Obesity and Energetics Offerings

Featured

• Waists, health and history: obesity in nineteenth century Britain.
• RCT: Small Cash Rewards for Big Losers – Experimental Insights Into the Fight Against the Obesity Epidemic.
• Hope thinking and past trauma mediate the relationships of BMI with perceived mental health treatment need and mental health treatment use.
• Leptin Mediates the Increase in Blood Pressure Associated with Obesity.

Headline vs. Study

• Headline: Chinese licorice used in traditional medicine can prevent diabetes.
• Study: A study in mice studied substances found in licorice (but not licorice).

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• RCT: No effects of dietary protein-to-carbohydrate ratio on cognitive performance, mood or self-reported sleep quality were observed during energy balance or energy deficit.
• “Expression of fetal miRNA is not altered in umbilical cord blood in response to in utero exposure to obesity. Alternate mechanisms underlying the fetal effects of maternal obesity should be explored.”
• Summer vacation, not school year, associated with zBMI gain in school children.
• Neither dietary nor supplemental intake of vitamin A or vitamin C nor supplemental intake of vitamin E was significantly associated with mortality after multivariate adjustment.
• This meta-analysis does not support the routine use of testosterone treatment in men with T2D and/or the metabolic syndrome without classical hypogonadism.
• Type 2 diabetes and cancer: "Though type 2 diabetes has been extensively studied in relation to risk of developing cancer and cancer mortality and strong claims of significance exist for most of the studied associations, only a minority of these associations have robust supporting evidence without hints of bias.”
• Metabolically normal obese people are protected from adverse effects following weight gain.
• Overall, lunch FV intake was not significantly higher for students who had a play-before-eating vs a play-after-eating lunch schedule at school.

Exercise

• The Physical Education Hall of Shame, Part IV: More Inappropriate Games, Activities, and Practices.
• RCT: Post-dinner resistance exercise improves postprandial risk factors more effectively than pre-dinner resistance exercise in patients with type 2 diabetes.
• “Quasi-causal associations” of physical activity and neighborhood walkability with BMI: A twin study.
• Modern standup desks coax office workers back on their feet.
• Adenovirus 36 Attenuates Weight Loss from Exercise but Improves Glycemic Control by Increasing Mitochondrial Activity in the Liver.

Methods

• Comparison of Gestational Weight Gain z-Scores and Traditional Weight Gain Measures in Relation to Perinatal Outcomes.
• Optimizing methods for the study of intravascular lipid metabolism in zebrafish.

Food

• Temporal Trends in Fast-Food Restaurant Energy, Sodium, Saturated Fat, and Trans Fat Content, United States, 1996–2013.
• Gluten-Free Diet for Type 1 Diabetes Still Questionable.
• What’s the Best Diet in America?
• Effects of weight loss via high fat vs. low fat alternate day fasting diets on free fatty acid profiles.
• The role of higher protein diets in weight control and obesity-related comorbidities.
• Large portion sizes increase bite size and eating rate in overweight women.

Aging

• Meta-analysis of global metabolomic data identifies metabolites associated with life-span extension.
• The suppression of ghrelin signaling mitigates age-associated thermogenic impairment.

Epidemiology

• Association of Uric Acid With Vascular Stiffness in the Framingham Heart Study.
• Over the past four decades, the share of families with only one child has been rising steadily and singletons have a higher level of BMI and a higher obesity rate than children with siblings.
• Childhood adiposity trajectories and risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in adolescents.
• In-store marketing strategies of low-nutrient foods appear to be risk factors for a higher BMI among regular shoppers.
• Relationship Between Social Support and BMI Among Overweight and Obese African American Women in the Rural Deep South, 2011–2013.
• “Short-term disability claims related to obesity have increased by 3,300 percent, according to Cigna's study."
• BMI Is Associated With Mucosal Disease in Crohn’s: Results of a Case-Control Study.
• Cardiovascular Mortality During Dates of National Cardiology Meetings.
• Motor Vehicle Crash Injury Costs Topped $18 Billion in 2012.
• Examining Rural-Urban Obesity Trends among Youth in the U.S.: Testing the Socioeconomic Gradient Hypothesis.

Stigma

• Too fat, too thin: Understanding bias against overweight and underweight.
• Obese individuals’ perceptions of health and obesity and the lived experience of weight loss, gain, or maintenance over time.
• What are your experiences with obesity bias in physical activity/physical education settings?
• Neural Activation during Anticipated Peer Evaluation (Rejection) Alters Brain Activity and Laboratory Meal Intake in Overweight Girls.

Sleep

• Review: The Role of Sleep in the Control of Food Intake.
• Sleeping more to improve appetite and body weight control: dream or reality?

Drugs

• Cannabis use in relation to obesity and insulin resistance in the Inuit population.
• New drug tricks metabolism into burning fat as if you’ve just finished a meal.
• Intestinal FXR agonism promotes adipose tissue browning and reduces obesity and insulin resistance.
• The Effectiveness (Association) of Pharmaceutical Interventions for Obesity: Weight Loss With Orlistat and Sibutramine in a United Kingdom Population-Based Cohort is Less Than in Published RCTs.
• Case Report: In young boy with novel leptin gene mutation, treatment with recombinant human leptin (metreleptin) rapidly normalized eating behavior and resulted in weight loss.

