Obesity and Energetics Offerings

Featured

• Obesity and vehicle type as risk factors for injury caused by motor vehicle collision.
• FXR is a molecular target for the effects of vertical sleeve Gastrectomy.
• Bariatric Surgery versus Intensive Medical Therapy for Diabetes — 3-Year Outcomes.

Headline vs. Study

• Headline: Eat Chocolate To Get Thin? Study Touts Cocoa For Weight Loss.
• Study: Compounds in cocoa (but neither cocoa nor chocolate) were administered to mice and reduced weight gain.
• Commentary on media misinformation: Hiding Healthy Fast Food? Not Quite.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Ideas

• RCT: No effect of recommending double vegetable intake on weight loss.
• No consistent dose-response relation between dietary intakes of fat and total mortality among Japanese populations with a low fat intake.
• “Few differences were observed between [1997 and 2009] in the portion sizes of selected foods. This indicates that other factors may have been more important influences on obesity in New Zealand during this time period.”
• No association of fast food or SSBs with obesity in small sample of youths from Pontianak.
• Compared With Usual Sodium Intake, Low- and Excessive-Sodium Diets Are Associated With Increased Mortality: A Meta-Analysis.
• Debunking the Myth of the “Jolly Fat and Fit”: A Longitudinal Cohort Analysis.
• Epidemiology: Running more may not help you live longer.
• In both sexes BMI was not associated with sexual problems after the confounding factors were controlled.
• The associations between family meals and TV viewing during dinner with overweight were few and showed significance only in Northern Europe.
• BMI percentiles not associated with home gardening.

Basic Science

• Effects of chronic leptin infusion on subsequent body weight and composition in mice: Can body weight set point be reset?
• MINOR (NR4A3) Overexpression in Mouse Skeletal Muscle Enhances Insulin Action.
• Melatonin, Energy Metabolism and Obesity: a Review.
• Leptin-promoted cilia assembly is critical for normal energy balance.
• Metabolic and genomic changes induced by macronutrient composition vs. caloric restriction.
• Continuous 24-Hour Leptin, Proopiomelanocortin and Amino Acid Measurements in Human Cerebrospinal Fluid.
• MicroRNA-125a expression in adipose tissue changes with insulin resistance.
• Nonenzymatic cholesterol oxidation may be responsible for changes in oxysterol metabolism in diet-induced-obese mice.

Food

• RCT: Long-term effects of a Palaeolithic-type diet in obese postmenopausal women.
• RCT: Effects of whole grain rye crisp bread for breakfast on appetite and energy intake in a subsequent meal.
• RCT: Weight Status Moderates the Relationship between Package Size and Food Intake.
• RCT: A higher protein content of an ad libitum diet improves weight loss maintenance in overweight and obese adults over 12 months (DIOGENES).
• RCT: Curcumin therapy significantly reduces IL-1ß, IL-4, and VEGF.
• Randomized Trials of Low-Fat vs. Other Diet Interventions on Weight Loss: A Meta-Analysis.
• High proportions of foods recommended for consumption by United States Dietary Guidance contain solid fats and added sugar: results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2007-2008).

Sugars

• RCT: In virtual supermarket, price increase on sugar sweetened beverages decreases SSB purchases.
• Consuming 10% sucrose solution increased weight gain in Albino but not Hooded Wistar rats.
• Sugar administration to newly emerged Aedes albopictus males increases their survival probability and mating performance.
• Commentary: Dietary Sugar and Body Weight: Have We Reached a Crisis in the Epidemic of Obesity and Diabetes? We Have, but the Pox on Sugar Is Overwrought and Overworked.
• Commentary: Dietary Sugar and Body Weight: Have We Reached a Crisis in the Epidemic of Obesity and Diabetes? Health Be Damned! Pour on the Sugar.
• Commentary: A “Spoonful of Sugar” and the Realities of Diabetes Prevention!
• Commentary: Fructose in obesity and cognitive decline: is it the fructose or the excess energy?

Longevity and Transgenerational Effects

• Weekly administration of rapamycin improves survival and biomarkers in obese male mice on high-fat diet.
• Caloric restriction reduces age-related and all-cause mortality in rhesus monkeys.
• Reproductive long-term effects, endocrine response and fatty acid profile of rabbit does fed diets supplemented with n-3 fatty acids.

Ecology, Evolution, and Energetics

• Did Europeans Get Fat From Neandertals?
• Sensitivity and feeding efficiency of the black garden ant Lasius niger to sugar resources.
• Climate Change Shrinks Salamanders.
• How large are the extinct giant insular rodents? New body mass estimations from teeth and bones.

Epidemiology

• Children entering food deserts experienced an increase in BMI z-scores of roughly 0.08 standard deviations. There was no effect [association] when children left food deserts.
• Associations of holiday weight gain on body weight.
• Cross-sectional Study: Lower height and higher BMI in children with lupus.

