Food Is One of the Top Five Addictions
Addict Nation: An Intervention for America is a book which examines the country’s leading addictions. Not surprisingly, food addiction is #2. (The other most prevalent addictions are prescription pills, crime and punishment, shopping, and technology.) What do the authors say about food addiction? Millions of Americans have been self-medicating with fat and sugar for so […]
Reviews, Presentations, Publications
Here is a very exciting development. Dr. Robert Pretlow’s “Addiction To Highly Pleasurable Food as a Cause of The Childhood Obesity Epidemic: A Qualitative Internet Study” will be published in the summer edition of Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention. The study, which will appear in Volume 19, #4 (In Press) July/Aug/Sept 2011, […]
Many Find Gluten Addictive
Although “7 Worst Supermarket Rip-Offs” was first published by Men’s Health, authors David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding make it clear that they are passing along wisdom found in Eat This, Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide and Cook This, Not That! What wisdom might that be? The lowdown on a popular snack and an energy drink, […]
Can Veggies Be Comfort Food?
When we are stressed, depressed, lonely, downhearted, or suffering from any other kinds of bad feelings, we often tend to self-medicate with comfort food, in hopes that it will cheer us up. But comfort foods are so often laden with sugar, fat, carbohydrates, and special chemicals to make them taste extra yummy. Like mother’s milk, […]
Is Childhood Obesity Inescapable?
With a title like this, you have to read the story: “Childhood obesity almost ‘inevitable’, say experts” (link is ours). Which experts? Could this be? Must we resign ourselves to the prospect of the ever-enlarging children? Journalist Madeleine Brindley has been talking to people who fear this might be the case. In Wales, as in […]
Many Doctors Believe Food Can Be Addictive
Can food be addictive in the same way as, for instance, heroin? Many doctors believe that it can. While some people are not very addiction-prone, others are, but are too busy being junkies involving some other substance, and food doesn’t do a thing for them. Not every person who eats is a food addict. But […]
Let’s Hear It for the Early Adopters
It’s always a pleasure to discover another person who endorses the view that there is such a thing as food addiction; who, in other words, looks at the childhood obesity epidemic through the psychological food dependence-addiction lens. The medical profession tends to resist the idea, sometimes strenuously. Dr. Pretlow’s term for this unfortunate state of […]
Do Bad Genes Cause Big Jeans?
In the area of childhood obesity, does genetic research lead to a light at the end of the tunnel, or a dead end? Is the whole genetic thing just a cop-out for people who are in denial about their food addiction? A couple of years ago, Maggie Fox of Reuters reported on the activities of […]
Young Activists, the Anti-Obesity Krew
The more you follow the news about childhood obesity, the more unusual facts you learn. For instance, think of all the fruit and vegetables eaten by the Americans. An awful lot of that farm produce is grown in the “nation’s salad bowl.” Yet the San Joaquin Valley is California’s worst locale in terms of “food […]
Dietary Fat as Obesity Villain
Let’s see what Dr. Mark Hyman, founder of The UltraWellness Center, has to say. We have quoted him before, by the way, on the subject of food addiction. He and Dr. Pretlow share an interesting characteristic. Neither of them are prejudiced against what some medical practitioners dismissively call “anecdotal evidence.” On the contrary, they are […]