Obesity and Energetics Offerings

Featured

• Overstatement of Results in the Nutrition and Obesity Peer-Reviewed Literature.
• RCT: Increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, as advocated in public-health advice, has no effect on IR in overweight individuals who are at high risk of CVD.
• Nutrition research must overcome pseudoscientific measures and self-interest to make progress in the fight against obesity.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• RCT: Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation had no effect on body weight but reduced energy intake in overweight and obese females.
• The number of food outlets was not significantly associated with BMI-score over 4 years among German children.
• No association of food stores with obesity in a sample of Brazilian adults.
• RCT: No effect of low glycemic index diet on body weight and blood pressure in overweight adolescent girls.
• No association between author COI and drugs recommended in guidelines for Glycemic Control in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.
• Among over 11,000 Spanish individuals, those with obesity generally had a lower consumption of sugary drinks (see Table 2).
• Meta-analysis of data from 11 randomized, school-based physical activity interventions show no effect on BMI.

Headline vs. Study

• Study: Nucleus accumbens C-Fos expression is correlated with conditioned place preference to cocaine, morphine and high fat/sugar food consumption.
• Headline: College study finds Oreo cookies are as addictive as drugs.
• University Press Release: Student-faculty research shows Oreos are just as addictive as drugs in lab rats.
• Commentary: Oreos = Cocaine (Huh?).
• Commentary: Cookies, Cocaine, and Culture.
• Study: Meat intake and semen parameters among men attending a fertility clinic.
• Headline: Bacon Everyday Might Keep Baby Away.
• Headline: Is bacon a male contraceptive?
• Commentary: Bacon bad for your sperm - news stories hit below belt again.
• Misleading Press Release: Based on association study, states “For the first time, it has been proved that obesity regardless of the students social background influences school performance.”

Video

• Videos now available from UAB NORC conference on Evaluating Bioactive Food Components in Obesity and Cancer Prevention (see bottom of page).
• Jake Lusis: A Systems Genetics Approach to Complex Cardio-metabolic Traits (see bottom of page).
• Michael Thorner: Ghrelin Regulation and Its Implications for Its Physiological Role (see bottom of page).
• Jeff Sindelar - Discovering the History and Science of Meat Products.

Saturated Fat

• From the Heart: Saturated fat is not the major issue.
• Scapegoats, Saints, and Saturated Fats: Old Mistakes in New Directions.
• CardioBuzz: How Bad Is Saturated Fat?

Brown Fat

• MRI Detection of Brown Adipose Tissue with Low Fat Content in Newborns with Hypothermia.
• FABP3 and brown adipocyte-characteristic mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation enzymes are induced in beige cells in a different pathway from UCP1.

Caloric Restriction & Lifespan Extension

• Calorie restriction and sirtuins revisited.
• Synergistic effects of caloric restriction with maintained protein intake on skeletal muscle performance in 21-month-old rats: a mitochondria-mediated pathway.
• Prevention of Neuromusculoskeletal Frailty in Slow-Aging Ames Dwarf Mice: Longitudinal Investigation of Interaction of Longevity Genes and Caloric Restriction.
• Melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) and gonadotropin-releasing hormones (GnRH) in Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua: Tissue distributions, early ontogeny and effects of fasting.
• A pharmacological network for lifespan extension in C. elegans.

Psychology

• High energy diets prevent the enhancing effects of emotional arousal on memory.
• RCT: Choosing between an Apple and a Chocolate Bar: the Impact of Health and Taste Labels.
• Obesity and self-control: food consumption, physical activity and weight-loss intention.

Surgery

• Bariatric surgery versus non-surgical treatment for obesity: a systematic review and meta-analysis of RCTs.
• Effects of Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass and Ileal Transposition Surgeries on Glucose and Lipid Metabolism in Skeletal Muscle and Liver in Rats.
• Alabama investigators report that Robotic-assisted total laparoscopic hysterectomy can be a safe and effective method of performing hysterectomies in select morbidly obese patients.
• Psychological predictors of weight loss after bariatric surgery: A review of the recent research.
• Executive Control Circuitry Differentiates Degree of Success in Weight Loss Following Gastric-Bypass Surgery.

Epidemiology

• Prevalence of Obesity Among Adults: United States, 2011–2012.
• Is body mass human capital in sumo? Outcome of globalization and formation of human capital in Japan.
• On the effect of obesity on employment in the presence of observed and unobserved confounding.
• Slow metabolism 'obesity excuse' true.
• Obesity and Occupational Injury: A Prospective Cohort Study of 69,515 Public Sector Employees.
• Explaining Trends in BMI Using Demographic Counterfactuals.
• Seasonality and ambient temperature at time of conception in term-born individuals associated with obesity in adult life.
• Defining an epidemic: The BMI in British and US obesity research 1960-2000.
• Obesity Paradox in People Newly Diagnosed With Type 2 Diabetes With and Without Prior Cardiovascular Disease.
• Telomere length loss due to smoking and metabolic traits.
• Social and spatial patterns of obesity diffusion over three decades in a Norwegian county population: the HUNT Study.
• Impact of BMI on prevalence of multimorbidity in primary care: cohort study.
• Obesity-related Behaviors of US- and Non-US-born Parents and Children in Low-income Households.
• Pregnancy weight gain and childhood body weight: a within-family comparison.
• Alcohol consumption and risk of metabolic syndrome: A meta-analysis of prospective studies.
• Dinner rituals that correlate with child and adult BMI.

