My issue, as much as any, is legitimacy for food addiction, based on my personal experience recovering from it. For so many people, that is the place to start, and perhaps even to end: address the physical, emotional, and spiritual deficits that are getting in the way of peace, happiness, and health.

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...

I checked in this morning with my new pal, research analyst J. Justin Wilson at the Center for Consumer Freedom, a Washington lobbying group supported by restaurants and food companies. He recently had an op-ed published in the Witchita Eagle filled with the half truths one can expect from a paid spokesman for a private commercial interest. Such voices employ the tone and terms of reason while not being reasonable at all.

Another short interview: I ask questions of 10 words or less, and ask respondents to answer with the same brevity. The theme of the current series is people who are working in eating disorder recovery.

MARTY LERNER, 60, Davie, Fla.

Chief executive and clinical director, Milestones in Recovery

Not much news here, but I wanted to mention I heard from my good friends (whom I'm never met) at b.good, the growing burger empire in Greater Boston: Starting in a couple of weeks, their beef, which they already hand-grind each morning, will all come from local family farms.

Long-time readers will recognize this format: I ask interview subjects questions of 10 words or less, and ask them to respond in kind (please, no counting). I've done about a dozen in this style on people working in sustainability, and now I hope to do a set with people working on some part of the obesity problem.

PHIL WERDELL, 68, Sarasota, Fla.
Cofounder, Acorn Food Dependency Recovery Services
What did you want to be when you grew up? “A leader.”
Someone you admired in childhood, outside your family
“Robert McNamara.”
Someone you admire today, outside your family “Bill Wilson,” cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
What do you do for a living? “I work intensively with late-stage food addicts and write about food addiction.”

If you've read this blog even once before, you likely know I used to lean to the left, but now am permanentaly bent that way. I favor actions like sugared soda taxes as a way to encourage people not to drink them — I think of them as a market solution to a community problem. I don't purposely single out sugared sodas, but consider them an excellent beachhead because they add empty calories without delivering any nutritional benefit.

Restricting sugary foods could lead to overeating, according to a new rat study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    Many people try to lose weight by going on a diet. But this new research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, suggests that restricting certain foods for a set time period in the manner of dieting could cause withdrawal symptoms similar to those associated with drug abuse and increase cravings for those foods. This could lead periodic dieters to gorge on forbidden foods when they have the opportunity, the researchers suggest.

Oy frickin' vey.

The implication of this seems to be, don't ever stop eating this stuff, because it'll go bad for you when you come back, and you will.

I am not, by any stretch, the only voice supporting recognition for food addiction. But since I'm the only writer here, it might sometimes seem that way.

A proposal to raise taxes by two cents per ounce on sweetened bottled and canned soda won't make it out of committee.