Surgery

• Association Between Bariatric Surgery and Long-term Survival.
• The influence of an individual's weight perception on the acceptance of bariatric surgery.
• RCT: Benefits of Heated and Humidified High Flow Nasal Oxygen for Preoxygenation in Morbidly Obese Patients Undergoing Bariatric Surgery.
• Impact of bariatric surgery on clinical depression. interrupted time series study with matched controls.

Neuroscience

• Neural dissociation of food and money related reward processing using an abstract incentive delay task.
• RCT: Neural Effects of Cannabinoid CB1 Neutral Antagonist Tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCv) on Food Reward and Aversion in Healthy Volunteers.

Psychology

• Dietary Self-Control Is Related to the Speed With Which Attributes of Healthfulness and Tastiness Are Processed.
• Can Behavioral Health Organizations Change Health Behaviors?
• Obesity and onset of depression among U.S. middle-aged and older adults.
• Physical activity and energy expenditure during depressive episodes of major depression.
• Perceived stress and freshman weight change: The moderating role of baseline BMI.
• Self-perceived successful weight regulators are less affected by self-regulatory depletion in the domain of eating behavior.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• Parasitism alters three power laws of scaling in a metazoan community: Taylor's law, density-mass allometry, and variance-mass allometry.
• Scaling of free-ranging primate energetics with body mass predicts low energy expenditure in humans.
• The effect of temperature and body size on metabolic scope of activity in juvenile Atlantic cod Gadus morhua L.
• Mammalian energetics. Flexible energetics of cheetah hunting strategies.

Transgenerational Effects

• Association of Trimester-Specific Gestational Weight Gain With Fetal Growth, Offspring Obesity And Cardio-Metabolic Traits in Early Childhood.
• Study Shows Mice Passing Down Drug Benefits To Offspring.
• The B'more Fit for healthy babies coalition of Baltimore.
• Mitigating or exacerbating effects of maternal-fetal programming of female mice through the food choice environment.
• A Maternal High Fat Diet Has Long-Lasting Effects on Skeletal Muscle Lipid and PLIN Protein Content in Rat Offspring at Young Adulthood.
• Obesity during pregnancy harms stem cells in developing babies.

Clinical

• Calculating energy needs in critically ill patients: Sense or nonsense?
• Fat-free mass loss generated with weight loss in overweight and obese adults: What may we expect?
• Rapid Deterioration of Insulin Secretion in Obese Adolescents Preceding the Onset of Type 2 Diabetes.
• Severe Obesity and Comorbid Condition Impact on the Weight-Related Quality of Life of the Adolescent Patient.
• Triad of Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, Preeclampsia, and HELLP Syndrome in a Parturient: A Rare Confrontation to the Anesthetist.
• In a sauna, persons with a high BMI are at higher risk of dehydration, and they should pay particular attention to replenishing fluids during a visit to the sauna.

Policy Related

• Many Insurers Do Not Cover Drugs Approved To Help People Lose Weight.
• FDA Regulation of Laboratory-Developed Diagnostic Tests.
• “The results show that the SNAP is not responsible for the higher prevalence of obesity among adolescents of low-income households. Proposed SNAP changes such as more frequent benefit distribution and a focus on fresh fruits and vegetables are likely to be ineffective in reducing childhood obesity, although they might encourage healthy dietary practices among SNAP participants.”
• Easy access may boost kids' water consumption.
• Some forced to buy on health insurance exchanges for the first time.
• Visual gut punch: persuasion, emotion, and the constitutional meaning of graphic disclosure.

New Books

• Nutrition in Clinical Practice – David Katz et al.
• Childhood Obesity: Impact on Health Care – Diane Thompson.
• The Obesity Paradox: When Thinner Means Sicker and Heavier Means Healthier – Chip Lavie.
• Fashioning Fat: Inside Plus-SSIze Modeling, by Amanda M. Czerniawski.
• Fat, Gay, and Proud: Review of Fat Gay Men: Girth, Mirth, and the Politics of Stigma, by Jason Whitesel.
• Epidemiology of obesity among Austrian adults: Long-term trends, social inequalities and obesity-associated diseases and disorders.

Commentary

• Wearable Devices as Facilitators, Not Drivers, of Health Behavior Change.
• 2014 FDA Obesity Scorecard: Drugs 2, Devices 0.
• As a Matter of Fact: The Chicago Tribune Misses on Obesity.
• Science and Humanity.
• A Bigger Body Does Not Equal a Diseased Body.
• How the world could better fight obesity.
• Fork in the Road of Obesity Policy toward Paternalism.
• Many Consumers Misled About Bogus Weight-Loss Supplements, Survey Says.

Basic Science

• Cilia Dysfunction May Promote Development of Type 2 Diabetes.
• Dermal adipocytes protect against invasive Staphylococcus aureus skin infection.
• mTOR signaling in cellular and organismal energetics.
• Obesity-induced oxidative stress, accelerated functional decline with age and increased mortality in mice.
• Fat Isn’t All Bad: Skin Adipocytes Help Protect Against Infections.
• Magainin-related peptides stimulate insulin-release and improve glucose tolerance in high fat fed mice.

