Edward Archer, Ph.D., studies obesity at the Nutrition and Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His fields of expertise are many—computational physiology, psychology, nutrition, exercise science, and epidemiology. Yet, in …

Once upon a time, Ruben Meerman lost 15 kg (more than 30 pounds) and wondered where the weight had gone. The doctors he asked didn’t seem to know. He conducted a survey of 150 health professionals, of whom “more than half thought that fat was converted …

MyFitnessPal is a popular phone app that reveals the number of calories in a serving of any of the 5 million foods whose vital statistics are stored in database. When Randy Dotinga wrote about a study focusing on the app, he noted that the study “doesn …

In his paper written for the journal Eating Disorders, Dr. Pretlow stated that today’s youth appear to be “victims of boredom, stress, and depression in an addictive, comfort food environment” and added: Accordingly, a perfect storm may be contributing …

In the struggle to reverse the childhood obesity trend, one of the most pervasive tropes about junk food is to “tax it like tobacco.” In 2008, at the National Childhood Obesity Congress, Dr. Pretlow met Steven K. Galson, who was at the time the acting …

Stress triggers the fight-or-flight reflex, and it doesn’t even require a stressor as obvious as a pinched tail. Boredom is a little-recognized and under-appreciated stressor, which many children and adults intuitively self-medicate by chewing gum. The …

Childhood Obesity News has been looking back at Dr. Pretlow’s presentations at various conferences throughout the years. Let’s resume with 2011, when “Addiction to Highly Pleasurable Food as a Cause of the Childhood Obesity Epidemic” was the topic at t …

Slender women are preferred by many as “the face” of a company Recently, Childhood Obesity News looked at one of the many reasons to help children maintain normal weight. Researchers have presented convincing evidence that obese boys will grow up to ea …

Childhood Obesity News has mentioned before that the young people taking part in the pilot studies of the W8Loss2Go smartphone app are strangely unexpressive about their unhappiness. This is puzzling because Weigh2Rock, Dr. Pretlow’s immensely helpful …

Christopher Bergland is connected with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, an organization primarily concerned with the childhood obesity epidemic. Its project is the Healthy Schools Program, which operates in 27,000 American schools. He is also a …

Dr. Pretlow’s latest paper, “Treatment of Child/Adolescent Obesity Using the Addiction Model: A Smartphone App Pilot Study,” will soon appear in the highly-respected print publication Childhood Obesity and can also be found online. Today, let’s gain a …

It becomes more and more evident that all addictions are one. Apparently, whichever addictogenic behavior or substance gets to a person first will lay claim to an addiction-prone person, and if that addiction is ostensibly cured, another one will step …

Addiction guilt is one of the facets of Dr. Pretlow’s investigation of childhood obesity, and today we look at what several experts say about guilt, and the subtle differences between guilt and shame. These observations include an assertion that might …

A new paper, Treatment of Child/Adolescent Obesity Using the Addiction Model: A Smartphone App Pilot Study,  will appear in the next print edition of the journal Childhood Obesity. This publication signals another advance in spreading the idea of using …

Everyone eats breakfast every day, at least in the literal sense. The first meal, no matter what time it is consumed, breaks the fast, or period of abstention from eating that includes sleep. But conventionally, breakfast takes place in the morning, wh …

It often seems like there’s very little solid ground anywhere in the world of obesity. Breakfast, for those lucky enough to have food available, is a subject that never ceases to enthrall people concerned with weight loss. For instance, do the results …

“Weight cycling” is a classier term for yo-yo dieting. Linda Bacon, Ph.D., is typical of the experts who say that yo-yo weight cycles are common to dieters and do harm to health. In the opposite corner is a New England Journal of Medicine article that …

The topic of meal size versus meal frequency has not yet been exhausted. Neither has the thin or possibly nonexistent line between frequent small meals and snacks. Many authorities have opinions for or against snacking, and many researchers have garner …

A nosology is a system of disease classification, and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is promoting a new one, the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC). Yesterday, Childhood Obesity News outlined the basic characteristics of the systems alread …

The W8Loss2Go smartphone application is designed to halt food cravings and stop the urge to snack between meals. The 5-month program starts by eliminating the most tempting “problem foods” one or two at a time, a process which was shown by the prelimin …

With one of the major eating festivals on the horizon, Childhood Obesity News looks to Scientific American’s Ferris Jabr for information on the toxicity (or not) of sugar. This topic also fits into the “everything you know is wrong” niche for contested …

Or maybe it isn’t. As Childhood Obesity News has discussed, a person is apt to occasionally think, “Everything I know is wrong,” especially when encountering contradictory headlines about the same topic. This is particularly true in the world of weight …

In the spirit of the previous post, “Why Everything You Know is Wrong,”  here are some contrarian viewpoints on various foodstuffs that are said to affect childhood obesity. Carbohydrates: Kris Gunnars collected a number of “debunked nutrition myths,” …

“Why Everything You Know is Wrong.” Once in a while, Childhood Obesity News puts up a post with some variation of that title. Of course, everything we know isn’t wrong–but how do we know? How can we be sure? As Dr. David Katz (who has been a Childhood …

Marmite on Toast What causes obesity? This is a fertile area for both speculation and research, and certainly a place to find flaky fringe notions. Out of the hundred or so causes that have been suggested for obesity, at least a few are bound to be rid …

Last Supper   In the Season 6 finale of the immensely popular TV series Mad Men, advertising executive Don Draper talks about his boyhood fondness for Hershey bars. It’s a saccharine, stereotypical tale reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting, a …

Under the current model (as set forth in the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) for what used to be known as addiction, unhealthy dependency has become measured on a graduated scale. “Substance Use Disorder” is rated by degrees rangi …

After the most recent Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index was published, an uncredited writer at Conscienhealth.org questioned the means by which the 10 fattest and leanest states, and similar lists, are generated. The page states that “most of the cove …

When interviewed by Marc Maron, Saturday Night Live cast member Julia Sweeney revealed how alcoholism  affected some members of her family, but not her: Sometimes I think I’m so lucky that my drug was food, actually, because you can survive that. Unles …

Many health professionals believe that all addictions are one addiction. Furthermore, some believe that all addictions are symptoms. The addiction is not the problem, but the outward and visible sign of the problem. And unless the problem is eliminated …