Clinical

• RCT: Effect of weight reduction on treatment outcomes in obese patients with psoriasis on biologic therapy.
• RCT: 24-Month Outcomes of Telephone-Delivered Weight Loss and Physical Activity Intervention to Improve Glycemic Control.
• Weight loss, saline loading, and the natriuretic peptide system.
• Managing Weight Loss Expectations: The Challenge and the Opportunity.
• Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis is underdiagnosed in adolescents referred for weight loss surgery.

Surgery

• Associations Between Massive Weight Loss Status, Amount of Weight Loss, and Method of Weight Loss on Body Contouring Surgery Outcomes.
• A proteomic analysis of excreted and circulating proteins from obese patients following two different weight-loss strategies.

Drugs

• RCT: Prevention of Type 2 Diabetes in Subjects With Prediabetes and Metabolic Syndrome Treated With Phentermine and Topiramate Extended Release.
• A systematic review of the effect of oral glucocorticoids on energy intake, appetite, and body weight in humans.
• Food consumption and weight gain after cessation of chronic amphetamine administration.
• Metformin and berberine prevent olanzapine-induced weight gain in rats.
• Miglitol increases energy expenditure by upregulating uncoupling protein 1 of brown adipose tissue and reduces obesity in dietary-induced obese mice.

Policy Realted

• News Flash: No More Obesity Exclusions in Federal Plans.
• Europe votes for clinical trial transparency.

Psychology

• A Time-Lagged, Actor–Partner Interdependence Analysis of Alliance to the Group as a Whole and Group Member Outcome in Overweight and Obesity Treatment Groups.
• Influences of Ovarian Hormones on Dysregulated Eating: A Comparison of Associations in Women With Versus Women Without Binge Episodes.

Mathematical

• Computational Fluid Dynamics Endpoints for Assessment of Adenotonsillectomy Outcome in Obese Children with Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome.
• Mathematical model relates obesity and insulin and captures the impact of increasing levels of insulin on IGF-1 pathway and can predict a risk of colorectal cancer.

Fitness

• Strength Capacity and Cardiometabolic Risk Clustering in Adolescents.
• Interval Training Intensity Affects Energy Intake Compensation in Obese Men.

Horses

• Obesity prevalence and associated risk factors in outdoor living domestic horses and ponies.
• Influence of Weight Loss on Skeletal Muscle Mitochondrial Function and Metabolism in the Mature Horse.

Brown Adipose Tissue

• Searching for signatures of cold adaptations in modern and archaic humans: hints from the brown adipose tissue genes.
• Brown adipose tissue function is accompanied by cerebral activation in lean but not in obese humans.
• Brown Fat Determination and Development from Muscle Precursor Cells by Novel Action of Bone Morphogenetic Protein 6.

Temperature

• Exploration of the Influence of the Environmental Temperature and Thickness of Fat on Heat Release.
• Individual (co)variation in thermal reaction norms of standard and maximal metabolic rates in wild-caught slimy salamanders.

Methods

• Quality of life assessment in adolescent obesity: Development of a new instrument for economic evaluation.
• Measuring hunger and satiety in primary school children. Validation of a new picture rating scale.
• Validation of the Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease Pooled Cohort Risk Equations.
• Breathprints of childhood obesity: changes in volatile organic compounds in obese children compared with lean controls.
• What we think about when we think about food: new consumer-perception tool.

Video

• NIH: Eating Patterns and Diseases.
• Bioenergetics and the Oxidative Burst: Protocols for the Isolation and Evaluation of Human Leukocytes and Platelets.
• 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, Third Meeting.
• Marise Parent - Remembering to eat: Reciprocal interactions between energy intake & memory.
• Video: Dan Kahan: Cultural Cognition and the Challenge of Science Communication.

General Science

• Publication and other reporting biases in cognitive sciences: detection, prevalence, and prevention.
• Intranasal administration of plasmid DNA nanoparticles yields successful transfection and expression of a reporter protein in rat brain.
• Is Big Data the New Frontier for Academic-Industry Collaboration?
• Back to Basics: A call for fundamental neuroscience research.
• Yum, Lego... Human babies born to move hands to mouth.
• Woman gets a new 3D-printed skull.
• Gunshot victims to be suspended between life and death.

Commentary

• The Contrived Association of Dietary Protein with Mortality.
• Diet Studies Challenge Thinking on Proteins Versus Carbs.
• The Harm of Bioethics: A Critique of Singer and Callahan on Obesity.
• Rethinking Fat: The Case For Adding Some Into Your Diet.
• Fat Shaming and Stigmatization Lite: How Far to Go?
• A narrow view of optimal weight for health generates the obesity paradox (pdf).