Policy Related

• Food labels: A critical assessment.
• USDA study evaluates Hannaford grocery stores feature the company's Guiding Stars rating system.
• Calorie labeling, Fast food purchasing and restaurant visits.
• Food and Beverage Policies and Public Health Ethics.
• Punishing Maternal Behavior: Potential Legal Consequences for Obesity-Associated Poor Fetal Outcome in the United States.
• Obesity experts appalled by EU move to approve health claim for fructose.

Methods

• Measurement and validation of the nature of salivary adiponectin.
• Hunger and thirst numeric rating scales are not valid estimates for gastric content volumes: a prospective investigation in healthy children.
• Interactive Effects of in Utero Nutrition and Genetic Inheritance on Cognition: New Evidence Using Sibling Comparisons suggests caution in interpreting previously reported associations.
• Exploiting the universAAL platform for the design and development of a physical activity monitoring application.
• Estimation of feature importance for food intake detection based on Random Forests classification.
• On the confounding effect of temperature on chemical shift-encoded fat quantification.
• How to use published complete case results from weight loss studies in a missing data sensitivity analysis.
• Reliability and Accuracy of Real-Time Visualization Techniques for Measuring School Cafeteria Tray Waste: Validating the Quarter-Waste Method.
• Solid anthropomorphic infant whole-body DXA phantom: design, evaluation, and multisite testing.
• Are Ethnic and Gender Specific Equations Needed to Derive Fat Free Mass from Bioelectrical Impedance in Children of South Asian, Black African-Caribbean and White European Origin?

Review

• Effect of weight loss on health-related quality of life: systematic review and meta-analysis of RCTs.
• Prolactin and Adipose Tissue.
• Race and the Insulin Resistance Syndrome.

Food

• RCT: Alternate day fasting with a high fat or low fat diet equally effective in reducing weight and related risk factors.
• RCT: Short-term black pepper consumption effects on 24-hour energy expenditure and substrate utilization.
• RCT: Hypocaloric diet supplemented with probiotic cheese improves BMI and blood pressure indices of obese hypertensive patients.
• Hass avocado and postprandial vascular reactivity and postprandial inflammatory responses to a hamburger meal in healthy volunteers.

Exercise

• RCT: Whereas intense exercise reduces daily energy balance in adolescents with obesity by mainly affecting ad libitum dinner energy consumption, imposed sedentary behaviors lead to increased energy intake and then positive energy balance.
• RCT: Community Engagement Promotes Physical Activity in Parks.
• RCT: Effects of an acute bout of aerobic exercise on immediate and subsequent three-day food intake and energy expenditure in active and inactive men.
• RCT: Eight weeks of stretching training reduces aortic wave reflection magnitude and blood pressure in obese postmenopausal women.
• The effects of imposed sedentary behavior and exercise on energy intake in adolescents with obesity.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• Ovarian function in Samoan women shows stronger association with signals of energy metabolism than fat reserves.
• Obesity accelerates ovarian follicle development and follicle loss in rats.
• Environmental Conditions during Breeding Modify the Strength of Mass-Dependent Carry-Over Effects in a Migratory Bird.
• Quantifying energy intake in Pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis) using the heat increment of feeding.
• Energetics of hibernation and reproductive trade-offs in brown bears.

Clinical

• RCT: Trial of a Community-based Behavioral Counseling Program.
• RCT: Efficacy of a daily self-weighing weight loss intervention using smart scales and e-mail.
• RCT: Chewing thoroughly reduces eating rate and postprandial food palatability but does not influence meal size in older adults.
• RCT: Personalized dietary intervention in managing gestational weight gain in a low-risk antenatal population.
• RCT: An active telephone-based recruitment strategy to increase childcare service staff attendance at a physical activity and nutrition training workshop.
• RCT: Evaluation of phentermine and topiramate versus phentermine/topiramate extended-release in obese adults.
• RCT: Changes to dietary intake during a 12-week commercial web-based weight loss program.
• RCT: The effect of topiramate on weight loss in patients with type 2 diabetes.
• Long-term testosterone therapy in hypogonadal men ameliorates elements of the metabolic syndrome.
• Obese Children in a Community YMCA “Fun 2B Fit” Program Have a Reduction in BMI Z-Scores.
• Adding Obesity to the Problem List Increases the Rate of Providers Addressing Obesity.

Basic Science

• Hypoxia-mimetic effects in the secretome of human preadipocytes and adipocytes.
• How dormice make optimal use of their body fat reserves.
• Obesity Alters Adipose Tissue Macrophage Iron Content and Tissue Iron Distribution.
• Investigation of adipocyte proteome during the differentiation of brown preadipocytes.
• Moving beyond energy homeostasis: New roles for glucagon-like peptide-1 in food and drug reward.
• Genetic identification of a neural circuit that suppresses appetite.
• Regulation of cuticle pigmentation in Drosophila by the nutrient sensing Insulin and TOR signaling pathways.
• Obesity is associated with an altered autonomic nervous system response to nutrient restriction.
• Adipose stromal-vascular fraction-derived paracrine factors regulate adipogenesis.
• Adipose Dipeptidyl Peptidase-4 and Obesity: Correlation with insulin resistance and depot-specific release from adipose tissue in vivo and in vitro.