Video

• Video: Edward Archer, "Childhood Obesity Epidemic as a Result of Nongenetic Evolution"
• UAB’s Robert Kessler uses new cyclotron to study obesity.

General Science

• Reproducibility in Science: Improving the Standard for Basic and Preclinical Research.
• Mathematical model of the Action of body forces in tumor growth.
• Safety of Assisted Reproductive Technology in the United States, 2000-2011.
• Working with Nitric Oxide and Hydrogen Sulfide in Biological Systems.
• In cardiovascular RCTs, half were reported as nonregistered and that these nonregistered trials were more likely than trials that were reported as registered to report statistically significant positive outcomes, suggesting that clinical trial registration mitigates selective reporting.
• The strange case of East African annual fishes.
• The man who revolutionized our knowledge of the human body.
• Body suit makes the best lie detector, say scientists.
• Obesity 'not always linked with metabolic problems'.
• Variants for HDL-C, LDL-C and Triglycerides Identified from Admixture Mapping and Fine-Mapping Analysis.
• The Genetic Ancestry of African Americans, Latinos, and European Americans across the United States.

Announcements

• The 2015 Charles River Prize for Laboratory Animal Science.
• The American Gut Project.

Featured

• RCT: Eating with chopsticks lowers the glycemic index of rice.
• RCT: A lower-carbohydrate, higher-fat diet reduces abdominal and intermuscular fat and increases insulin sensitivity in adults at risk of type 2 diabetes.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• RCT: This pilot study found no evidence that manipulating expectancies about treatment efficacy or not blinding raters biased measurements.
• Using exposure to the reform as an instrument ..., we find that for women ages 18-30, education has no impact on self-reported health, BMI, overweight, obesity... education increases men's BMI and the propensity to be overweight and obese.
• The Presence of Methanogenic Bacteria, Identified During Clinical Breath Testing, Is Not Associated with a Higher BMI in a U.S. Midwestern Population.
• RCT: Ranitidine at doses of 150 and 300 mg per day when combined with olanzapine was ineffective in attenuating olanzapine-induced weight gain.
• RCT: "Rate of weight loss does not affect the proportion of weight regained within 144 weeks."
• RCT: No significant differential effects of egg, egg-whites, or high carb breakfast in humans.

Food

• Intermittent access to liquid sucrose differentially modulates energy intake and related central pathways in control or high-fat fed mice.
• Association of maternal BMI with hormones in breast milk: a systematic review.
• Effect of cactus pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) on body weight and cardiovascular risk factors: a systematic review and meta-analysis of RCTs.
• Humans are more sensitive to the taste of linoleic and a-linolenic than oleic acid.

Exercise

• A combination of exercise and capsinoids supplementation additively suppresses diet-induced obesity by increasing energy expenditure in mice.
• RCT: Comparison of the acute metabolic responses to traditional resistance, body-weight, and battling rope exercises.
• Fitter individuals appear to over-report PA more than lesser fit participants.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• In flies, the "cost of cheating was negative condition dependent because the deduction in fat reserve in order to exaggerate the signal would represent a greater physiological cost for males in poor condition, constraining males in poor condition from cheating."
• Acclimating to thermal changes: intraspecific variation by a small mammal from the Andes Mountains.

Epidemiology

• Regional disparities in obesity prevalence in the United States: A spatial regime analysis.
• Dietary patterns derived using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.
• Dietary contributors to glycemic load in the REasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study.
• Associations of neighborhood area level deprivation with the metabolic syndrome.
• Obesity was associated with a greater rate of slip, trip and fall injuries.

Clinical

• Obesity Management: Applying Clinical Trial Data to Clinical Care.
• RCT: Effects of weight loss on foot structure and function in obese adults.
• Obesity, metabolic health, and the risk of end-stage renal disease.

Surgery

• Effect of bariatric surgery combined with medical therapy versus intensive medical therapy or caloric restriction and weight loss on glycemic control in ZDF rat.
• Sexual Functioning and Sex Hormones in Men Who Underwent Bariatric Surgery.
• Effects of Bariatric Surgery on Weight Loss and Quality of Life.
• Continued loss in visceral and intermuscular adipose tissue in weight-stable women following bariatric surgery.
• RCT: Liquid vs normal very low calorie diets before bariatric surgery.

Drugs

• Why are anti-obesity drugs stigmatized?
• RCT: The effect of recombinant human growth hormone with or without rosiglitazone on hepatic fat content in HIV-1 infected individuals.
• Effects of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists on weight loss in patients with type 2 diabetes: a systematic review and network meta-analysis.

Policy Related

• Evidence-based fitness promotion in an afterschool setting: Implementation fidelity and its policy implications.
• Is the banning of unhealthy foods at school canteens associated with principal influence or school policy?
• Support for laws to prohibit weight discrimination in the United States: Public attitudes from 2011 to 2013.
• Are government efforts to "nudge" us to lose weight really based on science?

Psychology

• The influence of hot and cool executive function on the development of eating styles related to overweight in children.
• Food reinforcement and delay discounting in zBMI-discordant siblings.