OEO Erratum

• Previous entry, "RCT: No differential effects of Aerobic Interval vs Continuous Training Program on Maximal Oxygen Consumption, BMI, and Body Fat Percentage in Officer Students" should have been titled, "No differential effects of Aerobic Interval vs Continuous Training Program on BMI and Body Fat Percentage in Officer Students, Differential Effects Observed in Maximal Oxygen Consumption" (Hat tip to Robert Ross, PhD).

Announcements

• New Book: The Obesity Paradox by Carl Lavie.
• UAB’s 2nd Annual Workshop on Metabolomics, June 2 - 5, 2014.
• Short Course on Mathematical Sciences in Obesity Research, Mon 5/12/2014 - Fri 5/16/2014.
• Three faculty positions are available in UAB’s Department of Nutrition Sciences.
• American Society for Nutrition announces 2014 class of Fellows.
• 29th Annual Clinical Conference on Diabetes, May 22-25, 2014.
• The Food Forum Workshop on Relationships between the Brain, Digestive System, and Eating Behavior.
• The Research Clinic: A new interactive research integrity training from the Office of Research Integrity

Featured

• The Obesity Society Encourages Science-Industry Collaborations to Support Obesity Science, Public Health. New Position Statement Condemns Ad Hominem Attacks on Researchers.
• The Bamboo-Eating Giant Panda Has a Sweet Tooth: Behavioral and Molecular Responses to Compounds That Taste Sweet to Humans.

Headline vs. Study

• Headline: Toddlers Need Sleep to Avoid Obesity.
• Study: Shorter nighttime sleep duration has a linear association with higher energy intake early in life.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Ideas

• Human Twin Study Finds no evidence that androgen overexposure of the female fetus affects obesity, metabolic profile, or reproductive health in young adult females.
• Fruit and vegetable consumption was not associated with physical distance but, with supermarket choice, after adjusting for covariates.
• When controlled for covariates, supermarkets were not associated with obesity.
• “Associations of infant breastfeeding and age at the introduction of solid foods with general and abdominal fat outcomes are explained by sociodemographic and lifestyle-related factors.”
• “UW study: Soda tax does not bring down obesity.”
• RCT: No significant effects in small study of Mobile Technology for Obesity Prevention in Racial- and Ethnic-Minority Girls.
• Meta-analysis: Among Worksite Environmental Interventions for Obesity whose potential risk of bias was low, the magnitude of the effect was modest and sometimes in the unexpected direction.
• Results suggest that: (i) winter depression is not associated with major alterations in gustatory function; and (ii) sweet craving and increased consumption of carbohydrates in patients with winter depression is not secondary to altered responses to sweet tastants.
• Additional assessment of HbA1c values in the context of CVD risk assessment provide little incremental benefit for prediction of CVD risk.
• RCT: Probiotics in obese pregnancy do not reduce maternal fasting glucose.

Technology

• Medical breath analyzer can check fat metabolism.
• Ophthalmic Glucose Monitoring System: A Novel Diagnostic Approach for Diabetes.
• Automatic Ingestion Monitor: A Novel Wearable Device for Monitoring of Ingestive Behavior.
• In Search of a Few Good Apps.

Stigma

• An obesity educational intervention for medical students addressing weight bias and communication skills using standardized patients.
• Food addiction as a causal model of obesity. Effects on stigma, blame, and perceived psychopathology.
• 3 Risks of Obesity Discrimination for Employers.

Questioning Media Portrayals

• A plunge in U.S. preschool obesity? Not so fast, experts say.
• Tips for High-Fidelity Science Reporting with Drs. David Allison and Andrew Brown.
• The Spinning of Look AHEAD.

Sleep

• The metabolic burden of sleep loss.
• Sleep restriction increases the neuronal response to unhealthy food in normal-weight individuals.

Food

• Are Sugars Addictive? Perspectives for Practitioners.
• Can We Say What Diet Is Best for Health?
• Lower protein content in infant formula reduces BMI and obesity risk at school age: follow-up of a randomized trial.
• Meta-Analysis of Fructose and Cholesterol: A Concern Regarding Missing Data.
• Narrative Review: Meals and snacking, diet quality and energy balance.
• RCT: Effect of a 6-Month Intervention with Cooking Oils Containing a High Concentration of Monounsaturated Fatty Acids (Olive and Canola Oils) Compared with Control Oil in Male Asian Indians with Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease.
• RCT: Effects of raw red onion consumption on metabolic features in overweight or obese women with polycystic ovary syndrome.
• RCT: Low-Protein Formula Slows Weight Gain in Infants of Overweight Mothers.
• RCT: Regular intake of High-Oleic peanuts improves fat oxidation and body composition in Overweight/Obese men pursuing a Caloric-Restricted diet.

