An irking aspect of conventional wisdom around weight loss, peddled foremostly by many dietitians, is that deprivation doesn’t work, so moderation is the only path that can succeed.

I have some sympathy with the notion, I suppose — I don’t like to be deprived if what’s dear to me, either. But I reject the premise.

The second in this series of videos, all offering eating advice without hardly mentioning food, advises getting a clear plan of eating, and then following it as if its a prescription, not a suggestion.

Olivier De Schutter is the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, and one of my new best friends, even if we've never interacted. Via the BC (British Columbia) Food Security Gateway and the COMFOOD e-mail loop, I've just read De Schutter's five ways to tackle disastrous diets, and it hits bullseye after bullseye.

The question of whether high fructose corn syrup is a particularly noxious substance is being fought on many fronts, including currently in a Los Angeles courtroom. Corn refiners are fighting mightily not to be demonized, and regularly send out missives stating their case to anyone who will listen.

The question of whether high fructose corn syrup is a particularly noxious substance is being fought on many fronts, including currently in a Los Angeles courtroom. Corn refiners are fighting mightily not to be demonized, and regularly send out missives stating their case to anyone who will listen.

Their newsletter landed on my e-doorstep this morning, and it was amusing enough for me to relate it to you.

I’ve been wanting to get to this topic for a while, but it has languished in the in-box, as too many other things do:

The headline is, “The Food Industry Fights Back,” and it’s written by Dave Fusaro, editor in chief of foodprocessing.com (“Home Page for the Food & Beverage Industry”). The subhed is just as good: “On obesity, food safety, 'questionable' ingredients, the industry can do a better job of tactfully defending itself; the key is transparency.”

Dateline Doha: Drs. Robert Lustig and Robert Lefever are interviewed in this Aljazeera report on the toxicity, the addictiveness, and the dangers of refined sugar.

I’ve said many times that the causes of disordered eating are extremely complicated, a condition that muddles any conversation about overcoming the personal and societal ills that result. Obesity is a very noticeable outcome, and there are others, of course.

One such muddler is the phenomenon of craving, which is well known to addicts of every stripe. It’s the biochemically driven desire to ingest more of the addictive substance or engage again in the addictive experience, because the body has become habituated to the addictive action.

Just connected, if only in Twitter-ese, with Cameron Hay, 34, of Melbourne, Australia, a former personal trainer now working back from 315 pounds and blogging about it at fitnessandthefatguy.com.

After brief perusing, I thought enough of what I saw to bring him to your attention.

One of the patently dishonest threads of the healthy food/processed food debate has been Big Food’s complaint that they can put healthy options on their menus, but they can’t make people buy them.

It’s a variant of its explanation of why kids’ menus only have hot dogs, fries, and other crap. “It’s all they’ll eat,” they complain. One defect of this strain is that it’s just not true — and besides, “I’m the daddy.”.