It is very easy to get caught up in the excitement of being seen, especially by an entity with the broad reach of a national television network, but it helps me to get back, as quickly as possible, to the real issue, which is food addiction.

The core of my message, in "Fat Boy Thin Man" and on this blog, is that food addiction is real and that both for individuals and for all of us collectively, important changes will necessarily follow once we understand.

Over at Childhood Obesity News, Dr. Robert Pretlow writes about the journal Childhood Obesity, which launched in September with a luminous editorial board and a grant from the Kellogg's Foundation. 

More from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale's recent f.a.c.t.s. report on Food Advertising to Teens and Children:

Children’s exposure to fast food TV ads is increasing, even for ads from McDonald’s and Burger King, who have pledged to reduce unhealthy marketing to children. Compared with 2007, in 2009 children (6-11) saw 26 percent more ads for McDonald’s, 10 percent more for Burger King, and 59 percent more for Subway.

This time it's the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Health Organisation, as related by the Daily Mail newspaper:

"A ‘fat tax’ on unhealthy foods, restrictions on junk food advertising and better labelling are the most cost-effective ways to cut obesity," a study finds.

FoodNavigator-USA.com reports on a Brazilian writer's commentary that assigns three levels to food processing and blames the "ultra" level for much of diet-related obesity. It's a foreign idea to most people, I think, but shouldn't be.

I commend to you this article on The Delano Report (drzarkov.com) about how food addiction, "considered fringe just five years ago, is fast becoming a mainstream view among researchers as new studies in humans confirm initial animal findings, and the biological mechanisms that lead to 'junk-food addiction' are being revealed."

Frequent readers know that my bottom line is that food addiction is real, and that ignorance underlies its lack of acceptance in mainstream medicine and popular culture. So it's fair to say that anyone doing research on obesity (the main, but not only, result of food addiction) is a friend of mine, and that's essentially true.

The problem with studies, especially around food and nutrition, is that so many have contradicted other studies from over the years that no one knows what to believe.