Sugar & Sweeteners

• Dietary Sugar and Body Weight: Have We Reached a Crisis in the Epidemic of Obesity and Diabetes?
• Effects of three intense sweeteners on fat storage in the C. elegans model.
• Sweetened carbonated beverage consumption and cancer risk: meta-analysis and review.

Exercise

• RCT: No differential effects of Aerobic Interval vs Continuous Training Program on Maximal Oxygen Consumption, BMI, and Body Fat Percentage in Officer Students.
• Assessing Causality in the Association between Child Adiposity and Physical Activity Levels: A Mendelian Randomization Analysis.
• Exercising for Healthier Eyes.
• Sports Participation and Parent-Reported Health-Related Quality of Life in Children: Longitudinal Associations.
• Why Runners Can't Eat Whatever They Want.

Clinical

• It’s like rocket science…only more complex: Challenges and experiences related to managing pediatric obesity in Canada.
• Meta-analysis of weight loss studies finds calorie counting, contact with a dietitian, and use of behaviour change techniques that compare participants' behaviour with others were associated with greater weight loss.
• Periodontal Care Cuts Admissions, Costs for Diabetes and CVD.
• RCT: Vitamin D3 supplementation during weight loss did not increase weight loss or associated factors compared with placebo.
• Antiobesity action of gingerol: Effect on lipid profile, insulin, leptin, amylase and lipase on male obese rats induced by a high-fat diet.
• Update on obesity pharmacotherapy.

Epidemiology

• Active Commuting to Elementary School and Adiposity: An Observational Study.
• Dairy intake and semen quality among men attending a fertility clinic.
• Obesity Increases [is associated with] Risk of Wrist Fractures in Children.
• History of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus and Future Risk of Atherosclerosis in Mid‐life: The Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study.
• Robust relation between temporal discounting rates and body mass.
• Parental Monitoring of Children’s Media Consumption: The Long-term Influences on [association with] BMI in Children.
• Challenges and Future Directions to Evaluating the Association Between Prenatal Exposure to Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals and Childhood Obesity.
• Neighborhood Contributions to Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Obesity Among New York City Adults.
• Longitudinal Associations Between Poverty and Obesity From Birth Through Adolescence.

Mortality

• For older populations, being overweight not associated with an increased risk of mortality.
• Obesity Paradox: Conditioning on Disease Enhances Biases in Estimating the Mortality Risks of Obesity.
• Compared to subjects of normal weight, obese and overweight individuals survive longer following fracture.
• Serum total cholesterol concentration and 10-year mortality in an 85-year-old population.

Ecology, Evolution, and Energetics

• Seasonal Changes of Body Mass and Energy Budget in Striped Hamsters: The Role of Leptin.
• On the Evolutionary Origins of Obesity: A New Hypothesis.
• Does body mass convey a digestive advantage for large herbivores?

Commentary

• '5 Obesity Conspiracy Theories: Why They Persist'.
• Bittman, Butter, and Better than Back to the Future.
• BMI, age, and mortality: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
• NPR Report: Why We Got Fatter During The Fat-Free Food Boom.
• Why almost everything you've been told about unhealthy foods is wrong.
• Two Contrasting Views of Look AHEAD.
• Approaches and Costs for Sharing Clinical Research Data.
• 3 Competing Views of Obesity as a Disease.
• Adiposopathy, “Sick Fat,” Ockham’s Razor, and Resolution of the Obesity Paradox.

Policy Related

• School Lunch Guidelines Suggested to Cause Increase Waste: School-kids toss up to 70% of fruit or vegetable servings.
• Why Are We Banning Chocolate Milk in Schools?
• Ethics and Obesity Prevention: Ethical Considerations in 3 Approaches to Reducing Consumption of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages.
• Consumers are still confused about food labelling.
• Economic evaluation of “healthy beginnings” an early childhood intervention to prevent obesity.
• Concession stand makeovers: a pilot study of offering healthy foods at high school concession stands.
• The influence of market deregulation on fast food consumption and BMI: a cross-national time series analysis.
• Child obesity: who is measuring who? And what?

Basic Science

• Extended lifespan and reduced adiposity in mice lacking the FAT10 gene.
• Fat mass in cells expands with disuse.
• Potential new therapeutic target identified to control high blood sugar.
• High-fat diet-induced memory impairment in triple-transgenic Alzheimer's disease (3xTgAD) mice is independent of changes in amyloid and tau pathology.
• Adipocyte Stiffness Increases with Accumulation of Lipid Droplets.
• A novel form of ciliopathy underlies hyperphagia and obesity in Ankrd26 knockout mice.
• Effects of balanced deep sea water on adipocyte hypertrophy and liver steatosis in high-fat diet-induced obese mice.
• Endotrophin triggers adipose tissue fibrosis and metabolic dysfunction.
• Central Neural Regulation of Brown Adipose Tissue Thermogenesis and Energy Expenditure.
• FTO and Obesity: Mechanisms of Association.