Commentary

• Do CDC’s Obesity Stats Tell the Whole Story?
• Research accomplishments that are too good to be true.
• Neuroscience wrongs will make a right.
• The next generation of obesity treatments: beyond suppressing appetite.

Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

• RCT: Effect of Sugar-Free Versus Sugar-Sweetened Beverages on Satiety, Liking and Wanting.
• American adults eligible for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program consume more sugary beverages than ineligible adults.

Pediatric

• Excess weight gain in the first 18 months of life is associated with later childhood overweight, obesity and greater arterial wall thickness.
• Declining and stabilising trends in prevalence of overweight and obesity in Dutch, Turkish, Moroccan and South Asian children 3-16 years of age.
• Social and behavioral risk factors for obesity in early childhood.
• ADHD is a risk factor for overweight and obesity in children.
• The Origins of Early Childhood Anthropometric Persistence.

Transgenerational

• DDT exposure in rats causes increased obesity in the third generation.

General Science

• How science goes wrong.
• UK Report on evidence use in public health highlights concerns about biases.
• Internships Boost Postdocs' Skills, Worldliness, and Marketability.
• Older Siblings' Cells Can Be Passed From Female Dogs to Their Puppies in the Womb: Discovery will help further research into health effects of microchimerism.
• Scientists like to think of science as self-correcting. To an alarming degree, it is not.
• Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future.
• History: Great myths die hard.
• Why does a beer bottle foam up after a sudden impact on its mouth?
• It Pays to Be Herr Kaiser-Germans With Noble-Sounding Surnames More Often Work as Managers Than as Employees.
• Scientists discover DNA body clock.
• For first time, drug developed based on zebrafish studies passes Phase I clinical trial.
• First Venomous Crustacean Found.
• Oldest known galaxy discovered in photos by Hubble.

Announcements

• ADA Position Statement: Nutrition Therapy Recommendations for the Management of Adults With Diabetes.
• Special Issue Published in Human Heredity on Genes and the Environment in Obesity.
• More Information on Moving Forward with NIH Applications, Review, and Awards.
• ECO2014, the 21st European Congress on Obesity, will take place in the wonderful city of Sofia, Bulgaria from 28 - 31 May 2014.
• Join PubMed’s Revolution in Post Publication Peer Review.
• NY Academy of Sciences offers small nutrition grants.
• AHA EPI Council offers travel and mentoring Awards.
• ICMJE Releases New Guidelines for Journals.

Featured

• Can We Trust Obesity Data? Analysis of NHANES methods to measure energy intake.
• Despite popular statements to the contrary, genetic factors have likely made contributions (albeit small) to recent population increases in obesity.
• The Perils of offering people ‘inert’ advice.

Findings Contrary to Hypothesis or Popular Ideas

• Sexually transmitted infection history and contraceptive compliance did not vary by BMI.
• RCT: Children consuming the cereal-based (high-sugar and high-glycemic index (GI)) snack exercised more intensely than the two lower-GI snack groups.
• The finding of an inverse obesity-dental decay relationship contradicts the obesity-sugar and the obesity-dental decay relationship hypotheses.
• Obesity did not increase time to undetectable viral loads.
• Findings do not support an association between birth order and BMI or blood pressure.

Stigma

• Stigmatization of a Formerly Obese Young Female.
• Weight stigma and narrative resistance evident in online discussions of obesity.

Clinical

• RCT: Plaster body wrap with aerobic exercise reduces abdominal fat.
• RCT: Commercial weight loss program better than self-help for weight loss.
• Protein-conserving adaptation with weight loss overtime eliminate sex differences in the composition of weight loss.
• RCT: Go4it multidisciplinary approach beneficial for quality of life of obese adolescent.
• Families eating together in the kitchen or dining room have lower BMI.
• RCT: Reducing TV Watching During Adult Obesity Treatment.
• Overweight and obese adults - lifestyle weight management: supporting evidence.

Surgery

• Placing a non-permeable tube in the small intestine leads to reduced nutrient absorption, which in turn can help reduce obesity and enhance glucose metabolism.
• Obesity research in adolescence: moving object—hard to target.

Exercise

• RCT: Effect of a school-based active play intervention on sedentary time and physical activity in preschool children.
• RCT: Eight Month Exercise Intervention Alters Resting State Synchrony in Overweight Children.
• RCT: Obese but not lean adolescents spontaneously decrease energy intake after intensive exercise.
• AHA Issues Guideline for Assessing Physical Activity or Routine Physical Activity Assessment Vital for Patients.

Food

• Breakfast and cognition: sixteen effects in nine populations, no single recipe.
• Chronic stress reduces dietary restraint and increases carbohydrate and saturate fat intake increasing weight.
• RCT: Effect of Avocado Soybean Unsaponifiables on Insulin Secretion and Insulin Sensitivity in Patients with Obesity.
• Calories may not mean what we think they do.
• Hedonic and Homeostatic Overlap following Fat Ingestion.
• Transient receptor potential activated brown fat thermogenesis as a target of food ingredients for obesity management.
• Diets best matching current recommendations related to less cognitive decline.