Caloric Restriction

• Calorie restriction mimetics: Can you have your cake and eat it, too?
• Mild caloric restriction reduces blood pressure and activates endothelial AMPK-PI3K-Akt-eNOS pathway in obese Zucker rats.
• Disruption of Snf3/Rgt2 glucose sensors decreases lifespan and caloric restriction effectiveness through Mth1/Std1 by adjusting mitochondrial efficiency in yeast.
• A time-efficient reduction of fat mass in 4 days with exercise and caloric restriction.

Energy Balance

• Economics of food intake in mice: Energy yield of the reinforcer.
• A paradoxical role for alarin in the nervous control of energy homeostasis and thermoregulation: orexigenic but hypermetabolic.

Economics

• Community socioeconomic deprivation and obesity trajectories in children using electronic health records.
• The poverty effects of a 'fat-tax' in Ireland.
• Material Need Insecurities, Control of Diabetes Mellitus, and Use of Health Care Resources: Results of the Measuring Economic Insecurity in Diabetes Study.

Methods

• Estimating energy expenditure using heat flux measured at a single body site.
• Differing Statistical Approaches Affect the Relation between Egg Consumption, Adiposity, and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Adults.
• Application of NMR-based metabolomics to the study of gut microbiota in obesity.
• Systematic research review of observational approaches used to evaluate mother-child mealtime interactions during preschool years.
• Modelling the vicious circle between obesity and physical activity in children and adolescents using a bivariate probit model with endogenous regressors.
• Even modest prediction accuracy of genomic models can have large clinical utility.

Stigma

• Obesity Bias, Medical Technology and the Hormonal Hypothesis: Should We Stop Demonizing Fat People?
• A Northern Approach to Childhood Obesity?

Basic Science

• Adiponectin prevents reduction of lipid-induced mitochondrial biogenesis via AMPK/ACC2 pathway in chicken adipocyte.
• Secretion of fatty acid binding protein aP2 from adipocytes through a non-classical pathway in response to adipocyte lipase activity.
• Mechanisms of Aging-Related Impairment of Brown Adipocyte Development and Function.
• Expression Profiling and Structural Characterization of MicroRNAs in Adipose Tissues of Hibernating Ground Squirrels.
• Chronic oxytocin administration inhibits food intake, increases energy expenditure, and produces weight loss in fructose-fed obese rhesus monkeys.
• Absence of Intracellular Ion Channels TPC1 and 2 Leads to Mature-Onset Obesity in Male Mice, Due to Impaired Lipid Availability for Thermogenesis in Brown Adipose Tissue.

New Year Commentary from Ted Kyle

• 10 Nutrition, Health & Fitness Trends for 2015.
• Goodbye to 5 Infatuations of 2014.
• Obesity Wish List for 2015.

Commentary

• Naked Scientists: Fancy popping an anti-fat pill?
• Hank Cardello: Restaurants Should Be Doing More to Fight Obesity--for Their Own Good.
• Fast Food Nation and Fast-Track Arthroplasty: Can We Have Our Cake and Eat It Too?
• "Sufficient Unto the Day:" The Complexities of Satiety.
• Energy balance measurement: when something is not better than nothing.

General Science

• The Myth of Learning Styles.
• How DNA Sequencing In Sewers Could Detect Disease Outbreaks.
• Science Isn't Science If It Isn't Reproducible.
• Enhanced Cardiac Akt/PKB Signaling Contributes to Pathological Cardiac Hypertrophy in Part by Impairing Mitochondrial Function Via Transcriptional Repression of Nuclear-Encoded Mitochondrial Genes.

Announcements

• Late-breaking Experimental Biology abstracts due January 21.
• American Diabetes Association abstract deadline January 5.

Featured

• The Science of Fat: What We Don't Know Will Hurt You.
• Remote regulation of glucose homeostasis in mice using genetically encoded nanoparticles

Scientific Rigor & Dialogue

• Letter: Energy Intake and Weight Loss.
• Reply: Energy Intake and Weight Loss.
• Letter: Calorie Labeling on Menus and Menu Boards.
• Reply: Calorie Labeling on Menus and Menu Boards
• Letter: Implausible Results from the Use of Invalid Methods.
• Reply: Implausible Results from the Use of Invalid Methods

Headline vs. Study

• Headline: The GI diet debunked: Glycaemic index is irrelevant for most healthy people - so it doesn't matter if you eat white or wholewheat bread, scientists claim.
• Study: No benefit of a low GI diet in 5 weeks (controlling weight).
• Headline: Kiss goodbye to fat under the mistletoe! Plant could help fight obesity.
• Study: A substance in mistletoe, but not mistletoe itself, reduced body weight in mice.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• Consumption of sucrose, but not high fructose corn syrup, leads to increased adiposity and dyslipidaemia in the pregnant and lactating rat.
• Changes in leptin and peptide YY do not explain the greater than predicted decreases in resting energy expenditure following weight loss.
• RCT: No significant effect observed in a trial for Reducing Weight Retention in New Mums.
• RCT: In overweight/obese individuals, no difference in appetitive variables following isocaloric bouts of moderate- or high-intensity exercise.
• RCT: "The use of mitrapide in addition to low-fat high-fibre diet does not seem to offer any further useful effect in the loss of weight during the treatment of canine obesity."

