Q&A with author of 'Overweight: What Kids Say'

In his Belltown home office, Robert Pretlow, M.D., has just showed me what he calls "food porn": a TV commercial showing thick chocolate poured sensuously over a curvaceous cookie and the word "comforting" materializing on the screen.

It's to illustrate the temptations that plague the kids quoted in "Overweight: What Kids Say" (self-published through Amazon.com's CreateSpace publishing division). The new book features messages kids posted anonymously on Pretlow's website, www.weigh2rock.com. Although it's not a scientific study, Pretlow argues that the anonymity elicited information kids don't reveal elsewhere, and he drew conclusions from it about their struggles with obesity.

Q: A new study shows that obesity is a national-security threat because so many kids are unfit to join the military. Which is only good news if there's a draft.

A: I think that's absolutely true. I think it really is a security issue. If our soldiers are not able to move on the battlefield, they're not going to be able to fight. That's a no-brainer.

Q: Anonymity allowed kids to open up more than they would otherwise. What new things did you learn from that?

A: What these kids say contradicts the prevailing beliefs of mainstream medicine and also the lay public as to what's causing the childhood as well as the adult obesity epidemic. The prevailing belief is that kids as well as adults, parents and so forth do not have knowledge of how to make healthy choices — in terms of healthy eating, in terms of healthy activity. These kids say that they're OD'd on healthy-choice information.

Q: Gorged on it.

A: They get it nonstop, in school, in health classes. What they say they need is ways to resist their cravings for this highly pleasurable junk food, fast food, restaurant food that's available to them, that's always around.

Q: Kids hating themselves, avoiding photos, saying that looking in the mirror in the morning is the worst part of their day, having nobody show up to their birthday parties ... some of their posts are heartbreaking.

A: I read them every day. They are heartbreaking, heart-wrenching. I feel for these kids so much. The travesty is that no one seems to believe them. Their docs don't seem to believe them, their parents don't seem to believe them, so they band together on the Web, where they can talk to other kids that will believe them.

Q: Some kids choose home-schooling to avoid ridicule — and ironically, you say that just makes them gain more weight.

A: When they're home-schooled, they don't get activity at all. They just basically sit at home on the couch. They also don't have social contact. Which is a vicious cycle because the more isolated they become, the more lonely they become, and they eat to counteract this loneliness, to comfort this loneliness.