the story: “Birds and Bees Are Kid Stuff: New National Study Reveals Weight a More Difficult Talk Between Parents and Teens than Sex, Drug …

People say, “How can food be called addictive? We need to eat.” But “food” covers a lot of territory, so it’s a difficult case to prove. When you narrow it down to one particular substance, however, the idea can be seen in a different light. Especially …

Sugar Addiction Awareness Day is coming up pretty soon now, on October 30, and everything you need to know about it is spelled out at EndSugarAddiction.com! The title of a piece that caught our eye is, “Why a personal trainer is making himself obese… o …

Jeff O’Connell, author of Sugar Nation, has explored the depths of this variety of food addiction. He writes, Researchers at Princeton University have studied the effects of sugar on the brain chemistry of rats, and what they’ve found is that their sub …

The variety of Halloween costumes available for babies is amazing. Here are only a few of the food items a baby can be disguised as: taco, banana, chili pepper, hamburger, hot dog, pizza slice, lobster, roast turkey, ketchup packet, gingerbread man, To …

October 30 is Sugar Addiction Awareness Day, so this is pretty much going to be Sugar Week. You are invited to absorb what it’s all about, at EndSugarAddiction.com, and then follow along for a sick-making ride through food addiction hell. And this migh …

There is overweight, and then there is perception of overweight. This is one of the areas investigated by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) program which, under the auspices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, …

Dr. Pretlow has developed an iPhone application with interesting potentialities in the area of childhood obesity. Below, he describes the impetus behind the innovation and retraces the thinking that inspired it: Charleston Children’s Hospital came to u …

Of course, kids and teens are crazy about social networking. The need for social approval and interaction is deeply ingrained. Its dark side may show up as the type of unwholesome peer pressure that can lead to undesirable behavioral outcomes. But the …

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture says the average American eats 150 pounds of sugar per year (see illustration). People who care about the childhood obesity epidemic never run out of things to say about sugar. William Dufty’s classic Sugar Blues was publi …

Dr. Pretlow was extensively quoted by Marsha McCullouch, R.D., who interviewed him as one of the main sources for an article titled “Is Your Child Overweight?” in the print publication LiveRight. The topics are stress and food cravings in children, and …

Is there such a thing as too much fairness? Maybe the Obesity Society has a case of it, on display at its annual meeting which is coming right up, October 1-5, in Orlando, Florida. The Obesity Society self-identifies as THE leading scientific society d …

The vast Coca-Cola empire comprises 450 different brands and a stunning number of products, including 3,500 separate and distinct beverages. Imagine that! If you tried a different Coca-Cola brand every day, at the end of a year there would still be alm …