Transgenerational Effects

• A Statistical Framework for Testing the Causal Effects of Fetal Drive.
• Fetal Programming of Obesity: Maternal Obesity and Excessive Weight Gain.
• Maternal high-fat diet feeding during pregnancy and lactation augments lung inflammation and remodeling in the offspring.
• Maternal dietary protein supplement confers long-term sex-specific beneficial consequences of obesity resistance and glucose tolerance to the offspring in Brandt's voles.
• Effect of Maternal BMI on Hormones in Breast Milk: A Systematic Review.

Temperature

• Transcriptome profiling of brown adipose tissue during cold exposure reveals extensive regulation of glucose metabolism.
• Selection for high activity-related aerobic metabolism does not alter the capacity of non-shivering thermogenesis in bank voles.

Stress

• Acute stress enhances sensitivity to a highly attractive food reward without affecting judgment bias in laying hens.
• Enhanced motivation for food reward induced by stress and attenuation by corticotrophin-releasing factor receptor antagonism in rats: implications for overeating and obesity.
• Why is obesity such a problem in the 21st century? The intersection of palatable food, cues and reward pathways, stress, and cognition.

Media Communications

• Dietary advice for muscularity, leanness and weight control in Men's Health magazine: a content analysis.
• Large-scale automated analysis of news media: A novel computational method for obesity policy research.

Mathematical

• Model of adipose tissue cellularity dynamics during food restriction.
• Combating Obesity through Healthy Eating Behavior: A Call for System Dynamics Optimization.
• Growth mixture modeling with non-normal distributions.

Drugs

• FDA approves weight-management drug Saxenda.
• Combination of carvacrol and rosiglitazone ameliorates high fat diet induced changes in lipids and inflammatory markers in C57BL/6J mice.
• Metformin reduces the Walker-256 tumor development in obese-MSG rats via AMPK and FOXO3a.

Law & Policy

• Splitting Hairs: Obesity & Disability.
• Carbohydrates and obesity: from evidence to policy in the UK.

Caloric Restriction

• Calorie restriction and methionine restriction in control of endogenous hydrogen sulfide production by the transsulfuration pathway.
• A weekly alternating diet between caloric restriction and medium-fat protects the liver from fatty liver development in middle-aged C57BL/6J mice.
• Fasting for 15 hours a day wards off obesity in mice.
• Calorie Restriction Improves Cognitive Decline via Up-Regulation of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor Tropomyosin-Related Kinase B in Hippocampus.

Brown Fat

• Browning of human adipocytes requires KLF11 and reprogramming of PPARγ superenhancers.
• Transcriptome profiling of brown adipose tissue during cold exposure reveals extensive regulation of glucose metabolism.
• Acupuncture promotes white adipose tissue browning by inducing UCP1 expression on DIO mice.

Economics

• Relative Food Prices and Obesity in U.S. Metropolitan Areas: 1976-2001.
• Economics of Information: Comments on Moral Hazard in Diabetes.

Surgery

• RCT: Dual Intragastric Balloon for the Treatment of Obesity.
• Beyond BMI: the need for new guidelines governing the use of bariatric and metabolic surgery.

Stigma

• Waistlines and Ratings of Executives: Does Executive Status Overcome Obesity Stigma?
• “Overall, participants reported very few weight-related microaggressions in [psycho]therapy.”
• Throwing their weight around: a critical examination of faculty experiences with challenging dominant obesity discourse in post-secondary education.
• The weight of stigma: Cortisol reactivity to manipulated weight stigma.
• A critical analysis of ‘lesbian obesity’ in public health discourse.
• Giving Permission To Be Fat? Examining the Impact of Body-Based Belief Systems.
• Why are anti-obesity drugs stigmatized?
• You are not fat, you are hermosa": Mexican caregivers share their perceptions about their role supporting their morbidly obese children.

Psychology

• Associating a prototypical forbidden food item with guilt or celebration: Relationships with indicators of (un)healthy eating and the moderating role of stress and depressive symptoms.
• Making snacking less sinful: (Counter-)moralising obesity in the public discourse differentially affects food choices of individuals with high and low perceived body mass.
• Social Competence and Obesity in Elementary School.
• A weighty issue: Explaining the association between BMI and appearance-based social anxiety.
• Depressive Symptoms and Food Intake among Weight-Preoccupied Women: Do Eating Behaviors and Attitudes or BMI Mediate This Association?
• Psychological flexibility is not a single dimension: The distinctive flexibility profiles of underweight, overweight, and obese people.
• New Year’s Res-Illusions: Food Shopping in the New Year Competes with Healthy Intention.

