Welcome to another installment of "10 Words or Less," in which I ask brief questions of interesting people and request brief answers in return. Today's participant is Ashley Gearhardt, author of the Yale Food Addiction Scale who is now an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. I'll post an edited print version of the interview once it's completed, but for now, check out the video version. Run time is 25 minutes.

A defender’s work is never done, apparently, because new (to me) clueless voices keep spouting off with the same ignorant arguments.

Yes, I know. I have to develop some opinions someday.

This time, the spouter is Prof. John Blundell, who apparently is head of the department of psychology at the University of Leeds in Britain. “Is addiction an excuse to overeat” is the headline of his BBC op-ed, which squarely establishes the turf he stumbles through.

This is another entry in my “assumptions” series, in which my intention is to explain one of my underlying assumptions definitively, so the next time I feel the need to veer away from a post’s point at hand to provide full background, I can just link to the full thought and let others veer, if they choose to.

Assumption: Your perception of sweetness is very skewed.

Several points about refined sugar:

This is another entry in my “assumptions” series, in which my intention is to explain one of my underlying assumptions definitively, so the next time I feel the need to veer away from a post’s point at hand to provide full background, I can just link to the full thought and let others veer, if they choose to.

Assumption: Not all fat people are unhealthy, and not all thin people are healthy. But overweight does correlate with ill health, and the greater the overweight, the greater the likelihood and severity of ill health.

This is another entry in my “assumptions” series, in which I state one of my underlying assumptions definitively, so the next time I feel the need to veer away from a post’s point at hand to provide full background, I can just link to the full thought and let others veer, if they choose to.

The assumption here is that food addiction exists.

This is another entry in my “assumptions” series, in which my intention is to discuss one of my underlying assumptions definitively, so the next time I feel the need to veer away from a post’s point at hand to provide full background, I can just link to the full thought and let others veer, if they choose to.

Assumption: What we eat actually matters.

Too often in posts, I find myself having to spend a few paragraphs remaking some point I’ve made before, in the name of completeness, when I’d really rather a “save-get,” as we called them in the early days of electronic front-end systems for newspapers. (You could save a character string once, and get it back with one key as many times as you wanted.)

So I decided to put together a series of posts of my basic assumptions, which I can then just put in a link for, rather than saying it all over again. And this is the first one:

Being fat sucks.

Welcome to another installment of "10 Words or Less," in which I ask brief questions of interesting people and request brief answers in return. Today's participant is a pioneer in the recognition and treatment of food addiction, and I should also acknowledge that she wrote the forward to my 2009 book, "Fat Boy Thin Man." She's the best-selling author of "Food Addiction, The Body Knows," published in 1989, and "From the First Bite," published in 2000, as well as other works. A licensed mental health counselor and certified eating disorders specialist, she conducts workshops for food addicts worldwide and hosts the Food Addiction Conference on AOL's Addiction and Recovery Forum. Please remember, "10 words" is an attitude, not a limit, so no counting! Besides, let's see you do it.

Name: Kay Sheppard
Born when, where Batavia N.Y., Aug. 25, 1938
An early formative event  "I had rheumatic fever when I was a youngster. Leg aches, a lot of pain. I was bedridden for almost a year."
First paying job "Babysitting. 50 cents a week."
Your education "I have a masters degree in counseling."

I written before about Plough and Stars, Erik Jacobs's blog about a year as a farming student. Jacobs and I don't know each other, but we worked concurrently at the Boston Globe.

What I expressed previously was my adoration for Jocobs's overwhelming combination of stunning, affecting photography with good writing and reporting about his experience. And, completely, I still have it, but it's hardly worth repeating oneself.

Two years ago, Kareem Bouhafs, 23, of Arlington would have been wary of someone who wanted to warn him about genetically modified organisms, the use of pesticides on foods, or the many additives present in today’s food.