Intergenerational Associations

• Physical activity levels in mothers and their 4-year-old children are directly associated.
• Gestational weight gain and neonatal adiposity in the hyperglycemia and adverse pregnancy outcome study-north american region.
• Underestimating a child’s BMI is associated with coronary risk-related factors, while overestimating a child’s BMI is associated with a protective CVD marker. .

Methods

• Conducting a successful systematic review of the literature, part 1.
• Food frequency questionnaire as an indicator of the serum composition of essential n-3 and n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids in early pregnancy, according to BMI.
• Reproducibility and Validity of A-Mode Ultrasound for Body Composition Measurement and Classification in Overweight and Obese Men and Women.

General Science

• Conflict of Interest and Medical Innovation: Ensuring Integrity While Facilitating Innovation in Medical Research - Workshop Summary.
• Analysis: Industry-sponsored academic inventions spur increased innovation.
• A Longitudinal Analysis of Electronic Cigarette Use and Smoking Cessation.
• Building the Google of Blood, One Tube at a Time.
• Sea Anemones Are Half-Plant, Half-Animal, Gene Study Finds.
• Apples Vs. Oranges: Google Tool Offers Ultimate Nutrition Smackdown.
• Dog Brains Link Pleasure With Owner’s Scent.
• Modeling 3D Facial Shape from DNA.
• Better modeling of ocean patterns and resulting weather climate.
• Someday we’ll have infrared-seeing contact lenses.
• Will the Yellowstone supervolcano erupt in our lifetime? (No)

Video

• Suzanne Higgs: Understanding Food Choice.
• Steven Zeisel: Nutrigenomics, Dietary Requirements and Personalized Medicine.
• JOVE: Studying Food Reward and Motivation in Humans.
• Bill Nye: The Meaning of Life in 5 Min.

Announcements

• UAB’s Ashley Moellinger wins Award for her research on postoperative feeding protocol.
• Short Course on Mathematical Sciences in Obesity Research.
• Panel led by UAB’s Garvey sets framework to combat obesity epidemic.
• Nutrition Society Meeting: Carbohydrates in health: friends or foes? 14–17 July 2014.
• Diabetes Care Special Issue: Current Concepts of Type 2 Diabetes Prevention.
• Summer Academy in Global Food Law & Policy - Bilbao, July 21-25 2014.

Featured

• Judge the science, not the funding source.
• Obese adolescents seem to show a compensatory response to an acute session of exercise by decreasing subsequent physical activity energy expenditure.
• First Short Course on Mathematical Sciences in Obesity Research.
• Grand challenges in nutrition.

Headline vs. Study

• Headline: How Calico cats could help cure obesity.
• Study: A conference abstract titled involving X-inactivation in mouse cells – no cats or obesity involved.
• Headline: Study questions fat and heart disease link.
• Study: Association of dietary, circulating, and supplement fatty acids with coronary risk: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
• Commentary: The new dietary fat study: What you’ll hear, and what it really means.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Ideas

• RCT: “Eight years of intensive lifestyle intervention did not alter cognitive function in obese adults with type 2 diabetes; however, there was evidence for benefit among overweight but not obese individuals.”.
• RCT: An intervention for improving the lifestyle habits of kindergarten children in Israel: reduces parent-reported food intake, yet has no discernable effect on weight.
• This study could not detect a “programming” effect of early nutrition supplementation on adult LBM and muscle strength.
• Study Finds Distance to Supermarket Makes No Difference to Diet Quality.
• Although Higher Ideal Diet Index, Diet Quality Index, and Mediterranean Diet Score indices based on 3-day diet records are strongly associated cross-sectionally to CVD risk profile of middle-aged men and women, they do not add to ability to predict long-term mortality in follow-up.
• Quasi-Experiment: Deprived target districts targeted with area improvements showed no greater change in walking, cycling, or sport compared to other deprived districts - for all leisure-time PA outcomes, trend changes were not related to the intensity of environmental interventions.
• RCT: No discernable effects or differential effects on weight of being required to consume ~263 kcal daily as 3 high-energy-density, high-sugar, high-fat snacks (chocolate, chips, or hazelnuts) for 12 weeks.
• Quasi-Experiment: Results suggest that neither a 5% nor a 5.5% sales tax had a statistically significant impact on the consumption of soft drinks.

Sugar

• RCT: Sugar-sweetened beverages with moderate amounts of fructose, but not sucrose, induce fatty acid synthesis in healthy young men.
• High intake of dietary sugar enhances Bisphenol A (BPA) disruption and reveals ribosome-mediated pathways of toxicity in flies.
• RCT: 10 weeks of normally consumed sucrose or high fructose corn syrup does not promote weight gain or an atherogenic lipid profile even when consumed at two to four times the recently AHA recommended level.
• WHO launches consultation on draft sugar recommendations.

