I was listening to Ira Flatow interview Rob Lustig on a Science Friday podcast when I heard Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UC Berkeley, make a really good point.

Big Food spinmeisters subvert the libertarian viewpoint to “keep Big Brother from telling me what to eat” as a way to avoid any fetter on its ability to sell its products, when Big Food is already telling us what to eat! Read more »

A finding whose significance I missed during Dr. Timothy Brewerton’s presentation last Friday morning at the Binge Eating Disorder Association’s national conference: The tremendous confluence in men of substance-use disorders, eating disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

According to Brewerton, 88 percent of men of who exhibit eating disorders and PTSD also exhibit other substance-use disorders. This compares with about 35 percent of women, and is dramatically higher for rates of PTSD or eating disorders alone. Read more »

So is weight loss an important measure of whether eating-disorder treatment is working? Even getting past the eating-disorder corners that don’t address overweight, the answer is apparently not.

During her opening remarks at the Binge Eating Disorder Association national conference last Friday, founder Chevese Turner argued for a definition of recovery that doesn’t include it. Later, during a researchers’ panel, Denise Wilfley of the Washington University School of Medicine, chimed in, saying that “if someone is having a stable weight, that’s a very important outcome.” Read more »

It’s too facile to call it political correctness, but I noted a strong effort by some speakers at the Binge Eating Disorder Association’s national conference last weekend to say the right thing. Here are some examples:

* ”There’s no such thing as junk food.” I’m not sure whose ox is gored by saying otherwise! My goodness, junk food not only exists, we celebrate it! It’s such an example of shared insanity. We would never eat actual junk, but we eat junk food and consider it a pleasure (guilty or otherwise). Read more »

Perhaps it’s only self-flattery when I say that one of the ways in which I contribute most to discourse is my honesty. Believe me, there’s enough I don’t disclose, but I believe in the power of disclosure to move myself and others forward, even when I don’t look great in the process.

I’m going to test that again in this post.

As a result of attending the Binge Eating Disorder Association’s national conference over the weekend in Bethesda, Md., I’m revisiting some of my biases, which include: Read more »

In my last post, a researcher found a more specific predictor of binge eating disorder (and other conditions) than most people would have assumed. In this post, the researcher is Timothy Brewerton, a psychiatrist in South Carolina, and he spoke on trauma. Read more »

Before Friday morning’s presentation at the BEDA national conference by Marian Tanofsky-Kraff, I would have assumed that binge eating in children is an excellent predictor of developing binge-eating disorder and other conditions. Read more »

I use Pocket to save articles to read later. It is helpful but also a crutch with its own faults, or, I should say, a crutch for my own faults to lean on. Which is to say, I put stuff in my to-do basket, and there it sits, not getting done. Read more »

It isn't officially out until Sunday, but already, 5 people have sent me pointers to The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, which leads the New York Times Magazine this Sunday. I'll have comments about the story in a day or two, but I had just enough time today to share this reader comment from Expat in Germany: Read more »

An aphorism states that one definition of insanity is endlessly repeating a behavior and expecting the outcome, this time, to change.

I am about to prove, again, that I remain, by that definition, completely bonkers. Read more »