If anyone out there is proposing a tax on sugary sodas, you can be sure the "Center for Consumer Freedom" will be nearby, trying to distract from any real discussion.

With this post, it returns to Philadelphia, where the mayor is again proposing a soda tax, even after beverage industry lobbyists pledged to give $10 million to the city's Children's Hospital, in the middle of a debate on a soda tax, so it could expand obesity-prevention efforts. Any reasonable person would consider that civic bribery, but let's skip over that right now.

Zoe Harcombe, a Twitter pal in the UK, is a nutritionist and author. Here, she is interviewed for what I believe is a BBC show on topics including processed food, food cravings, food addiction, and other topics we have a mutual interest in.

If you're visiting me here, you may be interested as well.

The clip is a bit less than 20 minutes.

Sometimes, I just share stuff because it oughta be shared. This is from my friend and former Boston Globe colleague, Alex Beam:

Happily, there are plenty of loons left in the lake that Trump flew in from. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Screwloose) — the distinguished legislator who thinks the American Revolution began somewhere near Nashua — is worrying out loud that America will be biblically “cursed’’ if Obama “rejects’’ Israel, whatever that means. Fellow policy wonk Sarah Palin likewise dumped on Obama’s Israel policy in an op-ed column graciously accepted for publication by her Facebook page.

This post, of course, was graciously accepted by michaelprager.com.

Perhaps it's a sign of immaturity, but I'm still enjoying the internecine squabbles among sugar producers. According to foodnavigator-usa.com, five more sugar companies have joined the opposition to the corn refiners' association effort to rename high fructose corn syrup to "corn sugar."

A couple times recently, I've come across the notion that obesity is a sign of malnutrition. The first time, it was in an interview, and I decided just to edit that out, 'cause I wanted to save the speaker from himself. I mean, that couldn't be right, right?

Then I saw it again here, and while I'm not buying it yet, I understand the reasoning and see how it might be true. For some. Perhaps.

Bettina Eilas Siegel, proprietor of The Lunch Tray blog, also addresses — quite well— Kathleen Parker's Washington Post op-ed about how family leadership is the route of salvation from the epidemic of obesity.

One commonality I note is that we both agree that family involvement is necessary but neither of us thinks it is sufficient. Our prescription is multifaceted.

As I am called to say frequently these days, I agree that for child obesity, any strategy that doesn't begin with family involvement is unlikely to be sufficient. Here's the problem with Kathleen Parker's misty-eyed paean to the family and how it holds the key to America's obesity problem: We're relying on it already — have been all along — and we're getting fatter.

Ordinarily, that's evidence that we need to try something more.

In the latest round of “10 Words or Less,” the participant is one of the panelists May 26 for “Food and Sustainability,” a continuation of the two-year “Let’s Talk About Food” series being conducted by Boston’s Museum of Science. Carroll is the author of several books, including “Pastures of Plenty” and “The Real Dirt.” Remember: Please, no counting; the 10-word thing is a goal, not a rule, and besides, let’s see you do it.
Name: John E. Carroll
Age: 65
Residence: Durham, N.H.
Occupation: Professor of environmental conservation, University of New Hampshire
Passion: “Watching the growth of the new local food and farming movement.”

I saved a portion of the survey I wrote about previously because it touches on a subject I've been slow in approaching: Is government intervention the best way to reduce the alarming level of obesity in America?

I did a 30-minute segment last night with the hosts of "The Attitude Shift" program on Blog Talk Radio.