Caloric Restriction

• Maternal dietary restriction during the periconceptional period results in adrenocortical hypertrophy in postnatal lamb.
• Rapamycin extends life- and health span because it slows aging.
• Food restriction interacts with psychoactive drugs to potentiate goal-directed responding unrelated to food seeking in a much more powerful manner than previously thought.
• Seven-Day Caloric and Saturated Fat Restriction Increases Myocardial Dietary Fatty Acid Partitioning in Subjects with Impaired Glucose Tolerance.
• Are hungry sheep more pessimistic? The effects of food restriction on cognitive bias and the involvement of ghrelin in its regulation.
• RCT: Efficacy of Fasting and Calorie Restriction on Mood and Depression among Ageing Men.

Chocolate

• Flavonol-rich dark cocoa significantly decreases plasma endothelin-1 and improves cognition in urban children.
• Protective effects of dark chocolate on endothelial function and diabetes.

Basic Science

• Obese mice are resistant to eosinophilic airway inflammation induced by diesel exhaust particles.
• Black dog barks at brown fat – Depression, Clock, & Fat.
• Aging Fruit Flies Explain Metabolic Dysfunction in Aging Humans.
• Updating the mitochondrial free radical theory of aging: An integrated view, key aspects, and confounding concepts.
• PYY(3-36) into the arcuate nucleus inhibits food deprivation-induced increases in food hoarding and intake.
• Effects of acute intermittent hypoxia on energy balance and hypothalamic feeding pathways.
• Effect of adenovirus and influenza virus infection on obesity.

Sleep

• RCT: Experimental sleep curtailment causes wake-dependent increases in 24-h energy expenditure as measured by whole-room indirect calorimetry.
• Irregular bedtime tied to kids' behavioral problems.
• Too little or too much sleep is associated with increased prevalence of cardiovascular events.
• Lack of sleep could increase obesity in children and too much television could be partly to blame.
• Short sleep duration as a risk factor for the development of the metabolic syndrome in adults.
• Prevalence and clinical characteristics of unremembered nocturnal eating in diabetic subjects.

Epidemiology

• New Dynamics in Global Obesity Facing Low-and Middle-Income Countries.
• Collective behavior in the spatial spreading of obesity.
• Home schooled children leaner than traditionally schooled kids.
• Access to excess: how do adolescents deal with unhealthy foods in their environment?
• Compliant Eating of Maternally Prompted Food Predicts Increased Body Mass Index z-Score Gain in Girls: Results from a Population-Based Sample.
• Built environment studies have not yielded consistent associations.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• High saturated fat-sucrose feeding affects lactation energetics in control mice and mice selectively bred for high wheel-running behavior.
• Unsteady flow affects swimming energetics in a labriform fish (Cymatogaster aggregata).
• Moose body mass variation revisited: disentangling effects of environmental conditions and genetics.
• Ecological Energetics of an Abundant Aerial Insectivore, the Purple Martin.
• Super Hume: a source of Terrestrial Organic Carbon to Investigate the Browning of Aquatic Ecosystems.

Methods

• Don't birth cohorts matter? A commentary and simulation exercise on Reither, Hauser, and Yang's (2009) age–period–cohort study of obesity.
• Resting energy expenditure values assessed by a multi-sensor armband show a low accuracy in obese subjects.
• Biomarker breakthrough? An amino acid and lipid signature for visceral adiposity.
• Estimating the Range of Obesity Treatment Response Variability in Humans: Methods and Illustrations.
• Computational Biology: Using wearables to monitor chemical changes in the body.
• Dynamic Interactions of Gas Exchange, Body Mass, and Progressive Exercise in Children.
• Researchers uncover new ways to detect marginal vitamin B-6 deficiency.
• Using community engagement to determine priorities for childhood obesity prevention.
• Assessing Preschool Children's Physical Activity: How Many Days of Accelerometry Measurement?
• Measuring internalized weight attitudes across body weight categories: Validation of the Modified Weight Bias Internalization Scale.

Mortality

• Obesity and Mortality after Breast Cancer vary by Race/Ethnicity: The California Breast Cancer Survivorship Consortium.
• Pre-pregnancy BMI associated with cause-specific mortality: The Child Health and Development Studies.

Economics & Policy Related

• More Americans Living Longer with Cardiovascular Disease will increase Healthcare Costs while lowering Quality of Life.
• Coverage for bariatric surgery increases insurance costs across states.
• A lesson in business: cost-effectiveness analysis of a novel financial incentive intervention for increasing physical activity in the workplace.
• RCT: Effect of different calorie labeling approaches on menus.

Commentary

• Obesity Study $$: Who Cares Where They Come From?
• 2000+ Reasons Why GMOs Are Safe To Eat And Environmentally Sustainable.
• The Average American Man.
• AHA: Severe Obesity in US Youth Is Increasing and Difficult to Treat.
• Breastfeeding and Childhood Obesity: Where Do We Go From Here?
• The Marketing of Dietary Supplements: A Canadian Perspective.
• Training Physicians to Manage Obesity — Back to the Drawing Board.
• In Struggle With Weight a Century Ago, a Diet From Today.
• Calories may not mean what we think they do.
• David Katz: "Beating on Wheat and Raining on Grains: What’s REALLY Making Us Fat and Stupid?"
• David Katz: "Lose Weight, Find Health, Be Disease Proof — As Easy as A-B-C, Just Not Easier …"
• Living relatives of 5,300-year-old Iceman discovered.
• Enough said' and obesity messaging.
• From Skinny Kids to Childhood Obesity.
• Battling Fat? Get More Sleep.