Food

• RCT: Benefits on body fat composition of isocalorically controlled diets including functionally optimized meat products: Role of alpha-linolenic acid.
• High consumption of fructose rather than glucose promotes a diet-induced obese phenotype in Drosophila melanogaster.
• A high fat diet rich in corn oil reduces spontaneous locomotor activity and induces insulin resistance in mice.
• Effects of polydextrose on different levels of energy intake. A systematic review and meta-analysis.
• Controlling obesity with potato extract in mice.
• Effects of Increased Free Fatty Acid Availability on Adipose Tissue Fatty Acid Storage in Men.
• Wild Blueberries (Vaccinium myrtillus) Alleviate Inflammation and Hypertension Associated with Developing Obesity in Mice Fed with a High-Fat Diet.
• Monitoring Changes in the Nutritional Content of Ready-To-Eat Grain-Based Dessert Products Manufactured and Purchased between 2005 and 2012.

Clinical

• Obese manikins are needed to train anaesthetists in airway rescue: A simulation study.
• Reducing Obesity among Lesbian Women: Recommendations for Culturally Tailored Interventions.
• Weight Loss in Children and Adolescents.
• Obesity prevention interventions in early childhood education and care settings with parental involvement: a systematic review.
• Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes—2015: Summary of Revisions.
• Effectiveness of lifestyle-based weight loss interventions for adults with type 2 diabetes: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
• Shape Up Somerville: Change in Parent BMIs During a Child-Targeted, Community-Based Environmental Change Intervention.

Energy Balance

• The effect of hydration status on appetite and energy intake.
• Effects of Exercise in the Cold on Ghrelin, PYY, and Food Intake in Overweight Adults.

Epidemiology

• An Empirical Analysis of Factors Associated with Obesity in the Alabama Black Belt and Surrounding Counties.
• Identifying gene-gene interactions that are highly associated with BMI.
• Association of Breaks in Daily Self-Weighing with Weight Gain.
• BMI and Depressive Symptoms in Older Adults: A Cross-Lagged Panel Analysis.
• Infant antibiotic exposure and the development of childhood overweight and central adiposity.
• The stagnation of the Mexican male life expectancy in the first decade of the 21st century: the impact of homicides and diabetes mellitus.
• Impact of Visceral Fat on Skeletal Muscle Mass and Vice Versa in a Prospective Cohort Study.
• Obesity in humans and companion animals: A comparative review.
• Regional disparities in obesity prevalence in the United States: A spatial regime analysis.
• Secular trends of obesity prevalence in Chinese children from 1985 to 2010: Urban–rural disparity.
• Workplace slip, trip and fall injuries and obesity.

Mortality

• BMI-Mortality Relationship in Severe Hypoglycemic Patients With Type 2 Diabetes.
• Ablation of insulin-producing cells prevents obesity but not premature mortality caused by a high-sugar diet in Drosophila.

Methods

• Baseline participant characteristics and risk for dropout from 10 obesity RCTs: a pooled analysis of individual level data.
• Statistical methods for BMI: a selective review of the literature.
• The 13C-glucose breath test is a valid non-invasive screening tool to identify metabolic syndrome in adolescents.
• Estimating Energy Expenditure Using Heat Flux Measured at a Single Body Site.
• Validity and reliability of the new Canadian Nutrition Screening Tool in the ‘real-world’ hospital setting.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• Behavior and body mass changes of a mother and calf Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) during the suckling period.
• Resident but not transient Eurasian Siskins reduce body mass in response to increasing predation risk: a natural experiment.
• Diurnal Rhythms of Standard Metabolic Rate and Respiratory Quotient in the Coal Tit (Periparus Ater, Aves) during the Autumn–Winter Period.
• Hot and not-so-hot females: reproductive state and thermal preferences of female Arizona Bark Scorpions (Centruroides sculpturatus).
• Heterothermy in large mammals: inevitable or implemented?
• Recent origin of low trabecular bone density in modern humans.
• Evolutionary preferences for physical formidability in leaders.

Exercise

• RCT: Behavioral Weight Loss and Physical Activity Intervention in Obese Asthma Adults.
• The effectiveness of yoga in modifying risk factors for cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome: A systematic review and meta-analysis of RCTs.

Commentary

• Why are there fewer obese children in France than in other Western European countries?
• Can You Train Your Brain to Crave Healthier Food?
• Geroscience: linking aging to chronic disease.
• Challenges in Understanding Development of Obesity.
• Holiday Weight Gain Is for Adults.
• The Top 10 (Obesity-related) Stories of 2014.
• Handling the fragile vase of scientific practices.
• Clinical trials: what a waste.

Basic Science

• KSRP is critical in governing hepatic lipid metabolism through controlling Per2 expression.
• Effect of isorhamnetin glycosides extracted from Opuntia ficus-indica in a mouse model of diet induced obesity.
• Impact of maternal melatonin suppression on amount and functionality of brown adipose tissue (BAT) in the newborn sheep.
• Effects of four weeks intermittent exposure to hypoxia environment and or endurance exercise on glucose homeostasis and body weight in obese mice with Type 2 diabetes.

General Science

• Video: Science's Breakthroughs of the Year 2014!
• Convergent transcriptional specializations in the brains of humans and song-learning birds.
• Evidence for a single loss of mineralized teeth in the common avian ancestor.
• Study: E-readers, tablets can disrupt sleep.
• Unlocking the mysteries of mathematics.

Announcements

• Hot Topic Conference 2015: Obesity & Pregnancy.
• UAB Seeks Post-Docs in Obesity Research: All Disciplines Welcome.

