I know that blog posts should be short, but I so often struggle to combine brevity with complete, rounded thoughts. I also indulge in little preludes, such as the one you just read. Anyway, here's an attempt at shorter:

One absolute invoked by those who speak of the "food police" is the primacy of individual and corporate rights. End of discussion. I value my rights, too, but they don't prevent me from seeing all the harm that unfettered junk food marketing to kids, and to the rest of us, is doing.

Another excerpt from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity's f.a.c.t.s. report, which looks at food advertising directed at children:

McDonald’s and Burger King have pledged to improve food marketing to children. However, both restaurants increased their volume of TV advertising from 2007 to 2009. Preschoolers saw 21 percent more ads for McDonald’s and 9 percent more for Burger King, and children viewed 26 percent more ads for McDonald’s and 10 percent more for Burger King.

HEIDI SNYDER, 46, of Port Townsend, Wash., is a certified nutrition consultant and a holistic health educator. She is fabulously versed in both the constituents and the wholeness of food, as I rediscovered when we both attended the Society of Food Addiction Professionals conference recently in Houston. Before we parted on Sunday, I asked her to play my typical short-question interview game, in which the questions — and, by my request, the answers — are 10 words or less. Remember, please: No counting. It’s a goal, not a rule.

This is slightly off my usual beat, but I find the question interesting enough to take the time; I hope you do too.

Does God want us to be vegetarians?

I engaged in a discussion on the topic recently with Liz Oliver, my niece’s fiancee, and found it both interesting and, at least so far, without conclusion.

As you may know from reading in the past here, seeking and trying to follow God’s will is central to my ability not only to eat healthy but to live productively and serenely.

I can't say I understand how it works, or its implications, but I am intrigued by this story about European scientists working on metabolic typing, which the story says could lead to personalized nutrition.

I cannot more highly commend this post by nutritionist Kristin Wartman, which I encountered at Grist, though a tag at its bottom says a version ran at civileats.com.

Marion Nestle, the doyenne of food, food politics, and food policy, has a number of post analyzing the new dietary guidelines, including this one and this one. She is da bomb.

At dinner last weekend in Houston, on a break with compadres from the Society of Food Addiction Professionals, I heard about a drug that was coming out any day, and it turns out, it's not!

Writing in the Las Vegas Review Journal, Kristi Eaton covers the range of binge-eating disorder, and includes a passage on me and my experience. I have never been diagnosed, but certainly I could have been had the diagnosis existed when I was doing that sort of thing.

I believe I've mentioned the third annual meeting of the Society of Food Addiction Professionals, which runs from Friday through Sunday this week in Houston. I'm attending for the third time, and will be master of ceremonies for the second year, a task I'm anticipating eagerly.