Video

• Edward Ip Multichain hidden Markov models for studying psychological and behavioral profiles: Two applications in obesity research.
• NPR: "Why is Cheating in Science Research on the Rise?"
• Michelle Cardel: UAB Doctoral grad on TV - Homeschooled kids 'leaner' than traditional students.

General Science

• The genetic causes of convergent evolution.
• Why Women Leave Academia.
• Unreliable research - Trouble at the lab.
• Hidden depths: Brain science is drowning in uncertainty.
• Data reuse and the open data citation advantage.
• Mythbusters: Doubting animals as effective models of human disease.
• Bringing values and deliberation to science communication.
• Juno probe en route to Jupiter after puzzling glitch.
• Biology’s Big Problem: There’s Too Much Data to Handle.

Announcements

• New Book: RECONSTRUCTING OBESITY. The Meaning of Measures and the Measure of Meanings Edited by Megan McCullough and Jessica Hardin.
• Upcoming Satellite Broadcast: “The Affordable Care Act: Mandates, Exchanges, Medicaid…and All That.”
• Atlanta to Host Obesity Week Conference.
• When the Proof in the Pudding Is Not in the Eating. Comments on New Book: Disease Proof.

Featured

• Invalidity of U.S. Nutritional Surveillance: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Caloric Energy Intake Data, 1971–2010.
• A risk algorithm for assessing short-term mortality for obese black and white men and women: The reasons for geographic and racial differences in stroke (REGARDS).
• Association Study Beverages and energy intake in overweight and obese women.
• For every additional $100k in house prices, obesity rates drop by 2.3%.

Findings Contrary to Popular Hypotheses or Beliefs

• RCT: Another school-based obesity prevention program shows no effect on BMI.
• There was no association between organized sport participation and weight status, adiposity, consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages or high-fat foods.
• Elevated GDM risk in Asian-pacific Islander women is not associated with an increased rate of macrosomia.
• There were no significant effects of rat cage enrichment on weight gain or food consumption.
• Overfeeding over 24 hours does not activate brown adipose tissue in humans.

Video

• Paul Rozin “Eating and the environment.”
• Terry Snell "Searching for Dietary Supplements that Extend Lifespan".

Twins

• Characterising metabolically healthy obesity in weight-discordant monozygotic twins.
• Age at dieting onset, BMI, and dieting practices. A twin study.

Surgery

• Obese Rats’ Weight Loss Surgery May Pose Risk to Health of Offspring.
• Weight Recidivism Post-Bariatric Surgery: A Systematic Review.
• Your Brain after Obesity Surgery.
• Adherence and weight loss outcomes in bariatric surgery: Does cognitive function play a role?

Sugar

• Trends in added sugar supply and consumption in Australia: there is an Australian Paradox.
• Experience with Sugar Modifies Behavioral but not Taste-Evoked Medullary Responses to Sweeteners in Mice.

Stigma

• Weight stigma and narrative resistance evident in online discussions of obesity.
• Adverse Association of Obesity and Bullying on Educational Attainment and Wellbeing among Taiwanese Adolescents.
• Inching Forward Against Weight Discrimination in MA.
• The stigma of obesity surgery: Negative evaluations based on weight loss history.
• Weight bias in professionals treating eating disorders.

Resveratrol

• Resveratrol Improves Adipose Insulin Signaling and Reduces the Inflammatory Response in Adipose Tissue of Rhesus Monkeys on High-Fat, High-Sugar Diet.
• Thermogenesis is involved in the body-fat lowering effects of resveratrol in rats.

Psychology

• Taking weight-loss supplements may elicit liberation from dietary control: A laboratory experiment.
• Impulsivity makes one more susceptible to overeating after contextual appetitive conditioning.
• (Still) longing for food: Insulin reactivity modulates response to food pictures.
• Effects of witnessing fat talk on body satisfaction and psychological well-being: A cross-cultural comparison of Korea and the United States.

Policy Related

• Using Behavioral Economics to Design More Effective Food Policies to Address Obesity.
• Evidence and obesity prevention: developing evidence summaries to support decision making.
• Nudging Legally - On the Checks and Balances of Behavioural Regulation.

Mathematics

• Effects of Body Surface Area-Indexed Calculations in the Morbidly Obese: A Mathematical Analysis.
• A novel mathematical model detecting early individual changes of insulin resistance.

Methods

• Animal Models of Exercise and Obesity.
• Evidence and Recommendations for Imaging Liver Fat in Children, Based upon Systematic Review.
• The Official Positions of the International Society for Clinical Densitometry: Indications of Use and Reporting of DXA for Body Composition.
• Measurement of food reinforcement in preschool children. Associations with food intake, BMI, and reward sensitivity.
• Association of run-in periods with weight loss in obesity randomized controlled trials.
• Rapid quantification of muscle fat content and subcutaneous adipose tissue in fish using MRI.
• Comparison of physical activity energy expenditure in Japanese adolescents assessed by EW4800P triaxial accelerometry and the doubly labelled water method.

