I was one of those who expressed qualified praise for McDonald’s Happy Meal changes: Apple slices, smaller French fries, slightly better beverage options. Other commenters, particularly “Appetite For Profit” author Michele Simon, drew different conclusions, which she discusses in a blog post headlined, “Who Put McDonald’s In Charge of Kids’ Health?" at appetiteforprofit.com.

I don’t know her, but I follow her Twitter feed and respect what she writes, including this one, even though I find enough disagreement in it that I feel compelled to rejoin, even on a day when I should be writing other stuff.

Let’s start with the headline: To my mind, we did. Doing nothing more than taking full advantage of the capitalist process, they advertised and promoted until we made them, via our billions and billions of purchases, the leader in fast food. They could have spent all that promotional cash and if we hadn’t bought what they were peddling, they would have failed. But we have bought, and now they have enormous influence.

Almost a year ago, I wrote aboutNicholas Christakis's Ted Talk, which showcased his research about connectedness in social networks.

What would have been my mild interest was heightened by his using obesity as an example: He said his research showed that if your friends were obese, your chances of being obese were 45 percent higher. Even more freaky was his suggestion that if friends of your friends whom you'd never met were obese, your chances were 25 percent higher, and that you had a 10 percent greater chance of being overweight if your friends' friends' friends were.

Turns out, his conclusions haven't been accepted into scientific fact just yet. Writing yesterday in the Boston Globe, reporter Carolyn Y. Johnson recapped the significant doubt that has bubbled up:

The Twitter is atwitter with McDonald's announcement that it now has a "comprehensive plan aims to help customers — especially families and children — make nutrition-minded choices whether visiting McDonald’s or eating elsewhere."

Across my transom came a casting call by documentarians seeking people "who have taken eating pure and healthy to an extreme." I've always thought that incidence of orthorexia was overstated, though certainly, it ain't if you got it.

If you're interested, you can volunteer here.

I recently came aware of therapist Amy Pershing via a blog post on psychcentral.com in which she was interviewed. I found a lot to agree with in what she said — that binge eating isn’t diet failure but is an eating disorder deserving of treatment, not societal scorn, for example.

But one passage bothered me enough to track her down for a few more questions. Here’s the passage, which came in response to interviewer Margarita Tartakovsky’s question: “What are common challenges that make it tougher to overcome BED or problems with overeating?”

”From a cultural perspective, we begin to teach people to distrust and dishonor their bodies from childhood. We do not, as a society, value size or shape diversity; in fact weigh bias and stigma fundamentally underlies any eating disorder. “Thin” has to be presumed more valued for the symptoms to coalesce. We are taught to distrust our food preferences and our appetites, especially as girls, from early in life. We are taught to “exercise,” but not to play. Children learn their bodies are to be controlled, not honored. So the ability to hear cues, to really feel the positive impact of playing and eating well, typically must be relearned.”

Additionally, weight and being “fat” is so completely vilified now that the idea of body wisdom is more remote than it has even been. We have a “war on obesity.” Literally now people are encouraged to be at odds with their bodies. Then, we are sold a profound “bill of goods” by the diet industry (with a 95% failure rate over 6 months), further removing us from simply listening to our needs. The current system makes recovery a veritable act of defiance. You have to be a renegade just to be in your body.

Welcome to another round of “10 Words or Less.” Today’s contestant is the original thinker behind Rad Urban Farmers, about whom I wrote for The Boston Globe a couple of years ago. His gig is to farm on underutilized suburban yards and disperse the produce he grows to the landowners and to CSA and farmers’ market customers. His goal, after each garden is established, is to service them via only a bike and trailer. As you may recall, the idea here is to ask short questions, request short answers, and do a minimum of editing, but the “10WOL” thing is a goal, not a rule, so please, no counting.

Name Charlie Radoslovich (ra-DOS-lo-vich)
Age 40
Residence Arlington, Mass.
Passions “The environment and good food.”
A guilty pleasure “Eating vegetables before they’re fully mature.”
What did you want to be when you grew up? “A lawyer, believe it or not.”
What happened? “That was 3d grade.”

The "tobacco playbook" is legend among capitalists, especially those who want to keep selling a product that clearly has adverse health effects for those who buy it. And it should be, considering that for decades after it was clear that ingesting tobacco or its smoke was noxious, the playbook made it possible for companies to continuing with relatively few curbs, and tobacco continues to be sold even today.

Playbook practices include lying, delaying, misdirecting, and obstructing at every turn. Such tactics have nothing to do with claiming right or virtue, two concepts you want to have on your side but are all but meaningless when you're in the trenches. I've always thought this lesson has been much better taken in by conservatives vs. liberals, and capitalists vs. crusaders.

I've discussed the topic before, so why bring up this topic again? Because the forces of sugary soda are deploying them again, according to Reuters. Read on.

The JAMA op-ed by Drs. David Ludwig and Lindsey Murtagh in which they raised the issue of moving extremely obese children temporarily into foster care, as an alternative to bariatric surgery, has drawn comment far and wide, including by me.

I say in my book, ”Fat Boy Thin Man” that when the ideas that I hold about compulsive eating and food addiction become mainstream, scientific advances will have been far more influential than anything I said. I believe my story of losing 150 pounds-plus and keeping it off for two decades deserves to be in the conversation, but as a counterpoint to the science, not a replacement for it.

I was asked twice yesterday for my penny's worth of reaction to this story, about whether extremely obese children should be put in foster care:

It has happened a few times in the U.S., and the opinion piece in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association says putting children temporarily in foster care is in some cases more ethical than obesity surgery.