Featured

• Resveratrol: Anti-obesity mechanisms of action.
• Can foraging behaviour reveal the eco-evolutionary dynamics of habitat selection?
• Antibiotics in early life and obesity.
• Mild Electrical Stimulation Increases Stress Resistance and Suppresses Fat Accumulation via Activation of LKB1-AMPK Signaling Pathway in C. elegans.

Scientific Rigor & Dialogue

• Comment: Order of Magnitude Misestimation of Weight Effects of Children's Meal Policy Proposals.
• Retraction: “Modeling Potential Effects of Reduced Calories in Kids' Meals with Toy Giveaways”.
• Letter: An Unjustified Conclusion from Self-report-based Estimates of Energy Intake.
• Reply: “Guided precisely by the principle of respect for the public’s faith in biomedical science, we have endeavored to correct this misinterpretation in the media, and we welcome the opportunity to do so here.”
• Study: Televised medical talk shows—what they recommend and the evidence to support their recommendations: a prospective observational study.
• Commentary: Scientists tallied up all the advice on Dr. Oz's show. Half of it was baseless or wrong.
• Letter 1: Linear extrapolation results in erroneous overestimation of plausible stressor-related yearly weight changes.
• Letter 2: Determining the culprit: stress, fat, and/or carbohydrates.
• Reply: Stress, Depression, and Metabolism: Replies to Bohan Brown et al. and Barton and Yancey.
• Commentary: How Many Calories Make a Pound of Fat?

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• There was no statistically significant difference in BMI among children who had dinner with family more or less frequently (see page 681).
• Low-glycemic diets may not improve cardiovascular outcomes when compared to high-glycemic diets.
• No link found between multivitamin use and improved cardiovascular health in middle-aged women.
• “Distance from full-service supermarkets was unrelated to weight or dietary quality…thus policy and interventions that focus merely on improving access may not be effective.”
• "This study provides little support for the notion that exposure to food outlets in the home, school and commuting neighbourhoods increase the risk of obesity in children."
• Among adolescents (but not children) fast food consumption is associated with less obesity.
• Eating More Fruit at Dinner Associated with Higher BMI.
• RCT: 16-week vitamin D3 supplementation to healthy immigrants from South Asia, the Middle East, or Africa and now living in Norway with low vitamin D status did not improve HbA1c, fructosamine, lipid profiles, or BMI.
• Vitamin D Highlights: No Convincing Evidence?
• Eating high fat chow, but not drinking sucrose or saccharin, enhances the development of sensitization to the locomotor effects of cocaine in adolescent female rats.

Policy Related

• Removing This (or Not), Adding That (or Not): A Classification of 'Healthy Food' Claims.
• FDA prices 'lost pleasure' of junk food into calorie count rule.
• Selective Consumption Tax Policy and Income-Expenditure Elasticities of Obesity-Linked Consumption Goods.

Clinical

• Future management of human obesity: understanding the meaning of genetic susceptibility.
• Roles of Caloric Restriction, Ketogenic Diet and Intermittent Fasting during Initiation, Progression and Metastasis of Cancer in Animal Models: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
• Obesity in the ICU.

Mortality

• Competing risks of death in younger and older postmenopausal breast cancer patients.
• BMI, Obesity & mortality: three grand challenges.
• The dynamic association of body mass index and all-cause mortality in multiple cohorts and its impacts.
• BMI and all-cause mortality among middle-aged and older adults in Taiwan: a population-based cohort study.

Food

• Intermittent access to liquid sucrose differentially modulates energy intake and related central pathways in control or high-fat fed mice.
• Role of Glycemic Index in the Context of an Overall Heart-Healthy Diet.
• Effects of High vs Low Glycemic Index of Dietary Carbohydrate on Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors and Insulin Sensitivity.
• RCT: A Lower-Carbohydrate, Higher-Fat Diet Reduces Abdominal and Intermuscular Fat and Increases Insulin Sensitivity in Adults at Risk of Type 2 Diabetes.
• Withdrawal of dietary phytoestrogens in adult male rats affects hypothalamic regulation of food intake, induces obesity and alters glucose metabolism.
• Consumption of ready-made meals and increased risk of obesity: findings from the Observation of Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Luxembourg (ORISCAV-LUX) study.

Drugs

• Radio-controlled mouse hints at new diabetes treatment.
• RCT: Effects of Metformin on Energy Intake and Satiety in Obese Children.
• Differential efficacy of nicotine replacement among overweight and obese women smokers.
• A rationally designed monomeric peptide triagonist corrects obesity and diabetes in rodents.
• Inhibiting peripheral serotonin synthesis reduces obesity and metabolic dysfunction by promoting brown adipose tissue thermogenesis.
• Ricin vaccine: pilot study brings optimism.
• ‘Unparalleled’ Results In Animal Trials Treatment To Cure Adult-onset Diabetes, Obesity.