General Science

• Recommendations for a uniform assessment of publication bias related to funding source.
• I confess, I wrote the Arsenic DNA paper to expose flaws in peer-review at subscription based journals.
• Let's Restore Some Of The Funding To NIH.
• Evaluating U.S. Medical Schools' Efforts to Educate Faculty Researchers on Research Integrity and Research Misconduct Policies and Procedures.

Food

• Chronobiology and Chronomics Honor Douglas Wilson. Neither Calories Nor Anything Else are Equal at Breakfast and Dinner or Along Other Time Scales.
• Portion size: What we know and what we still need to know.
• RCT: Appetitive, dietary and health effects of almonds consumed with meals or as snacks.

Exercise

• Meta-analysis: Exercise is efficacious for reducing percent body fat in overweight and obese children and adolescents.
• Endurance Training Modulates Intramyocellular Lipid Compartmentalization and Morphology in Skeletal Muscle of Lean and Obese Women.

Evolution, Ecology and Energetics

• Effects of photoperiod and temperature on the body mass, thermogenesis, and serum leptin levels of Apodemus draco (Rodentia: Muridae) in the Hengduan Mountain region, China.
• Caloric Content of Chukchi Sea Benthic Invertebrates: Modeling Spatial and Environmental Variation.

Epidemiology

• US Male Obesity from 1800-2000: A Long Term Perspective.
• Overweight Dogs Found To Have Reduced Life Expectancies.
• The International Study of Childhood Obesity, Lifestyle and the Environment (ISCOLE): Design and methods.
• Neighbourhood economic deprivation explains racial/ethnic disparities in overweight and obesity among children and adolescents in the USA.
• Propagation of Obesity across Generations: The Roles of Differential Realized Fertility and Assortative Mating by BMI.

Commentary

• Personal responsibility and public policy do not exist in opposition.
• Training Physicians to Manage Obesity — Back to the Drawing Board.
• Obesity is not a disease: Pretending otherwise will stoke an epidemic and crush the NHS.
• Do Public Health Professionals Need To Brush Up Their Knowledge of Basic Science?

Basic Science

• Eat more, weigh less: Worm study provides clues to better fat-loss therapies for humans.
• A common biological basis of obesity and nicotine addiction.
• Neurological Researchers Find Fat May Be Linked to Memory Loss.
• Voluntary timing of food intake increases weight gain and reduces basal plasma cortisol levels in common carp (Cyprinus carpio L.).
• A comparative analysis of the pig and human genomes sheds light on genetic predisposition to over eating.
• Cadmium modulates adipocyte functions in metallothionein-null mice.
• High-fat intake during pregnancy and lactation exacerbates high-fat diet-induced complications in male offspring in mice.
• The gut microbiota reduces leptin sensitivity and the expression of the obesity-suppressing neuropeptides in the central nervous system.
• Mechanical compressive force inhibits adipogenesis of adipose stem cells.
• Elevated glucocorticoids during ovine pregnancy increase appetite and produce glucose deregulation and adiposity in their granddaughters in response to ad libitum feeding at 1 year of age.

Clinical and Translational

• The impact of weight loss on the 24-h profile of circulating peptide YY and its association with 24-h ghrelin in normal weight premenopausal women.
• RCT: Reducing TV Watching During Adult Obesity Treatment.
• Computer simulations of obesity effects on occupant injury in frontal impacts.
• Obesity in show dogs.
• Weight-Loss Drug Cuts Type 2 Diabetes.
• Physical exercise and brain responses to images of high-calorie food.
• Where is the beef? Waist circumference is more highly correlated with BMI and total body fat than with abdominal visceral fat in children.

Featured

• Subordinate mice get fatter.
• RCT: Eating an extra 2 donuts per day (~11,600 kcal over three weeks) caused weight gain, but 4 exercise sessions per week were sufficient to prevent the gain in body weight and fat mass, and also improve some measures of cardiometabolic risk.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• RCT: No significant anthropometric changes were observed between groups following intervention of daily grapefruit intake after controlling for baseline values.
• RCT: Daily consumption of grapefruit for 6 weeks reduces urine f2-isoprostanes in overweight adults with high baseline values but has no effect on plasma high-sensitivity C-reactive protein or soluble vascular cellular adhesion molecule 1.
• Genetic Risk Score Does Not Predict the Outcome of Obesity Surgery.
• Morbid Obesity Is Not an Independent Predictor of Graft Failure or Patient Mortality After Kidney Transplantation.
• RCT: These findings suggest that weight loss has neither a positive nor a negative effect on cognitive function and that L-CHO and H-CHO weight-loss diets have similar effects on cognitive performance.
• Food availability of glucose and fat, but not fructose, increased in the US between 1970 and 2009: analysis of the USDA food availability data system.
• Exercise training, despite increasing cardiorespiratory fitness, is unable to improve obesity-associated decreases in LV diastolic myocardial function.
• RCT: a single bout of 8h of uninterrupted sitting does not result in measurable changes in circulating levels of insulin, glucose, or lipids in healthy children and youth.
• Despite being associated with walking and physical activity, dog ownership was not associated with weight status.
• Increasing the percentage of energy from dietary sugar, fats, and alcohol in adults is associated with increased energy intake but has minimal association with biomarkers of cardiovascular risk.
• Despite their reputation, canned fruits and vegetables retain many of their nutrients, in some cases better than fresh produce does.