Clinical

• RCT: The impact of a bodyweight and physical activity intervention (BeWEL) initiated through a national colorectal cancer screening programme.
• RCT: Intermittent dieting was as effective as continuous dieting over 8 weeks and for weight loss maintenance at 12 months.
• RCT: Using motivational interviewing for weight feedback to parents of young children.
• Challenges and experiences related to managing pediatric obesity in Canada.

Aging

• Hypothalamic SIRT1 prevents age-associated weight gain by improving leptin sensitivity in mice.
• Insulin-like growth factor-1 is associated with life-history variation across Mammalia.
• Rapamycin increases mitochondrial efficiency by mtDNA-dependent reprogramming of mitochondrial metabolism in Drosophila.
• Why do the well-fed appear to die young?

Food

• Children’s preferences for sweeter, saltier tastes are linked to each other and growth.
• Inconsistent results from studies testing the influence of glycemic index on cognitive functioning: A systematic review of the evidence.
• The protein type within a hypocaloric diet affects obesity-related inflammation: The RESMENA project.
• RCT: Infant formula with a lower protein content reduces BMI and obesity risk at school age.

Psychology

• A brief mindfulness intervention reduces unhealthy eating when hungry, but not the portion size effect.
• RCT: The effects of disordered eating, anger, and negative urgency on attentional bias and subsequent food cravings and food consumption.
• RCT: Dieters are better equipped to defend their diet-related goals when facing strong holiday-related temptations than weaker, everyday temptations.

Saturated Fat

• Talk Medicine (Audio): Replacing saturated fats: Are the guidelines wrong?
• The questionable benefits of exchanging saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat.
• Insight into the impact of dietary saturated fat on tissue-specific cellular processes underlying obesity-related diseases.

Pregnancy

• Low socioeconomic status negatively affects [is associated with] sleep in pregnant women.
• Caesareans linked to obesity in offspring.

Epidemiology

• Early Growth and Adult Health: Programming of postprandial responses, food intake and salt sensitivity.
• Obesity increases [is associated with] length of stay and direct medical costs in total hip arthroplasty.

Economics

• Estimating the benefits of public health policies that reduce harmful consumption.
• Market deregulation policies may contribute to the obesity epidemic by facilitating the spread of fast food.
• WIC policy revision contributed to modest reductions in fruit and vegetable prices in Illinois.
• Concession stand makeovers: a pilot study of offering healthy foods at high school concession stands.

Education

• Meta-Analysis: Lifestyle intervention for improving school achievement in overweight or obese children and adolescents.
• School-based healthy lifestyle intervention increases the percentages of children meeting physical activity and nutrition recommendations.

Exercise

• Non-face-to-face physical activity interventions in older adults: a systematic review.
• Review: Pharmacological exercise mimetics in therapy: delusion or future?
• Efficacy of physical activity interventions in postnatal populations: Systematic review, meta-analysis and content coding of behavior change techniques.

Energy Balance

• RCT: Dissociating negative energy balance and body composition during and after weight loss.
• Alpacas fed calcium propionate seem to moderate their energy intake.
• Metabolic parameters and their relationship to energy balance in multiparous Simmental, Brown Swiss and Holstein cows in the periparturient period as influenced by energy supply pre- and post-calving.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• Socioecological correlates of energy balance using urinary C-peptide measurements in wild female mountain gorillas.
• Diet quality limits summer growth of field vole populations.
• Eat or Not to Eat: Reversed sexual cannibalism as a male foraging strategy in the spider micaria sociabilis (Araneae: Gnaphosidae).

Methods

• Concurrent and convergent validity of the eating in the absence of hunger questionnaire and behavioral paradigm in overweight children.
• Coefficient of energy balance, a new parameter for basic investigation of the cerebrospinal fluid.
• Validation of four frequently used glucose meters and selection of Freestyle Freedom Lite for examining the effects of animated conversation and problem solving on blood glucose concentrations following a standardised carbohydrate loading.
• A highly sensitive glucose biosensor based on a microstrip ring resonator.
• A short version of the Food Cravings Questionnaire-Trait: the FCQ-T-reduced.
• Accelerometry is getting smaller if not necessary better.
• Yale team implants human innate immune cells in mice.
• Definition of healthy obesity may be broadened to include Intima Media Thickness measurement.
• Scientific method: Statistical errors.
• Using maximum weight to redefine body mass index categories in studies of the mortality risks of obesity.

Policy Related

• Should child obesity be an issue for child protective services? A call for more research on this critical public health issue.
• Behavior, paternalism, and policy.
• Protecting policy space for public health nutrition in an era of international investment agreements.

Diabetes

• Metformin plus vildagliptin helps lower A1C in diabetes.
• Poor glucose control worsens surgery outcomes in diabetes.
• Diabetes in middle age may cause memory problems later.

