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 …

In the old days, it was clear what the addictors or addictogens were: heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, alcohol, and nicotine. Then came the recognition of unhealthy and counter-productive attachment to activities that had seemed neutral or even benign, a …

Recently, Childhood Obesity News looked at a fascinating study in which alternative high school students – with at least one behavioral “strike” against them – were interviewed three years after going through a drug abuse prevention project. The resear …

As a doctoral student at the University of Würzburg in Germany, Adrian Meule was influenced by Dr. Pretlow’s “Addiction to Highly Pleasurable Food as a Cause of the Childhood Obesity Epidemic: A Qualitative Internet Study” in Eating Disorders: The Jour …

Psychologist Chris Crandall of the University of Kansas has noticed that the fundamental American values of individual choice and self-determination have a dark side: We blame people for everything that happens to them – being poor, being obese. It’s t …

The headline, “America rejoice! Being fat may actually make you healthier,” can brighten up one’s day, but the claim needs careful investigation. That particular headline appeared in the New York Post over Susannah Calahan’s review of cardiologist Carl …

Edward Archer, Ph.D, of the University of Alabama School of Public Health, has a major difference of opinion with most obesity researchers: he blames evolution for the obesity epidemic. Published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Archer’s paper is said t …

At the sight of morbidly obese people riding scooters through grocery or big box stores, many onlookers shake their heads in bewilderment. Opportunists make videos, a type of public shaming. Fat-positive activists say, “What’s it to ya? My body, my fat …

Genetics, or fatlogic? Condition, or condishun? It seems like a new “fat gene” is revealed every other week. Nevertheless skeptics, many of them formerly fat, accuse their obese brethren of lying, or at the very least, of self-deception. The derisive t …

It is generally accepted that about 2% of obesity is caused by a pre-existing genetic condition that a person can’t do anything about. (As contrasted with a “condishun,” the Reddit discussion website’s term for cop-out.) There is a wide gap between tha …

Back in 2011, Reuters reported on a study led by Tim Spector of King’s College London, which resulted in the discovery that the KLF14 gene is the mastermind of the obesity epidemic, ruling other genes like a mob boss and ordering them to wreak havoc in …