Obesity and Energetics Offerings

Featured

• Comparative effectiveness of exercise and drug interventions on mortality outcomes: metaepidemiological study.
• Parallel, Redundant Circuit Organization for Homeostatic Control of Feeding Behavior.
• RCT: 12 week trial of the Curves Complete 90-day Challenge, Weight Watchers Points Plus, Jenny Craig, or Nutrisystem Advance Select weight loss programs.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Common Beliefs

• RCT: Moderate replacement of carbohydrates by dietary fats did not cause statistically different changes in fasting plasma glucose, insulin, or atherogenic dyslipidemia among individuals with the metabolic syndrome.
• RCT: No significant effect of Antibacterial Mouthwash on Basal Metabolic Rate in Humans.
• RCT: No association of the rs6923761 GLP-1R polymorphism with weight loss after two different hypocaloric diets.
• No demonstrable association of bariatric surgery on weight development in offspring.
• Typical Gum Disease Treatments Won’t Help Ease Diabetes, Study Finds.
• Maternal High Fat Feeding Does Not Have Long-Lasting Effects on Body Composition and Bone Health in Female and Male Wistar Rat Offspring at Young Adulthood.
• There is little evidence that teachers’ judgements of pupils’ ability are influenced by obesity.
• RCT: No significant effect of a program to reduce sugar use in schools.
• RCT: No effect of massage therapy on weight gain in premature neonates.

Basic Science

• Effects of short chain fatty acid producing bacteria on epigenetic regulation of FFAR3 in type 2 diabetes and obesity.
• Resveratrol and Piceid Metabolites and Their Fat-Reduction Effects in Zebrafish Larvae.
• Identification of Sphingolipid Metabolites That Induce Obesity via Misregulation of Appetite, Caloric Intake and Fat Storage in Drosophila.
• Weight cycling promotes fat gain and altered clock gene expression in adipose tissue in C57BL/6J mice.
• Nutrigenomics of High Fat Diet Induced Obesity in Mice Suggests Relationships between Susceptibility to Fatty Liver Disease and the Proteasome.

Evolution, Energetics and Ecology

• Intrinsic circannual regulation of brown adipose tissue form and function in tune with hibernation.
• Estimating body mass of fossil rodents.
• Ingestion of fat tissue from wolf prey species and its influence on fatty-acid composition in sled dogs.
• To Learn About Obesity, Researchers Turn to Grizzly Bears.

Food

• Review: Novel insights of dietary polyphenols and obesity.
• Are Nuts a Weight-Loss Aid?
• Meta-analysis: Significant inverse association between dairy and risk of type 2 diabetes.
• Eating Healthy Is Cheaper Than You Think.
• Meta-analysis of RCTs: Ursodeoxycholic Acid and High-fat Diets Prevent Gallbladder Stones During Weight Loss.

Exercise

• RCT: Adaptive Physical Activity Intervention for Overweight Adults.
• RCT: Exercise counteracts the effects of short-term overfeeding and reduced physical activity in healthy young men.
• RCT: Four weeks of normobaric hypoxic exercise training caused more weight loss than normoxic training.
• Disrupted ion channel activity increases energy consumption during low-intensity exercise.
• Meta-Analysis: Exercise and drug interventions are similar in mortality outcomes.
• Testing the utility of three social-cognitive models for predicting objective and self-report physical activity in adults with type 2 diabetes.

Transgenerational Effects

• In mice: Maternal high-fat diet induces hyperproliferation and alters Pten/Akt signaling in prostates of offspring.
• DNA Methylation in Oocytes and Liver of Female Mice and Their Offspring: Effects of High-Fat-Diet–Induced Obesity.
• Meta-analysis: Gestational weight gain is associated with offspring obesity.
• Obese women had an increased risk for giving birth to an infant with Down syndrome compared to normal weight women.

Epidemiology

• First drop in obesity prevalence among final year primary school children in England.
• Trauma, Obesity, and Ghrelin.
• Synergistic effect of LEP and LEPR gene polymorphism on BMI in a Chinese population.

Clinical

• Non-linear mixed effect models for the relationship between fasting plasma glucose and weight loss.
• Review: Long-term Effects of Dieting: Is Weight Loss Related to Health?
• Review Finds Weight-Loss Surgery Safe and Effective.
• RCT: The acute metabolic responses to Fastin-RR®, a commercial weight loss/energy product, in overweight and obese individuals.
• Adenovirus-36 seropositivity and its relation with obesity and metabolic profile in children.

