Category: Food Addiction

Every year ends the same way. Journalists look back over the preceding 12 months and make arbitrary lists — the 10 top food stories, the 5 most promising discoveries, and so on. They weigh and assess, and pick the biggest health story of the year, or …

Here is a first-person account by a not-obese woman, of an encounter at a party: The high tables were pushed together into long strips, with barstool seating along both sides. I talked a bit with the woman next to me, and then she asked if I would mind …

Childhood Obesity News has reviewed high fructose corn syrup before, and found the track record of HFCS to be unimpressive. Or too impressive, but not in a good way. A year ago we quoted early worrier Sara Novak, whose words are an example of how yeste …

Really? For the holidays, are we going to talk about a bummer like addiction? Yes, indeed, because at this time of year, addictions that might have lain dormant for a while have a tendency to bloom. It’s a rough season for many people and for a lot of …

Jennifer Walker is an actor, photographer, and writer of lively posts online. Walker realized that she was addicted to sugar, and partway into a monthlong sugar fast, reflected on the mind-body connection: From what I’ve read, I need to find something …

Food can be addictive, and especially sugar. Over the years, many brave medical professionals fought the tide of prevailing opinion and asserted the addictiveness of food, especially sugar. And their number has been growing over the years. Childhood Ob …

In one of the most attention-getting books on food and nutrition to have been published in the last decade, The End of Overeating, Dr. David Kessler puts forth the idea that even though the individual ingredients in food might not be overwhelmingly att …

Surveys of the habits of American youth between the ages 13 and 17 find that half of them use social media on a daily basis. The American Heart Association (AHA), in a statement that will be published in the January issue of its journal, Circulation, r …

Last time, Childhood Obesity News mentioned the upcoming documentary film (scheduled for release in June 2013) which Dr. Pretlow will appear in, titled Sweet Nothing: America’s Addiction to Sugar. These are by no means the only voices raised against su …

20K Films is an independent outfit that makes low-budget, high-quality documentaries, with Laura Zinger as producer and director. One of their previous works is about sickle cell anemia, and the current project is Sweet Nothing: America’s Addiction to …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News looked at some of the controversial theories of Dave Asprey relating to obesity, insulin, and inflammation. One of his theories is not so controversial, and is in fact now pretty well-accepted — that foods can be addi …

In David Foster Wallace’s novel, Infinite Jest, the action revolves around a movie that is fatally entertaining. In other words, anybody who watches it, dies. This plot is unpleasantly reminiscent of what goes on in certain laboratories where scientist …

Nutritional therapists and dietitians play an indispensable role on the front lines of obesity treatment, as most physicians likely refer their obese patients to a nutritionist at some point. In addition, many nutritionists receive self-referrals from …

Since awareness of the childhood obesity epidemic has been raised, kids are kept track of more closely, and one result of that scrutiny is a rather jarring prediction. By 2020, American life expectancy is likely to be reduced by 13 years. In other word …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News discussed a recent article by The Wall Street Journal’s Melinda Beck, who mentioned that the nutritional deficiency theory of food cravings seems to be disproved, because so many cravings are addressed to food-like sub …

Cravings for any desired and potentially harmful substance are obligingly real enough to show up for scientific measurement. As we know, the human brain, hooked up to a MRI scanner, is capable of reacting to the thought of a chocolate milkshake as if i …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News began to explore the complicated realm of the human sense of taste. Dr. David Katz has been thinking about the subject also. The research that he is talking about was published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood a …

Among the critics of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! program, which was intended to reduce childhood obesity, many have complained that it puts too much emphasis on nutrition. In fact, nutrition, informed three out of four of the basic tenets of Let’s Mov …

Who would have guessed there would be so much to discover about food deserts? And so much to disagree about. Especially when the term only came into public consciousness in relatively recent years. Americans are now so familiar with it because of First …

Ever since first lady Michelle Obama introduced the concept of the food desert, there have been grumblings, as Childhood Obesity News noted yesterday. Earlier this year, the grumblings flared up into something of a brushfire when The New York Times pub …

Last time, Childhood Obesity News looked at the concept of the food desert, as publicized by Michelle Obama and the Let’s Move! program. Many critics were and are full of scorn for the very idea. Diane Medved wrote a particularly stern essay, “Veggies …

Not long ago, Dr. Pretlow was asked a series of questions by a young student whose area of interest is the impact of childhood obesity on the overall development of a child. Quite logically, she first inquired about the leading cause of obesity today, …

Any day now, in the face of rampant and ever-growing obesity among both children and adults in America, a retail establishment called Sugar and Plumm Purveyors of Yumm will open in New York City’s upper West Side. People who live in the area have been …

Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News mentioned the negative attention garnered by fast-food corporate sponsorship of the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Britain’s Academy of Medical Royal Colleges expressed disapproval, and so did cardiologist Dr. Aseem Mal …

A week before the 2012 Olympic Games began, the esteemed British publication The Lancet published an editorial regretting the ubiquitous presence of fast food corporations. Apparently, Coca-Cola now owns the ancient and venerated custom of the torch re …

There is a strong push in many American communities to either strengthen or institute physical education programs in public schools. Will all these efforts make any difference to the childhood obesity epidemic? There are both positive and negative indi …

Childhood Obesity News has been talking about what some call physical literacy, especially as it applies to school curricula. This is from researchers at the Georgia Health Sciences University, by way of ScienceDaily. The team wanted to look at a batch …

Last time, Childhood Obesity News discussed a Canadian publication called Developing Physical Literacy (a downloadable PDF file) which carries very specific recommendations. It promotes the idea that, just as there is an optimum age for a child to soak …

When childhood obesity is seen through the psychological food dependence-addiction lens, it becomes obvious that diet and exercise are not all-important. They are necessary conditions to health, but they may not be sufficient conditions to health. The …

The title “Choose What You Chew” is swiped from one of the sayings of Dr. David Katz, because it is such an apt rule for just about anybody, any time, anywhere. Childhood Obesity News praised the engaging music video, “Unjunk Yourself” and agreed that …