We had a bit of excitement over at "Fat Boy Thin Man" central today. Jennifer Larue Huget, "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy" column at the Washington Post, with whom I've spoken a couple of times, posted a query in The Check-up, a feature on the paper's website asking, "Is food addiction real?"

The Oxford scholar Christopher Fairburn would have to be considered one of the world's foremost authorities on eating disorders. His bio includes:  twice a fellow at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences; a governor of the Wellcome Trust, the largest international biomedical research foundation; recipient of the 2002 Outstanding Researcher Award by the Academy for Eating Disorders.

Do I have hope? Yes, I have hope because, as Michael Pollan wrote in "The Omnivore’s Dilemma," what it means to say that something is “unsustainable” is that it will stop. And we have an unsustainable food supply.

The speaker is Joan Dye Gussow, "the mother of the sustainable food movement," as ID'd by writer Paula Crossfield, setting up her interview on Grist (and, previously, on  Civil Eats).

The most current report by the World Health Organization estimates that in 2005:
* 400 million people in the world were obese,
* About 1.6 billion people 15 or older were overweight.
* At least 20 million kids under 5 were overweight.
WHO estimates that by 2015...
* About 2.3 billion people will be overweight.
* About 700 million will obese.
And, the planet groans.

For 3BL Media, the corporate social responsibility site, I wrote a column on the practice of some to frame the obesity problem solely as an issue of personal responsibility, without recognizing the responsibility of others. 

Another excerpt of findings by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, from its recent f.a.c.t.s. report on kids and eating.

Another tenet of my argument (see prev. post) is that insurance-supported rehab must be available to food addicts in the same measure as it is for other addictions. I reached that conclusion via experience: I was in the eating disorders unit of a psychiatric hospital in 1991, and it remains a cornerstone of my recovery, which is in its 20th year.

A tenet of my argument about obesity is that Americans don't lack for knowledge about nutrition, but choose not to apply it because nutrition is for sissies.

I could be wrong about that.

A poll by Consumer Reports Health says that 9 out of 10 Americans consider their diet  "somewhat," "very," or "extremely" healthy. Yeah, right. Fattest nation on earth, one of whose chief cultural exports to the world is fast food.

One of the dodges that food-industry lobbyists and apologists use is that those foods are fine when eaten occasionally as part of a balanced food plan. I would dispute even that, because crap food is crap food, regardless of how often it is consumed. But certainly, consuming more of it is worse than consuming less of it.

Following on my previous post, I take note of Carey Goldberg's post last week at the Commonhealth blog, where she is co-proprietor. She commented: