Any effort at persuasion through public relations can fail if it is perceived as shaming, and public health campaigns that rely on stigmatization can backfire.

If one third of our kids were suffering from asthma due to air pollution, we’d take draconian measures. Why is childhood obesity different?

Many drinkers and smokers consciously or unconsciously believe that they should not, so they’re OK with “sin taxes” — but it’s more complicated with junk food.

With tobacco and alcohol, the government both encourages and chastises their existence, sale and use, while profiting from the sale.

Portion control is all-important, and can be practiced both at home and out in the world. Banning “all-you-can-eat” restaurants might help.

Overeating is as much a threat as drinking and smoking to Americans’ health and the national budget. Can the methods used to fight any one of them cross over?

Clamping down on smoking in hospitals led to the first industry-wide ban of workplace smoking, and the idea caught on in other businesses.

Childhood Obesity News has been looking at measures taken around smoking, and, to a lesser extent, around alcohol, that are transferrable to obesity prevention.

Healthful meals, parental education, and portion control, to give three examples, are essential elements of Dr. Pretlow’s W8Loss2Go program.

Attempting to make overeating socially unacceptable, like smoking, seems like a good idea, but public relations experts do not always strike the right note.

Paid tobacco product placement in movies, and the TV and radio commercials were eventually banned. How did it affect the Americans’ tolerance for smoking?

Campaigns that promote healthy eating and exercise may be counterproductive. Those programs should instead educate kids as to why they overeat, and how to cope.

The proposed Harvest Box program for SNAP recipients was widely criticized as a “solution without a problem.”

Some of the suggested obesity causes stem from international trade policies that form the global food system, the market economy, and agricultural policies.

It doesn’t matter how much food might be available if people can’t afford to buy it or don’t have a way to bring the food from where it is to their homes.

How Portland, Oregon, addressed the issue of food deserts is a striking example of what a city can do when it puts its mind to a task.

When it comes to food deserts in major cities, there are problems that have solutions, and there are solutions that have problems.

If customers want fresh produce, why are the owners of groceries and convenience stores not stocking it already, out of sheer self-interest?

Many cities have made all-encompassing plans to address their food desert dilemmas. A massive one was conceived some years back by the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) in Portland, Oregon. The document began by saying, “This project consider …

There is debate about whether living in a food desert is associated with unhealthy eating and food buying practices.

Food is widely available even in the most depressed and oppressed neighborhoods, but it’s likely to be high-calorie, processed pseudo-food.

The child obesity epidemic in the U.S. seems to have taken a back seat. In the U.K., however, dedicated warriors continue to try and stop the enablers.

Coca-Cola Co. and others in the beverage industry are under criticism for not doing enough to reduce sugar in drinks and many other reasons.

Coca-Cola Co. has a longstanding practice of paying dietitians to tout the benefits of high-sugar beverages, while not even all disclose who is sponsoring them.

Corporate philanthropy provides an enormous amount of respectable cover for transactions that closely resemble bribery.

From all appearances, it looks like soda corporations are not helping public health one bit, despite the lucrative sponsorships they grant.

As agencies lose their funding, Coke and other industry players are encouraging the government to do less and less in the way of either research or policing.

Whatever the soda industry is doing, it’s working. Kids in the U.K. (between ages 7 and 15) spend more money on soda than they do on games, toys, and hobbies.

Brenda Fitzgerald, the former Public Heath Commissioner of Georgia and head of CDC, had owned stock in several tobacco companies, resulting in her resignation.

The Campaign to End Obesity brings together the leaders from academia, public health, industry, and the legislators, to help reverse the obesity epidemic.