Can Microbiome Awareness Solve Everything?
A fecal bacteria transplant, to make an obese human lean—what a bizarre notion! But what if it turns out to be valid? Should we all immediately rejoice and declare the war on obesity won? Absolutely not. Even when equipped with winning microbes, people are susceptible to all kinds of competing influences. In the Gordon lab […]
How to Observe Childhood Obesity Awareness Month
Much of our current understanding of the childhood obesity crisis comes from highly respected institutions. To pick a random example, after research was done at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, the authors made suggestions about what two different groups should do. They would like to see a collaboration between the […]
Childhood Obesity Awareness Should Focus on Prevention
One year ago, during Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, the most recent Childhood Obesity Prevention Summit was attended by nearly 300 state and local policy makers, and even some representatives of federal agencies. Other advocates of childhood obesity prevention included members of community organizations, as well as academics and professionals. The public relations material described the […]
Childhood Obesity Awareness and Scratch Cooking
Once again, September is Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, because the problem is still with us. According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 17% of American children are obese, and a lot of them are preschool-age kids. These youngsters face a lifetime — and an unnecessarily shortened one, at that — of physical discomfort, medical problems, and […]
Year-Round Pet Obesity Awareness
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, threatened, anxious, confused, or fearful, a dog might stop to scratch itself or chew up a shoe. A […]
Awareness Month, Childhood Obesity Style
For several years now, September has been the National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month in America. Lauren Rossen, Ph.D., explains the concept, beginning with an assertion that, awareness-wise, we still have a long way to go. One out of every three kids — that’s the official word on how many are overweight or obese. About half […]
Food Addiction Awareness — Important and Growing
Over the past couple of years, despite resistance to the food addiction paradigm, many different researchers have been making the connection between obesity and addiction. In a series of programs about addiction, National Public Radio brought listeners the tidings from Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobiology Ralph DiLeone, who spoke of the long-term changes that […]
Obesity Awareness or Discrimination?
A couple of days ago, we looked at the state of Georgia’s childhood obesity billboards, but, believe it or not, they are only the tip of a very large iceberg, consisting of what some see as a national trend that is headed in exactly the wrong direction. AllVoices contributor Anne Hart put together a very […]
Childhood Obesity Awareness Month Questions
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 observed? How do Americans feel about it? Does it accomplish anything? Two organizations […]
Childhood Obesity Awareness Month – Where Are We Now?
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 time? As it turns out, quite a few interesting things have occurred, and even some promising ones. […]