Food

• RCT: Dietary protein and weight in midlife adults.
• Prevention of diet-induced obesity in C57BL/BJ mice with addition of 2 % dietary green tea but not with cocoa or coffee to a high-fat diet.
• RCT: Acute Effect of Oatmeal on Subjective Measures of Appetite and Satiety Compared to a Ready-to-Eat Breakfast Cereal: A Randomized Crossover Trial.
• RCT: Positive effect of mushrooms substituted for meat on body weight, body composition, and health parameters.
• Deconstructing a Fruit Serving: Comparing the Antioxidant Density of Select Whole Fruit and 100% Fruit Juices.
• Effect of oral processing behaviour on food intake and satiety.
• Twizzlers as a cost-effective and equivalent alternative to the glucola beverage in diabetes screening.

Aging

• Aged mice given modified TFAM showed improvements in memory and exercise performance compared with untreated mice.
• RCT: Improvement of metabolic parameters in healthy older adult men following a fasting calorie restriction intervention.

Drugs

• RCT: The once-daily human GLP-1 analogue liraglutide impacts appetite and energy intake in patients with type 2 diabetes after short-term treatment.
• RCT: Effect of metformin versus placebo on weight and metabolic factors in initial patients enrolled onto NCIC CTG MA.32 in early-stage breast cancer.
• RCT: Empagliflozin improves glycaemic and weight control as add-on therapy to pioglitazone or pioglitazone plus metformin in patients with type 2 diabetes over 24 week.
• RCT: Weight reduction and maintenance with IQP-PV-101: A 12-week randomized controlled study with a 24-week open label period.
• Gastric injections of Botox might curb obesity.
• Long-term inhibition of intestinal lipase by orlistat improves release of gut hormones increasing satiety in obese women.
• Systematic review of metformin use in obese nondiabetic children and adolescents.
• New and Emerging Drug Molecules Against Obesity.

Exercise

• RCT: Among overweight and obese adults with knee OA, after 18 months, participants in the diet + exercise and diet groups had more weight loss and greater reductions in IL-6 levels than those in the exercise group; those in the diet group had greater reductions in knee compressive force than those in the exercise group.
• RCT: Physical activity intervention assessed by pedometer with or without dietary follow-up reduced gestational weight gain compared to control in obese pregnant women.
• Exercise May Be as Effective as Drugs in Treating Disease.

Surgery

• Response to glucose tolerance testing and solid high carbohydrate challenge: comparison between Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, vertical sleeve gastrectomy, and duodenal switch.
• Promises and Ethical Pitfalls of Surgical Innovation: the Case of Bariatric Surgery.
• Obesity ops 'no help' for those who have already developed diabetes.

Economics

• Obesity has a negative association with employment probability in women.
• Suggestive evidence that having trouble paying bills may be a cause of obesity for women.
• Who Pays For Obesity? Evidence From Health Insurance Benefit Mandates.

Psychology

• Holding the Hunger Games Hostage at the Gym: an Evaluation of Temptation Bundling.
• Authors conclude that in real-life non-experimental settings “light” claims are not associated with increased consumption of the “light” products.
• Relationships among grocery nutrition label users and consumers' attitudes and behavior toward restaurant menu labeling.
• Is obesity contagious by way of body image? A study on Japanese female students in the United States.
• Perceived Social-Ecological Factors Associated with Fruit and Vegetable Purchasing, Preparation, and Consumption among Young Adults.

Mathematics

• Examining the Mathematics Teachers' Design Process of the Model Eliciting Activity: Obesity Problem.
• Math can carry weight in the battle against obesity.
• Intake of food and the expenditure of calories is modelled by a system of differential equations.
• Body mass control and unresolved sociocultural stress: application of the generalized Data-Rate Theorem.
• A cure for the plague of parameters: constraining models of complex population dynamics with allometries.

Epidemiology

• Overweight/Obesity and Risk of Seasonal Asthma Exacerbations.
• A history of childhood abuse and neglect retrospectively reported is related to overall elevated inflammation in mid-life women, perhaps through obesity.

Genetics and Epigenetics

• Obesity susceptibility loci and uncontrolled eating, emotional eating and cognitive restraint behaviors in men and women.
• Changes in plant flowering time and other traits were the result of epigenetics alone, unaided by any sequence changes.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• Life history traits associated with body size covary along a latitudinal gradient in a generalist grasshopper.
• Homeostasis: An underestimated focal point of ecology and evolution.
• Honeybees prefer warmer nectar and less viscous nectar, regardless of sugar concentration.
• To kill a kangaroo: understanding the decision to pursue high-risk/high-gain resources.
• Robustness of empirical food webs with varying consumer's sensitivities to loss of resources.
• A review of the energetics of pollination biology.
• Temporal variation in site fidelity: scale-dependent effects of forage abundance and predation risk in a non-migratory large herbivore.
• Predation selects for low resting metabolic rate and consistent individual differences in anti-predator behavior in a bettle (Tenebrio molitor).
• Late-moulting Black-necked Grebes Podiceps nigricollis show greater body mass in the face of failing food supply.