Drugs

• Review: Targeting the intestinal L-cell for obesity and type 2 diabetes treatment.
• Anti-obesity activity of hen egg anti-lipase immunoglobulin yolk, a novel pancreatic lipase inhibitor.
• RCT: No significant effects of nicotine patch on weight gain in postmenopausal women during smoking cessation.
• The first year of antipsychotic treatment is a critical period for weight gain and metabolic changes.
• A mitochondrial targeted antioxidant (MnTBAP) patented for treatment of obesity.
• RCT: Liraglutide-augmented weight loss stimulated beta cell function independent of weight loss.

Policy Related

• 'Fat taxes' in Europe - A Legal and Policy Analysis under EU and WTO Law.
• FDA is trying to look at medical obesity devices through a patient’s eyes.
• Nordic Nutrition Recommendations.
• FDA to Extend Comment Period on Measure to Further Reduce Trans Fat in Processed Foods.

Caloric Restriction

• Body mass, energy budget and leptin of mice under stochastic food restriction and refeeding.
• Reduced Insulin/Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 Signaling and Dietary Restriction Inhibit Translation but Preserve Muscle Mass in Caenorhabditis elegans.
• Leucine improves protein nutritional status and regulates hepatic lipid metabolism in calorie-restricted rats.

Brown Fat

• Review: Modulation of Adipose Tissue Thermogenesis as a Method for Increasing Energy Expenditure.
• Enhancement of brown fat thermogenesis using chenodeoxycholic acid in mice.

Methods

• A method for estimating visceral fat from the elasticity of lumbar subcutaneous fat.
• An electronic system (PDA) to record dietary and physical activity in obese adolescents; data about efficiency and feasibility.
• Terminology of Study Completion in Weight Loss Treatment in Obese Adults.
• Isolation of adipose-derived stem cells: a comparison among different methods.
• Liver fat quantification using a multi-step adaptive fitting approach with multi-echo GRE imaging.
• A Mobile Food Intake Monitoring System based on Breathing Signal Analysis.
• How to use published complete case results from weight loss studies in a missing data sensitivity analysis.

Stigma

• Thin or Overweight Women's Fat Talk: Which Is Worse for Other Women's Body Satisfaction?
• Fat Talk and Body Dissatisfaction Among College Dancers.

Evidence-based medicine

• Lack of evidence for clinical and health policy decisions.
• Following celebrities’ medical advice: meta-narrative analysis.
• AHRQ report: Lack of comparative evidence to inform communication and dissemination of evidence-based and uncertain practices.

Commentary

• Why it’s time, author says, for journalism to raise its intellectual standards.
• Fat vs. Sugar: Which Do We Crave More?
• Video: Barry Bogin on “Impact of Globalization on Children's Nutrition.”
• Feeding Homo sapiens: Are We Truly As Clueless As We Seem?
• Too early to proclaim the end of the war on childhood obesity.

General Science

• The mesenchymal stem cells of whales and mice are alike, in both morphology and size.
• Nature's 2013: the year in science.
• Biomedical research: Believe it or not?
• JAMA Publishes New Hypertension Guidelines - Committee Chaired by UAB's Suzanne Oparil.
• Supplements - Systematic Review: Two trials found a small, borderline-significant benefit from multivitamin supplements on cancer in men only and no effect on CVD.
• Supplements - RCT: In male physicians aged 65 years or older, long-term use of a daily multivitamin did not provide cognitive benefits.
• Supplements - RCT: Oral High-Dose Multivitamins and Minerals After Myocardial Infarction.
• DNA of Storied Plant Provides Insight into the Evolution of Flowering Plants.

Announcements

• IOM Roundtable on Obesity Solutions.

Featured

• A heart–adipose tissue connection in the regulation of energy metabolism.
• Focusing on the satiety effect of a meal as the unit of analysis for human feeding behavior may be too myopic - we must view the control of energy intake over longer periods of time.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Common Beliefs

• No association between neighborhood built environment or change in built environment and BMI.
• RCT: No significant effect of assignment to different protein to carbohydrate ratios on weight loss.
• RCT: No effect of a school environment intervention on adolescent adiposity and physical fitness.
• Fatness predicts decreased physical activity and increased sedentary time, but not vice versa in 8-11 year old children.

Headline versus Study

• Headline: You are what your father eats.
• Study: Low paternal dietary folate alters the mouse sperm epigenome and is associated with negative pregnancy outcomes.

