Category: Food Addiction

Childhood Obesity News has been looking at what various authorities say about willpower. Way back in 1988, in his book, No More Cravings, Dr. Douglas Hunt took on the challenge of explaining how it works: Willpower is easily defined in two simple words …

Yikes! The Devil’s Candy, again! Really, the subject is worthy of attention. Dr. Pretlow once mused: Could this one substance be bringing down our whole society? Why not? There is a school of thought saying lead poisoning from the water pipes brought d …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking at the parallels between humans and animals in an area called displacement behavior, which in humans can also be called adjunctive behavior or body-focused repetitive behavior. When feeling boxed in, conflicted, …

Last August, Traci Carneal reported of the Association for Convenience & Fuel Retailing on the popularity of salty snacks. The numbers were from the previous year, 2011, during which $4.4 billion worth of salty snacks were sold. We’re talking about …

In the late 1980s, the great American crack epidemic was gathering momentum. Reports that fetuses were inevitably damaged by the maternal cocaine use were taken seriously. Years went by and sober research was done, and the whole crack baby threat later …

This year has already produced some interesting news relating to childhood obesity, with a lot of help from little rodents. Deep Brain Stimulation, or DBS, for instance, involves inserting a devices into the brains of a mouse. Its home is stocked with …

Before returning to the fascinating subject of food porn, excuse us for a moment while we pat ourselves on the back for being astute spotters of talent and relevance. Yes, Childhood Obesity News covered ChopChop way before it was chosen “Publication of …

In her book, Constant Craving, Doreen Virtue discussed in great detail the differences between physical hunger and emotional hunger. Why is this important? Because emotional neediness is one of the things that can lead a child or adult to food addictio …

When this article was published by Today, April Fools Day was still a week in the future, so it was meant to be taken seriously. The title, “Junk food might not be addictive, after all,” makes an assumption. It hints that belief in the addictiveness of …

The past few months brought news that breastfeeding is perhaps not all it was cracked up to be — at least not when the goal is the prevention of childhood obesity. The halo that surrounds breastfeeding may not shine so brightly — but some would say t …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News mentioned the discouraging words heard from the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. A study originating there showed that, of parents whose kids went to a school with an obesity intervention program, 30% of those parents we …

Lisa Lillien, a former Hollywood executive, segued into being a “foodologist” who specializes in making low-calorie foods taste as satisfying as high-calorie foods. Before long, she had turned that talent into what The Huffington Post writer John Roger …

Readers of Childhood Obesity News will recall Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me, which documented the filmmaker’s adventure as a human lab rat. He ate nothing but McDonald’s fare for a month, gained 25 pounds, sustained liver damage, and when he quit, exp …

“Seduced by Food: Obesity and the Human Brain” is the irresistible title of a piece by Stephen Guyenet, Ph.D. (who is an obesity researcher at the University of Washington) which touches upon many of the topics discussed by Childhood Obesity News. For …

Sometimes it seems like not much progress is being made, but when we look back a few months or a year, the retrospective view often makes the whole situation look better. Last May, Dr. Pretlow went to France for the 19th European Congress on Obesity, w …

We left off last time pondering the differences between modern life and the old days. Are humans simply taking in more and burning less energy than ever before? Is it only that people are eating more calories and exercising less? Is it feasible to ente …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at some of the thoughts of maverick “bio-hacker” Dave Asprey, who believes that a leading cause of obesity is systemic inflammation. Inflammation is associated with impaired cognition, and also with cancer, card …

Before getting into what Dave Asprey says, lets take a look at his bio, which does not include any medical credentials whatsoever. Asprey is an expert in computer security, and an entrepreneur and investor in a number of areas, who is said to have spen …

The yearly “Stress in America” report supplies an astonishing number of interesting statistics, many of which Childhood Obesity News has already discussed. For instance, one point made in the 2010 report was: Currently, tweens and teens report that the …

To review for a moment, why does any of this matter? If children and teenagers feel stress, what’s the big deal? Some hardy, old-fashioned parents might say, “Stress is an unavoidable part of life, a condition they had better get used to because, as th …

For several years, school districts across the country have struggled with the question of what to do about Valentine’s Day. Vikki Ortiz Healy, in Chicago, summed it up: In an age of allergies, anti-bullying efforts and concerns about test scores and c …

At the University of Missouri, Sara Gable discovered that being stigmatized because of their body size has the same effect on kids as being stigmatized because of their race. To be a member of an out-group is, in itself, stressful. It leads to depressi …

There were years when Dr. Pretlow didn’t talk with other medics about the psychological basis of obesity, or even mention the “a” word, addiction, in relation to food. Professional resistance to the idea was very frustrating, and he was told at one con …

In an essay describing how people use food to cope with emotional problems, Elizabeth Hartney outlined some resemblances: There are several similarities between food addiction and drug addiction, including effects on mood, external cues to eat or use d …

With his 1937 song “Malted Milk,” bluesman Robert Johnson confirmed the reality of emotional eating, especially in the Depression era in the United States. Some of the lyrics are: I keep drinking malted milk, trying to drive my blues away. Malted milk, …

The recent Consumer Reports National Research Center surveyed about 1,300 psychologists about the relationship between weight loss and emotions. Apparently, only 306 of them offer weight loss treatment per se, so their answers may count for more. Out o …

One of the problems with the whole sugar debate is the amazing amount of time, energy, and money that has been spent and will continue to be spent to answer such questions as, “Which is worse, traditional cane and beet sugar, or high fructose corn syru …

Gary Taubes is an independent investigator in health policy associated with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In a New York Times article, he resurrected the memory of John Yudkin, a British professor of nutrition and dietetics who spent the 1960s ex …

Looking at the brain’s reward circuits is a hot research area, and sugar is one of the favorite substances to experiment with. Consequently, the past 12 months have been rich in sugar addiction news. At the Oregon Research Institute, researchers starte …

How many people have made a serious effort to quit sugar for a month? How many have succeeded? It has been said that trying to quit sugar for a month will make a skeptic into a food-addiction believer. That is, if the person gets through the preliminar …