Drugs

• RCT: The effect of naltrexone on body fat mass in olanzapine-treated schizophrenic or schizoaffective patients.
• RCT: Investigation of safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics of single and multiple doses of a long-acting a-MSH analog in healthy overweight and obese subjects.
• RCT: Can an early weight management program (WMP) prevent olanzapine (OLZ)-induced disturbances in body weight, blood glucose and lipid metabolism?

Basic Science

• Extrasensory perception: Odorant and taste receptors beyond the nose and mouth.
• Central administration of oleate or octanoate activates hypothalamic fatty acid sensing and inhibits food intake in rainbow trout.
• BMI and all-cause mortality in older adults: A meta-analysis.

Video

• Webinar: Tips for high fidelity reporting.
• William Leonard and Others: The obesity-cancer connection panel: Metabolism, diet and disease conference.
• Are doughnuts the answer to your diet?
• Marise Parent: Remembering to eat: Reciprocal interactions between energy intake & memory.

Bias

• Three ways bias trumps evidence in obesity.
• Five overlooked sources of bias.

Commentary

• Combating bad science: Focus on John Ioannidis’ work.
• David Katz: Childhood Obesity – Are our children diseased?
• Five mistakes holding us back from reducing obesity.
• A tribute to Morris and Paffenbarger.
• The Spinning of look AHEAD study results.

General Science

• How stereotypes impair women’s careers in science.
• A boost in social status without a boost in economic status is associated with increased lifespan among Chinese academics.
• GenoCAD: tool to create genetic languages to guide the design of biological systems.
• Immune suppression by neutrophils in HIV-1 infection: Role of PD-L1/PD-1 pathway.
• Shift workers beware: Sleep loss may cause brain damage.

Announcements

• Invitation to attend Women in Statistics Conference (May 15-17, Research Triangle Park, NC).
• Prof Steve Blair Receives World Obesity Foundation Award.
• Obesity Week 2014.

Featured

• Adipogenic Factor-Loaded Microspheres Increase Retention of Transplanted Adipose Tissue.
• New contender for 'fat gene' (alternative to FTO) found.
• Taste hedonics–either unconditioned or conditioned aversive tastes–influence fat disposition by altering gastric emptying in rats.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Ideas

• Economic modeling suggests that concentrating on older subpopulations could maximize cost effectiveness of obesity treatment.
• Observational analysis suggests that moderators occurring after childhood will nearly as often make the well off large and the poor slender as what the conventional wisdom might dictate.
• Non-linear [projected] effects of soda taxes on consumption and weight outcomes.
• Contrary to the hypothesis that BMI would be inversely related to performance on tests of emotion recognition, results indicated that as BMI increases, reaction time to complete these tasks decreases.
• RCT: If people engage in an initial task that requires self-control (that is, if people are depleted), priming health-related words has no positive influence on self-control.
• Small for gestational age babies are not related to changes in markers of adipose tissue dysfunction during reproductive age.
• RCT: No significant difference in effects on VO2peak in obese/overweight men with three different exercise approaches: high intensity interval training, continuous training, and resistance training.

Clinical

• Review: Epicardial and Perivascular Adipose Tissues and Their Influence on Cardiovascular Disease: Basic Mechanisms and Clinical Associations.
• Time-of-day of meals modifies plasma glucose and insulin response in overweight males.
• RCT: Role of a prudent breakfast in improving cardiometabolic risk factors in subjects with hypercholesterolemia.
• RCT: Weight loss improves reproductive outcomes in obese women undergoing fertility treatment.
• RCT: Hypnosis vs CBT for weight loss.
• The Hope (Heart, Obesity, Prevention, Education) Program For Former NFL Players.
• Weight gain among breast cancer survivors prior to enrolling into a behavioral weight loss intervention.
• Higher HbA1c may best identify CV risk in patients with prediabetes.
• Effects of Long-Term Testosterone Therapy on Patients with “Diabesity”.
• Lack of Sleep Compounds Health Problems for Obese Teens.

Food

• RCT: Comparison of a very low-calorie-ketogenic diet with a standard low-calorie diet in the treatment of obesity.
• Canned Fruits And Vegetables May Be As Nutritious As Their Fresh Counterparts.
• Cereal purchases made with coupons have higher average sodium and sugar content than purchases made without coupons.
• Vegetarian or omnivore: The environmental implications of diet.

Aging/Caloric Restriction

• MTOR and autophagy in normal brain aging and caloric restriction ameliorating age-related cognition deficits.
• The Ratio of Macronutrients, Not Caloric Intake, Dictates Cardiometabolic Health, Aging, and Longevity in Ad Libitum-Fed Mice.
• A holidic medium for Drosophila melanogaster.
• The fine line between lifespan extension and shortening in response to caloric restriction.
• Enhanced protein diet accelerates the rate of development -A study in Drosophila nasuta nasuta.
• Video: Carol Boggs: "Life history & population responses to nutritional stress in insects."

