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PRESS ROOM
Media interviews

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To set up a media interview

About the author

An internationally known authority on weight and eating, Francie Berg is the founder, former editor and publisher of Healthy Weight Journal, and author of 11 books. She has reported the scientific research, news and commentary on weight issues to health professionals and educators worldwide for over 20 years, emphasizing the realities of weight loss treatment through the years. Berg is a licensed nutritionist, family wellness specialist, and Adjunct Professor at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine. Her master’s degree is from the University of Minnesota, and her undergraduate work from Montana State University in Bozeman.

She can discuss the ways our culture fails teenage girls and boys (demanding extreme thinness, appearance perfection, sexual vulnerability), how to fight size oppression, and what’s wrong with the typical doctor’s advice to lose weight. Berg encourages the Health at Every Size approach, which embraces living actively, eating well, and feeling good about oneself and others regardless of weight.

As national coordinator of the Task Force on Weight Loss Abuse for the National Council Against Health Fraud, Berg can demonstrate questionable and fraudulent weight loss products and gadgets from her extensive collection, and explain the bizarre methods Americans are using -- and have used in the past -- to lose weight.

Through Healthy Weight Network, Berg initiated Healthy Weight Week, which each year celebrates healthy diet-free lifestyles the third full week of January. On Rid the World of Fad Diets and Gimmicks Day of that week, her group announces the annual Slim Chance Awards for the "worst" weight loss promotions of the year, which began with the fad diets of 1989.

Francie Berg has been a guest on national television, including the Oprah show, Lezza, and Inside Edition, and presents seminars at national and international health conferences. Her latest book is Underage and Overweight: America’s Childhood Obesity Epidemic – What Every Family Needs to Know, published by Hatherleigh Press, New York.

Berg’s earlier books on weight and eating issues, "Women Afraid to Eat: Breaking Free in Today’s Weight-Obsessed World," "Children and Teens Afraid to Eat: Helping Youth in Today’s Weight-Obsessed World," and "Health Risks of Weight Loss," challenge our culture’s powerful pressures to be thin, and give clear guidelines on how to move ahead to health and well-being at any size. These award-winning books are highly recommended by health and nutrition professionals.

• Licensed Nutritionist
• Founder, former publisher, and long-time editor (16 years) of  Healthy Weight Journal, now Health at Every Size journal
• Adjunct professor, University of North Dakota School of Medicine, Grand Forks, ND.
• Lead author of the 2002 Society for Nutrition Education paper "Guidelines for Childhood Obesity Prevention Programs: Promoting Healthy Weight in Children"
• National Coordinator of the Task Force on Weight Loss Abuse for the National Council Against Health Fraud
• Serves on North Dakota's Healthy Weight Council

Recent Books

• Underage and Overweight:America’s Childhood Obesity Crisis – What Every Family Needs to Know (2004)

• Women Afraid to Eat:Breaking Free in Today’s Weight-Obsessed World (2000)

• Children and Teens Afraid to Eat: Helping youth in Today’s Weight-Obsessed World (2001)

For excerpts, reviews, listing information, or book cover images, see directory at left.

Francie Berg will discuss the day's headlines and topics from these books, including: weight loss programs and surgery (effectiveness, hazards), weight loss quackery and fraud, eating disorders, dysfunctional eating, the widespread undernutrition and malnutrition of teen girls, the starvation syndrome and how it affects the dieter, body hatred, size prejudice and its effect on persons of all sizes, and overweight and obesity -- causes, risks and prevention.