Category: Food Addiction

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 …

Not long ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a policy statement titled “Children, Adolescents, Obesity, and the Media,” which addressed those subjects with the organization’s usual thoroughness. The Introduction begins, Obesity represe …

Last time, we looked at how junk food, fast food, and snack food, more accurately known as pseudo-food, all have the common origin point of being specifically designed to create an unhealthy dependency. Some call it food addiction, and its reason for b …

Snacks, junk food, and hedonic foodstuffs in general are all too often nothing more than mere foodlike substances. These ersatz edibles are precisely engineered by the armies of food scientists. The goal is not maximum nutritional value, or even any nu …

Unlike some other social phenomena that are either celebrated or deprecated, childhood obesity has been allotted not a day or a week, but an entire month. We are still in the second annual Childhood Obesity Awareness Month (COAM). How is it being obser …

Since the February 2010 launch of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” program, what has been happening? Has anything changed in the year since the first Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, in September 2010? Has childhood obesity awareness evolved during this …

Chef Domenica Catelli is a food authority who takes a militant stand, who speaks of the fight against childhood obesity, and who wants us to step up to the front lines today and celebrate Childhood Obesity Awareness Month by making one positive change. …

Apparently, knowledge is not a solid rock but a vast expanse of shifting sands. A wise man once said, “There is enough evidence in the universe to prove anything,” and he might have had a point there. Another wise man said, “The ideal consumer is a con …

Influence can be exerted on the brain chemically or electrically. In the realm of chemistry, many of the examples have to do with the food that fuels the body and brain, how a person is influenced to eat more or less of it, and what kind of food they c …

Siegfried Othmer, Ph.D., is Chief Scientist of The EEG Institute, and we have mentioned him before in the context of MindStream Academy and Dr. Adela Chirita-Emandi, who applies the Othmer method in her pediatrics practice in Romania. Dr. Othmer, who w …

Deborah A. Stokes and Martha S. Lappin tell us that while peripheral biofeedback monitors responses of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, such as respiration and galvanic skin response, neurofeedback monitors the activity of the centr …

Will it never end? Sometimes it seems as if, in the effort to quench the obesity epidemic, nothing is ever quite nailed down. Chocolate milk, for instance. To think about how many hours of debate have been spent on chocolate milk, is to cringe. In some …

Sleep may be the last frontier whose mysteries will ever be penetrated. It’s still a puzzler, and its relationship to obesity even more so. “Everything You Know Is Wrong, Part 2” discussed insufficient sleep. Does it do anything besides make kids crank …

It seems to have been pretty well accepted, in childhood obesity circles, that proximity is destiny. Studies from several different parts of the globe have confirmed that when kids live and/or go to school near fast-food outlets, they tend to get fat. …

For a super-obese child or teenager, a live-in rehab program at a residential treatment center is a much better solution than bariatric surgery, as we have mentioned before. Unfortunately, such a thorough, comprehensive program is necessarily expensive …

Humans have a built-in susceptibility to addiction and, as we have discussed before, the foodlike substances known as hedonic or hyper-palatable foods are purposely designed and engineered to exploit that addiction-prone tendency. Hedonic foods are, ba …

Spoiler alert: We’re going to start with the end of this article by Martina M. Cartwright, Ph.D., R.D., followed by a relevant real-life fact. The title is, “Separating Super Obese Kids from Their Parents: Solution or Problem?,” and it was published in …

In July, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a subscription-only article by Lindsey Murtagh, J.D., M.P.H., and David S. Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D. It is understandable that a doctor and a lawyer have collaborated on a subject that …

The National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST) describes itself this way: Our mission is to ensure that all children, youth, and families have access to high quality programs, activities, and opportunities during non-school hours. We believe that …

We have talked about how parents enable the dependency on hedonic foods by keeping junk food around the house. Unfortunately, that’s not the only way in which careless or misguided parents can hurt their children’s chances for a long life with a health …

In July, U.S. Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge introduced House Resolution 339 that would designate September 2011 as the second annual National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month (COAM), as seen in this short announcement. It was she, along with U.S. Rep. …

Back about a year ago, we looked at the efforts being made to boot Ronald McDonald out of his job as spokesclown for fast food, especially when kids are the audience. After the company had denied that Ronald sells food to kids, Corporate Accountability …

This has been an overview of what happens at the intersection of electronic media and the struggles of individuals to deal with their weight issues, body image issues, food issues, addiction issues, food addiction issues, and the obesity epidemic in ge …

What kinds of suggestions do recovering food addicts pass along to each other through the numerous communication channels that make up the world of social networking? “Fashion Meets Food,” suggests a book called 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food …

All over the Web, people are sharing thoughts and emotions about their unhealthful and unnatural relationship with food, and especially their realization that food addiction is real. Unfortunately, many of these confessions are long on what the afflict …