As an author, reporter, blogger, and professional speaker, I've staked a lot on the value of public discourse. And that's why this little turd from Hershey Corp. is so offensive.

“It came down to a matter of the FDA believing that the chocolate syrup is a snack food, and that we believe it is more accurately categorized as a milk modifier, similar to products such as Ovaltine and Nesquik that have been fortified for decades,” Beckman said.

Perhaps it’s stating the obvious, but like just about everything else is capitalist America, money is at the center of our obesity crisis.

For the food industry, the issue is profit, of course. In such a thin-margin business, the only way to increase profit is to increase sales. No wonder they spend tens of billions on marketing annually.

But as a recovering food addict, I have an entirely different perspective on food and money, and that’s the untold thousands I spent to get my substances, completely disregarding prudence.

One of the communities I want to speak to works for wellness in corporate environments, and my story in Corporate Wellness reaches out to them. In it, I tell how EAP was one of the very first stops on my road to recovery from extreme obesity.

This story from FoodNavigator-USA is an interesting study in selective perception, if also being a crock.

The question of its headline is, “Is the food industry under attack from an NGO/media complex?” To which I will quickly answer, “yes, but no.”

My summer of not blogging/not tweeting/barely FB-ing continues, as I tend to other portions of my outreach to the world.

One part of that is the stories I've been writing in the Boston Globe food section, which almost always spring from the sustainable-food world. The latest entry, on the locavores' increasing interest in natural fermentation as the way to preserve summer's bounty, is published today.

For some reason, I keep going back to France, even though I haven't had the best of results. I gave this speech to my Toastmasters Club.

My first point today is that obesity is not a disease.

Disease can cause obesity, but to me, obesity is not a disease but a condition —  a result of heredity, behaviors, and often of choices (though not always).

The disease I’m thinking of in that last sentence is, of course, food addiction, which also goes to “... choices (but not always).” Food addicts do engage in behaviors that often result in obesity, but untreated, they (we) don’t have the same power of choice that you have — and that you probably think we should have.

Scant blogging lately as I give attention to other things. It's just temporary.

But in the meantime, here's my latest Globe story on food from a sustainability perspective, or is it sustainability from a food perspective?

Yes, the Globe story is one of the "other things" I've been giving my attention to.

“Tackling childhood obesity: What role should industry take?”

That’s the headline atop foodnavigator-usa.com’s story from a panel at the Institute for Food Technologists’ annual meeting last week in Las Vegas, and I had to think, “are you kidding me?”

I’ve written about the word “obesity” before, as some sort of bogey-word best not spake, in case someone might take offense. I concluded in that post that, OK, if using a different word would allow someone to get help they’d otherwise shun, fine. But you can see from my phrasing in the first sentence, I’m still working on meaning it.