Yes, readers, you have a right to be confused. The name on the blog is "Sustainably," but pretty much everything I write these days is on food, food policy, obesity, and addiction. As I've written before, there are parallels, but even so, what happened to the sustainability stuff?

And then comes a post like this one, after at least a couple of dozen "off-topic" posts! But I'm just going to live with the dissonance for now, and figure out what to do later. So, anyway...

Unless this is your first visit here, you know that I am convinced that food addiction exists, and that I reserve high dudgeon for the medical establishment for not understanding what I know to be true. (Feel free to make your own judgments about the know-it-all texture of that; I’m not unaware of them.)

They’ve recognized substance use disorders involving tobacco, alcohol, amphetamines, and myriad other chemical dependencies. But not food, not yet.

Joan Ifland, principal organizer of the Promising Practices in Food Addiction conference last weekend in Houston, shared some back-of-the-envelope figuring, and suggested that overeating is responsible for 7 percent of the economy. It went like this:

I fear no contradiction when I say that if you don’t act insanely around food, then you know someone who does. That shouldn’t even stir contention in a nation where 2 of every 3 adults — 145 million of us — are considered overweight (defined as a body/mass index of between 25 and 30) or obese (a BMI over 30).

Here’s a window on that insanity, cited by Diane Rohrbach of Seattle, program director of Food Addiction Recovery Education, during her presentation at the Promising Practices in Food Addiction conference last weekend in Houston: The Cookie Diet. This is an actual product.

The second annual conference on "Promising Practices in Food Addiction Recovery" will be at the end of the month in Houston. The focus this year will be on assessment — refining how the standards measures of addiction can be recognized in problem eaters.

Sponsors include Kay Sheppard, Renaissance Nutrition Center, Turning Point of Tampa, Shades of Hope Treatment Center of Texas, Milestones Eating Disorders Program of Miami, and ACORN Food Dependency Recovery Services of Sarasota. Essentially, these are the, uh, heavyweights of food addiction treatment.

Author and activist Bill McKibben [above] wasn’t only preaching to the choir when he addressed the annual meeting Sunday of the Mass. Climate Action Network, he was among the adoring.

When I think of ecotourism, I think of jungles and rain forests. Get in, get out, leave as little trace as possible.

For her new effort leading travelers overseas to investigate, and work on, sustainability projects, Andrea Atkinson has a different take: “We’re going beyond not leaving a footprint to leaving a positive footprint, having an impact on the place you’re visiting, and leaving that place with knowledge and wisdom useful in your business.”

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, speaks at an MIT Energy Initiative event on Wednesday, Oct. 7, at 4:15. 

The topic will be Copenhagen, but she'll also talk about the prospect for climate-change legislation in Congress. For many of us, the question has become, is the bill good enough. Or rather, is "any" bill worth supporting, at the potential expense of getting nothing at all. I have read on the topic, but yet have a satisfying answer, and hope she'll be able to help on that question.

Wolfgang Feist, founder of the Passivhaus Institut in Germany and co-originator of the Passive House concept, will be the featured speaker at a second annual gathering of Passive House building enthusiasts around Greater Boston.  

Paul Eldrenkamp, the Newton-based builder and building-efficiency leader who helped bring about the first gathering last year, said time, place, and registration fee have not been set, but the site will be near Boston, he says. The fee will pay for Feist's travel expenses.

I have neither the time nor the means to attend this event, but I'd sure like to — Chu, Gore, Pickens, Podesta, and others. The National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 is at UNLV  on Aug. 10.