Exercise

• Increased Skeletal Muscle Capillarization After Aerobic Exercise Training and Weight Loss Improves Insulin Sensitivity in Adults With IGT.
• RCT: The Contributions of Diet and Exercise to Improving Knee Osteoarthritis in Overweight Adults.

Psychology

• Effects of licensed characters on children's taste and snack preferences in Guatemala, a low/middle income country.
• RCT: Menu Labels Displaying the Kilocalorie Content or the Exercise Equivalent: Effects on Energy Ordered and Consumed in Young Adults.
• RCT: Group is more effective than Single Mindfulness Meditation for Weight Management.

Stigma

• Weighing the stigma of weight: An fMRI study of neural reactivity to the pain of obese individuals.
• Can Fat Only Be Funny? A Content Analysis of Fat Stigmatization in Mike and Molly.
• Fat Pedagogy and Environmental Education.

Network Modelling

• An efficient graph theory based method to identify every minimal reaction set in a metabolic network.
• Constructing regulatory networks to identify biomarkers for insulin resistance.
• Functional network analysis of obese and lean Göttingen minipigs elucidates changes in oxidative and inflammatory networks in obese pigs.

Epidemiology

• Delivery Timing and Cesarean Delivery Risk in Women with Mild Gestational Diabetes.
• Race, Regionality and Pre-diabetes in the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke Study (REGARDS).
• Sleep cyclic alternating pattern in otherwise healthy overweight school-age children.
• Obesity top 10 lists — the fattest and leanest states.

Ecology, Evolution, and Energetics

• Sugar Feeding Affects the Male Contribution in Reproduction in Aedes Aegypti.
• Risk-sensitive reproductive allocation: fitness consequences of body mass losses in two contrasting environments.
• SEDESTACTIV - intervention to reduce sitting time in overweight and obese patients.

Economics

• Mother’s labour market participation significantly predicts obesity among boys but not among girls.
• The Impact of Four Alternative Policies to Decrease Soda Consumption.

Sugar

• UK panel has stricter criteria for evaluating evidence than those used by the WHO committee.
• RCT: Sugar ingestion and dichotic listening: Increased perceptual capacity is more than motivation.
• Effect of fructose on markers of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD): a systematic review and meta-analysis of controlled feeding trials.
• WHO says halving sugar target has extra benefit.

Basic Science

• Review: SIRT1 and other sirtuins in metabolism.
• Review: Mechanisms and effects of “fat taste” in humans.
• Scientists Establish Critical Link Between Obesity and Diabetes.
• The potential role of leptin in the vascular remodeling associated with obesity.
• Ectopic expression of RBP4 impairs the insulin pathway and inguinal fat deposition in mice.
• Reduction of adenovirus 36-induced obesity and inflammation via the use of mulberry extract.

Commentary

• Diet Myth: Eat Healthy Foods, and You'll Lose Weight.
• The Fat Drug (antiobiotics).
• Vegetarian or omnivore: The environmental implications of diet.
• Metabolism: Tick, tock, a high-fat clock.
• Critical Analysis of study which generated headlines suggesting that High Protein Diets Cause Cancer.
• Type 2 diabetes as a redox disease.
• Globalization and children’s diets: The case of Maya of Mexico and Central America.
• Diabesity: Palliating, curing or preventing the dysmetabolic diathesis.
• The cardiometabolic consequences of replacing saturated fats with carbohydrates or ?-6 polyunsaturated fats: Do the dietary guidelines have it wrong?
• David Katz: Improving Nutrition Labels: Is ‘Better’ Good Enough?
• Critical analysis of report suggesting seaweed could help in weight loss. .
• Multimorbidity, Guidelines, and Clinical Inertia.
• So Much Insulin, So Much Hypoglycemia.
• Surviving as an Outed Whistleblower - Paul Brookes.

General Science

• Evolutionary biology: Sex, lies and butterflies.
• Zebrafish for a Cleaner Food Supply.
• Unveiling Research Data Stocks: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Leads by Example.
• Rare Double Infection: Lupus Patient Makes Antibodies to Fight HIV.
• Study Identifies Gene Important to Breast Development and Breast Cancer.
• Early Animals Oxygenated Oceans.

Announcements

• SCOPE School 2014 Integrating Primary and Private Care into Obesity Management, 27 - 28 October 2014, London, UK.
• Probiotics and Immunology - From Fashionable Concepts to Substantiated Health Claims, 23rd June 2014, Hotel InterContinental, Budapest.
• The Irish Section of the Nutrition Society will be hosting a meeting titled Changing dietary behaviour: physiology through to practice, 18–20 June 2014, University of Ulster in Coleraine, Northern Ireland.