Category: Food Addiction

As with any other subject important to humans, personal testimony carries (excuse the expression) a lot of weight. Today’s peek at social networking includes examples of individual stories meant to hearten and encourage others who have had enough of ob …

We talked about the Internet & American Life Project from Pew Research Center, which found that online social networking has generally good effects on people. Of course, it would not be at all surprising if obese people excelled at electronic commu …

Dr. Pretlow sees two main issues in dealing with the childhood obesity epidemic. To fight it, we need to: 1) Get obese kids unaddicted to highly palatable foods; and 2) Prevent healthy kids from becoming addicted to start with. We have been looking at …

The overall mission of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project is to explore the impact of the Internet on children, families, and communities. Last month, they released the report “Social networking sites and our lives.” The 85- …

Back in the hunting-and-gathering days of humankind, the only really delicious things to eat were fruits like berries, and honey. Even those were not available at all times or in all climes. Honey and berries advertise their rewards right up front and …

A meme is like a mental gene, a little packet of information that carries a cultural idea from one mind to another. The “perfect storm” meme illustrates a truth that has been around forever, in an original way that can be adapted to many situations. Bo …

Entertainment writer Jennifer Graham Kizer composed a splendid history of actress Kirstie Alley’s second career as an obese person: Showtime’s 2005 funny-but-short-lived scripted series, ‘Fat Actress,’ loosely chronicled the Emmy winner’s travails as a …

Actress Kirstie Alley is a wild woman who has freely admitted to an interviewer, “It was the greatest thing in the world getting fat.” But being fat? Not so much. Still, if there is one public figure (besides Oprah Winfrey) whose every ounce of gain an …

We told you. Didn’t we tell you? Now, here is Alicia Chang saying the same thing, a propos of a Harvard University study which appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine. Its title is “Changes in Diet and Lifestyle and Long-Term Weight Gain in Wom …

A while back, we mentioned that Dr. Pretlow’s latest paper was due to be published by Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention. The future has become the present, and the document is now online. (The print version of Volume 19 #4, July …

As we mentioned before, the definitions of compulsive eating, compulsive overeating, and binge eating are a bit slippery, depending on whom you ask. One clue to the problem is the nature of the food in which people tend to overindulge. Zoe Harcombe, wh …

The thing about compulsive overeating is, there are a lot of things about it. It’s a very hefty subject with many fascinating areas of inquiry. For women, the hormones involved in the monthly cycle are implicated as compulsive-eating triggers. But male …

We left off last time suggesting that maybe it’s time to accept the fact that the widely rumored and much discussed Gateway Drug, spoken of in addiction medicine, is actually sugar. A baby needs to love sugar for survival. Imbibing that liquid, whether …

I have always found it strange that the medical profession does not recognize this problem. I would say the majority of my patients are sugar addicts too, although most only become aware of it when they try to stop it. Those are the words of Frank Lipm …

Every now and then, some part of the food industry proves to be head and shoulders above the rest. In the realm of addictiveness, for instance, one of the unquestioned leaders is Starbucks. Back in 2006, The Wall Street Journal reporter Janet Adamy too …

The illustration on this page could be read in a couple of ways: one person might see a delicious Mother’s Day treat made specially for Mom. Which is probably what the photographer intended. Someone with a darker imagination — and you can picture this …

Kids have a natural talent for identifying baloney. They love to compare what parents say on Monday to what they say (or do!) on Tuesday, and if it doesn’t match up, look out! The average child possesses a highly developed critical sense that is consta …

In the food area, the addiction that people most readily admit to is sugar. The easiest way to convince a person that food addiction is real is to challenge them to quit sugar for a month — in all forms, including high fructose corn syrup and artifici …

It has become obvious that diet and exercise are not the only factors contributing to obesity. There are some physiological states that can make a dangerous difference. Dr. Pretlow says, Such conditions as Cushing’s syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome, and …

Hormones control metabolism, growth, development, the function of tissues, and a person’s mood. We have specialized organs for the production of hormones, and, just to keep things interesting, other organs can also secrete hormones as their second job. …

The more you look into the number one addictive substance behind childhood obesity, the more people you find who have seemingly devoted their entire lives and careers to the specific mission of warning us about it. Take Nancy Appleton, for instance. He …

There is a type of journalism that discourages the public from thinking about certain things. In a print newspaper, a sensitive piece of news can be buried in the third or fourth section. If an announcement might provoke a lot of dissent, it can be hel …

One amazing feature of the childhood obesity epidemic is that so many things correlate with it. When that happens, it’s always very tempting to assume a cause-and-effect relationship. Sometimes the relationship exists, other times not. Of course, poor …

Marching down the left-hand side of the homepage at My Addiction, there is a list of nearly 30 possible addictions. Sugar addiction is not lumped in with food addiction or eating disorders. No, sugar addiction is in a category all its own. And if there …

It has been a bad year for infant cereal. On the last day of 2010, Eryn Brown of the Los Angeles Times reported that a good time to start worrying about a baby’s obesity potential is about nine months. And then, on February 14, Childhood Obesity News g …

In advanced cases of overweight, up to and including morbid obesity, in teenagers and adults, the answer becomes clear. Many, many people are addicted to food in the same way an alcoholic or cocaine addict is hooked. They can only help themselves throu …

The Weigh2Rock website has invited kids aged 18 and under to download the PDF version of Dr. Robert A. Pretlow’s book, Overweight: What Kids Say, for free. Since then, kids residing in countries like Great Britain, Canada, and Australia, as well as the …

Jennifer Joyner is Assignment Editor at WRAL-TV in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and also works in radio, among other pursuits. She also published a book entitled Designated Fat Girl: A Memoir. Starting from morbidly obese at 330 pounds, her book cover …

The online magazine Slate asked its readers for their best ideas about how to shrink childhood obesity. A dozen submissions were picked, reporter Christy Harrison tells us, half of them by the readers themselves. Six more were chosen by a panel of judg …

(Part Two of a Two-Part Post — View Part One) The first part of this post had to do with the fact that the “healthy eating and exercise” approach for ending the childhood obesity epidemic just isn’t working. Compelling new evidence now points to actua …