Quite appropriately, stories have been cascading out of the media since April 4, when researcher Ashley Gearhardt, a post-doc at Yale, and her colleagues released a study that correlates people who scored high on a food-addiction questionaire they developed with increased brain activity when given food cues.

For the second time in a week, I find myself flummoxed by the declaration of an "expert," and so I must disclaim again: I'm neither a doctor nor a scientist, but I do read a lot.

I don't know Rick Berman, a PR guy who shills for the restaurant and food-processing industry, and have not before read anything he's written, but given that his piece was recommended to me by the discredited "Center for Consumer Freedom," I expected to encounter half truths and blinding lack of insight. And, I did.

My first impulse for the headline was to write something more caustic, but that never helps. Besides, the utterer of this absurd-to-me statement is the "expert!"

I stopped into a convenience store Sunday for a diet soda, one of my remaining weaknesses, and like every other convenience store in America, I had to pass by the chip-category junk food to get out the door.

It wasn't a problem in the "I'm on a diet" sense, because I've been clean of that stuff for a good many years, and I maintain enough of my spiritual fitness, for today, to not stray near the edge of a weak decision. 

KRISTEN McALEAVEY, 41, of Richmond, Va., is an associate professor in social work at Longwood University who also maintains a private practice in addiction. I met her recently at the third annual meeting of the Society of Food Addiction Professionals in Houston, and, impressed, asked her to join me for a 10-words-or-less interview. Please: No counting; it’s a goal, not a rule.

At dinner last weekend in Houston, on a break with compadres from the Society of Food Addiction Professionals, I heard about a drug that was coming out any day, and it turns out, it's not!

Writing in the Las Vegas Review Journal, Kristi Eaton covers the range of binge-eating disorder, and includes a passage on me and my experience. I have never been diagnosed, but certainly I could have been had the diagnosis existed when I was doing that sort of thing.

I believe I've mentioned the third annual meeting of the Society of Food Addiction Professionals, which runs from Friday through Sunday this week in Houston. I'm attending for the third time, and will be master of ceremonies for the second year, a task I'm anticipating eagerly.

I swear, I was going to comment on this post, anyway, before I got to the point where it mentions my name. No, I swear!