Clinical

• Divergent Effects of Obesity on Bone Health.
• RCT: High-Dose Resveratrol Treatment for 2 Weeks Inhibits Intestinal and Hepatic Lipoprotein Production in Overweight/Obese Men.
• RCT: Reduced energy density eating without meal replacements aids weight loss maintenance in primary care patients.
• RCT: Comparison of COPE (Creating Opportunities for Personal Empowerment) and Healthy Lifestyles TEEN (Thinking, Emotions, Exercise, Nutrition): Former superior in improving healthy lifestyle behaviors and BMI.
• The body adiposity index (BAI) over-estimates the percent body fat in children.
• RCT: Physical activity intervention assessed by pedometer with or without dietary follow-up reduced gestational weight gain compared to control in obese pregnant women.

Sugar

• Sugar, Uric Acid, and the Etiology of Diabetes and Obesity.
• Commentary: Obesity: Metabolic effects of fructose.
• Sweetened Beverages and Health: Current State of Scientific Understandings.
• The total sugar and free sugar content in beverages categorized according to recipes at coffee and beverage stores.
• Dextrose gel for neonatal hypoglycaemia (the Sugar Babies Study): a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.
• Modifying influence of dietary sugar in the relationship between cortisol and visceral adipose tissue in minority youth.

Sugar Sweetened Beverages

• No harmful effect of different Coca-cola beverages after six months of intake on rat testes.
• Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption in the U.S. is higher than previously reported when using a novel assessment methodology.

Pregnancy and Transgenerational Effects

• Mom's pregnancy weight gain tied to kid's obesity.
• Mom's obesity linked to extreme preemies.
• Childbearing is not associated with young women's long-term obesity risk.
• Parental dietary fat intake alters offspring microbiome and immunity.

Stigma

• BMI and depressive symptoms: The role of media pressures.
• Video clips for YouTube: Collaborative video creation as an educational concept for knowledge acquisition and attitude change related to obesity stigmatization.
• The relationship between selective visual attention and the maintenance of anti-fat prejudice.
• The relationship between physical appearance concerns, disgust, and anti-fat prejudice.
• Weight and Gender Discrimination among Job Applicants.
• Eating behaviors, victimization, and desire for supportive intervention among adolescents in weight-loss camps.
• Obese people residing in counties with higher levels of BMI may have better physical and mental health than obese people living in counties with lower levels of BMI by some measures, but these improvements are modest.

Policy Related

• Forbes: Shutdown stops funding for Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).
• An Attributional Explanation of Consumers' Responses to Government Regulations and Corporate Social Responsibility, with Implications for Childhood Obesity.
• RCT: Misinterpretation of the low endpoint of a calorie range biases calorie estimates of customized food products.
• Punishing Maternal Behavior: Potential Legal Consequences for Obesity-Associated Poor Fetal Outcome in the United States.
• The Affordable Care Act’s Impact on Persons with Obesity: The Full Report.
• School lunch debit card payment systems without a cash option are associated with lower nutrition and higher calories.
• NIH Closes Science Education Office.
• Recruits dismissed for obesity cost $1.1 billion a year.

Basic Science

• Obesity can be either spurred or stopped by key cellular mechanism in mitochondria.
• A network of neurons in the hypothalamus can turn feeding behavior on or off with the flip of an optogenetic switch in mice.
• Drowsy Drosophila shed light on sleep and hunger.
• Ghrelin-induced food intake and adiposity depend on central mTORC1/S6K1 signaling.
• Diet-induced obesity suppresses expression of many proteins at the blood-brain barrier.
• Study unlocks origin of brown fat cells important in weight maintenance.

Commentary

• Coffee and tea: perks for health and longevity?
• The Scarcity Response Linking Poverty, Hunger, and Obesity.
• How we fail fat people.
• School Lunch: Hazardous to Your Weight?
• Media reporting on no-calorie sweeteners: Good, Bad, or Biased?

Video

• Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey - Childhood Obesity 2013 Summit Sponsor Remarks.
• Einstein On: Childhood Obesity, Dr. Keith Ayoob.
• We're Going To Attack Your Donut Eating On All Fronts: How Health Propaganda Will Play Out In The Years Ahead.

General Science

• TED Talk - Elizabeth Loftus: The fiction of memory.
• Science reporter spoofs hundreds of open access journals with fake papers.
• Reflections on a Life in Biomedicine: Leading change.
• Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?
• Easter Island settlers ate predominately rats, not seafood.
• World first as woman gets pregnant seven years after ovaries removed.
• Building a fearless mind: Researchers have successfully erased frightening memories in the lab.

Announcements

• Swiss Winter Conference on Ingestive Behavior, March 1-6, 2014.
• 4th International Conference on Food Studies, Prato, Italy, Oct 20-21, 2014.
• Advances and Controversies in Clinical Nutrition 2013: Addressing gut to foods and all in between.
• Allyn L. Mark MD to be recognized as Distinguished Mentor on October 16th.
• UAB biologist Mike Sandel successfully petitions for rare Alabama fish to be protected Under the Endangered Species Act.
• Montclair State University is advertising four tenure track positions as part of an obesity cluster hire.
• Free Exercise Is Medicine event in Kingston, Ontario featuring Dr. Steve Blair