The Childhood Obesity Perfect Storm, Part 3
We have talked about the Perfect Storm concept before. This is what happens when a whole lot of conditions converge to cause a large problem. Probably no single one of them alone would have done it. But when they gang up and come at us all at once, we’re toast. The childhood obesity epidemic seems […]
Yale Childhood Obesity Study Explained by Dr. Ayala
When a big load of research comes to fruition and becomes a published study, there is nothing finer than an articulate professional who can break it down for you. Dr. Ayala Laufer-Cahana is splendid at doing just that. The controversial new report is from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, located at Yale […]
Bob Greene, Oprah's Healthstyle Guru
Oprah Winfrey is a mentor and role model for millions, so naturally it makes sense to check out who she gets her advice from: trainer Bob Greene. The Best Life is his website, and we’re here to find out what he’s been telling Oprah. Greene’s program has four main prongs: healthy meal plans, simple baby […]
Solutions: Families and Communities
Health writer Amanda Gardner recently wrote about a report completed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America’s Health. As Gardner reminds us in Business Week, Obesity is one of the biggest public health crises in the country. Rising rates of obesity over past decades is one of the major factors behind […]
Food Addiction Paradigm Early Adopters Gettinger and Winfrey
We’ve been going on and on about the difficulty of introducing the concept of food addiction. And it is in many ways an uphill push, but not a hopeless one. Today, we salute some people who have opened their minds enough to look through the psychological food dependence-addiction lens, and see a way out of […]
Why Parents Don't Want to Hear About Food Addiction, Part 3
Once the food addiction paradigm has been introduced, some conclusions follow, whether fair or not is yet to be decided. One conclusion is that parents who leave a child’s food addiction untreated, to the point of morbid obesity, are just as culpable as parents who encourage and enable a nicotine habit in a minor. Time.com […]
Ditch One Problem Food at a Time
In a nicely balanced report for the Houston Chronicle, Kim Morgan explores the question of whether food addiction is real. She interviews a counselor who has his doubts, and a counselor who leads food addiction recovery support groups modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous. Dr. David Kessler’s excellent book, The End of Overeating, is quoted to good […]
Denial Among Parents of Overweight Children
by Meredee Lloyd A recent poll conducted in Minnesota found that most adults there are in denial about their true weight status. They also tend to overlook overweight and obesity in their own children. In fact, some parents in this poll were concerned about their kids being underweight when in actuality they were within the […]
You and Umami: What the Heck Are We Eating?
We recently commented here on an article titled “Bacon as a Weapon of Mass Destruction,” by Arun Gupta, one of The Indypendent’s founding editors. Democracy Now host Amy Goodman was impressed by that essay too, and consequently invited Gupta to be on her show, along with Dr. David Kessler. Arun Gupta talks about the highly […]
Bad Intestinal Flora Could Be an Obesity Villain
In the AlterNet article titled “Poop is the most important indicator of your health,” author Anneli Rufus learns about the human intestine from Mitch Klaper, and passes the knowledge on to us. The vegan physician rhapsodizes over the exquisite functionality of the human intestine, and describes the fasting regime he has developed, which may not […]