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.

New York is contemplating a penny-per-ounce tax on sugared drinks. Here's how New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg justified his support to a state Senate committee:

“Today, more than half the residents of New York City, and nearly 40 percent of our public school students, are overweight, many of them seriously so. That puts them dangerously on track to contracting diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, asthma, depression, and other serious health problems later in their lives.

A study in the Journal of the American Medical Society, reviewing CDC figures, says that obesity has leveled off. Though it's based on data I accept as credible, I do have to say that what I see at the mall, at a ballgame, or at the airport, I still see a lot of overweight people. Maybe I'm just looking for them, based on my sensitivities.

But what made me want to comment is this:

But for the Democracy Institute, a free market think tank, the new data in the JAMA exposes the myth of the obesity epidemic.

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.

Yeah, OK, so I've been MIA forever, and probably, that's likely to continue. Georgie's family leave ends today, and I'll be finally taking on the full reality of what I set out to do when I left the Globe almost three years ago — be the full-time caregiver for my child. (His name is Joe; you can view photos here if you want.)

I received this over the transom, and am happy to pass it along. I know no one personally who has reached out to ABA, but I do know people who have gotten help from food-related 12 Step groups, and I could not endorse them more strongly.

Don'tcha hate people who say that? Yeah, me too, but it doesn't make me not one of those people sometimes. Anyway...

I don't have much time — I'm between feedings for my son, Joseph Fulton Prager, who was born about 22 hours ago — but I wanted to note that the so-called "Smart Choices" program, which was devised by the food industry allegedly to allow quick-glance assurance that a certain food product was based on sound nutrition, had suspended its labeling activity because the feds said they were intending to investigate programs like theirs.

Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general of Connecticut, has been around a very long time — he was my AG for awhile, and I moved out of the state 16 years ago. He's got a very good record of monitoring corporations and bringing them before the bar, perhaps most prominently when he helped bring suit against the tobacco industry for its deceptive advertising to children.