Dogs, Cats, Horses

• Evaluation of the oral 13 C-bicarbonate technique for measurements of energy expenditure in dogs before and after body weight reduction.
• Canine and feline obesity: a One Health perspective.
• Study explores the role of gut bacteria in the development of obesity in dogs.
• How often do primary care veterinarians record the overweight status of dogs?
• Fat adults, fat kids, fat pets: how we're driving the obesity pandemic.
• Ancient DNA reveals history of horse domestication.
• Equine Obesity: Researchers Investigate Molecular Biology.

Economics

• Unemployment and Health Behaviors Over the Business Cycle: a Longitudinal View.
• ‘Big box stores and obesity’.
• The Impact of Obesity on Consumer Bankruptcy.

Psychology

• Mindfulness and Weight Loss: A Systematic Review.
• Food sharing and empathic emotion regulation: an evolutionary perspective.
• Classically conditioned responses to food cues among obese and normal weight individuals: Conditioning as an explanatory mechanism for excessive eating.

Epidemiology

• Hypoglycemia increased risks for CV events, death in patients with diabetes on insulin.
• Are park proximity and park features related to park use and park-based physical activity among adults? Variations by multiple socio-demographic characteristics.
• Association of Adult Knee Height, Age at First Birth, Migration, and Current Age on Adult Physical Function of Bangladeshi Mothers and Daughters in the United Kingdom and Bangladesh.
• Associations between Vascular Health Indices and Serum Total, Free and Bioavailable 25-Hydroxyvitamin D in Adolescents.
• The association of Gestational Weight Gain with the Development of Gestational Hypertension in Obese Women.
• Habitual sleep duration is associated with BMI.

Exercise

• RCT: Gender differences on effectiveness of a school-based physical activity intervention for reducing cardiometabolic risk.
• RCT: The effects of persuasive communication and planning on intentions to be more physically active and on physical activity behaviour among low active adolescents.

Surgery

• Effects of bariatric surgery for knee complaints in (morbidly) obese adult patients: a systematic review.
• Outcomes of Laparoscopic Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass in Super-Super Obese Patients.
• Obese children may be 'wired from birth' to crave sugar.

Methods

• What Everyone Should Know about Statistical Correlation.
• Suggestions for Better Data Presentation in Papers: An Experience from a Comprehensive Study on National and Sub-national Trends of Overweight and Obesity.
• An Automated and Robust Framework for Quantification of Muscle and Fat in the Thigh.

Stigma

• Preschoolers show less trust in physically disabled or obese informants.
• The internalization of weight bias is associated with severe eating pathology among lean individuals.

Aging

• Obesity superimposed on aging magnifies inflammation and delays the resolving response following myocardial infarction.
• Feeling young may be more important than being young.
• Flavonoids may be 'important to promoting broad health and wellbeing in aging'.
• Discovery may hold clues to treatments that slow aging, prevent age-related chronic disease.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• Feeding across the food web: The interaction between diet, movement and body size in estuarine crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus).
• Microsatellite frequencies vary with body mass and body temperature in mammals, suggesting correlated variation in mutation rate.
• Impacts of acute elevated seawater temperature on the feeding preferences of an Antarctic amphipod toward chemically deterrent macroalgae.

Commentary

• Did the American Medical Association make the correct decision classifying obesity as a disease?
• NORC researchers find behavioral response to health interventions.
• Book Review: 'The Big Fat Surprise' by Nina Teicholz.
• BMJ Editorialist asks "Are some diets “mass murder”?
• Losing weight makes your lungs a potent CO2 emitter.
• The SkepVet and the Media.
• Do time-restricted eating habits reduce obesity?
• Is Weight Loss Overrated?
• Maybe Arguing with Your Spouse Will Make You Fat.
• Normal weight individuals who develop Type 2 diabetes: the personal fat threshold.

Basic Science

• Researchers make blood vessels grow by shining a light on skin.
• Leptin mediates the increase in blood pressure associated with obesity.
• White-to-brown metabolic conversion of human adipocytes by JAK inhibition.
• KCNK10, a Tandem Pore Domain Potassium Channel, Is a Regulator of Mitotic Clonal Expansion during the Early Stage of Adipocyte Differentiation.
• The Impact of Neutrophil Proteinase 3 on IGFBP-3 Proteolysis in Obesity.

General Science

• Greenland's ice sheet could melt quicker than previously predicted.
• Nature: Featured Stories of 2014.
• Million-Mummy Cemetery Unearthed in Egypt.
• Reproducibility project: cancer biology: Time to do something about reproducibility .
• Exoplanets Could Soon be Detected.
• The association between exaggeration in health related science news and academic press releases: retrospective observational study.
• Discontinuation and non-publication of surgical randomised controlled trials: observational study.
• Rapid evolutionary responses of life history traits to different experimentally-induced pollutions in Caenorhabditis elegans.
• Guinea Pigs Can Be Source of Serious Strep Infection.
• Extra vitamin E protected older mice from getting common type of pneumonia.
• Grand Challenges in Evolutionary Developmental Biology.

Announcements

• Denise Wilfley named Rudolph University Professor of Psychiatry.
• UAB’s federal research funding up significantly.
• UAB seeks post-doctoral fellows in obesity research.
• UAB recruiting faculty in nutrition and obesity.
• UAB recruiting faculty interested in nutrition and cancer.
• Open faculty positions at UAB.