Basic Science

• Functional collaboration of Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 Receptor (IGF-1R), but not insulin receptor (IR), with acute GH signaling in mouse calvarial cells.
• Irisin, a novel myokine: potential role in obesity and diabetes.
• Oncostatin M Is Produced in Adipose Tissue and Is Regulated in Conditions of Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes.
• Macrophages, fat, and the emergence of immunometabolism.
• Obesity and breast cancer: role of inflammation and aromatase.

Video

• Christopher Kuzawa - Epigenetic, developmental and intergenerational influences on US cardiovascular health disparities.
• Philipp Gut – “A whole-organism approach to study metabolic networks.”
• Understanding Risk: A Primer for Journalists.
• What if blaming the obese is blaming the victim?

Sugar & Sweeteners

• European Food Safety Authority concludes aspartame safe at current levels of exposure.
• The reward value of sucrose in leptin deficient obese mice.
• Sugar-containing drinks. Why do men compensate more than women?
• RCT: Repeated consumption of a non-caloric sweetened beverage, instead of a sugar sweetened version, appears not to result in changes in the reward value.
• RCT: Artificial sweeteners (sucralose and AceK) have no effect on gastric emptying, glucagon-like Peptide-1, or glycemia after oral glucose in healthy humans.

Sleep

• RCT: Sleep deprivation increases plasma levels of ghrelin and food intake.
• RCT: Restricting night-time eating reduces daily energy intake in healthy young men.

Psychology

• Help Me Get Fat! Feederism as Communal Deviance on the Internet.
• Humans are not fooled by size illusions in attractiveness judgements.
• Perceived weight in youths and risk of overweight or obesity six years later.
• Review: Friendship networks and physical activity and sedentary behavior among youth.
• Correlates of daily leisure-time physical activity in a community sample: Narrow personality traits and practical barriers.
• Metabolic signals and food intake. Forty years of progress.
• Trajectory of Suicidal Ideation in Relation to Perceived Overweight From Adolescence to Young Adulthood.
• The hypothalamus and metabolism: integrating signals to control energy and glucose homeostasis.

Policy Related

• Greater obesity severity is associated with less obesity-related policymaking.
• RCT: Healthy, anti-obesity, and mixed food advertising reduced intakes of total calories, fat, sodium, and carbohydrates and increased selection of more healthy items and fewer unhealthy items from a menu.
• Commentary: Is a tax on sugary drinks too bitter to swallow?
• RCT: Especially when hungry, participants choose a French fry side dish presented as the default more often.
• Regarding food taxes, “Do We Know What We Do not Know? A Response to Celine Bonnet.”
• Is overweight and class I obesity associated with increased health claims costs?

Methods

• Using freedom of information requests to elicit data about looked after children's involvement in physical activity.
• How many days of accelerometer monitoring predict weekly physical activity behaviour in obese youth?
• Vibration platform for mice to deliver precise, low intensity mechanical signals to the musculoskeleton.
• Bias in Recording of BMI Data in the Electronic Health Record.
• Overadjustment in Regression Analyses: Considerations When Evaluating Relationships Between BMI, Muscle Strength, & Body Size.
• Volumetric differences in body shape among adults with differing BMI values.
• A comparison of the Slaughter skinfold-thickness equations and BMI in predicting fatness and CVD risk factor levels in children.
• Predictors of validity and reliability of a physical activity record in adolescents.
• How evidence-based medicine biases physicians against nutrition.

Mathematical

• An Actor-Based Model of Social Network Influence on Adolescent Body Size, Screen Time, and Playing Sports.
• Effects of Body Surface Area-Indexed Calculations in the Morbidly Obese: A Mathematical Analysis.

Carbohydrates

• Effects of low carb diets on energy and nitrogen balance and body composition in rats depend on the dietary protein/energy ratio.
• Effects of low-carbohydrate high-fat diets on apparent digestibility of minerals and trace elements in rats.
• Review: Greater short term weight loss among obese individuals on low carb vs low fat diet, no differences in long term effect.

Food

• Organic Production Enhances Milk Nutritional Quality by Shifting Fatty Acid Composition.
• RCT: Effects of changes in portion size on meal eating behaviour in overweight women.
• When and why carbohydrate restriction can be a viable option.
• RCT: Dietary strawberries increase the proliferative response of CD3/CD28-activated CD8+ T cells and the production of TNF-a in lipopolysaccharide-stimulated monocytes from obese human subjects.
• RCT:Yeast hydrolysate can reduce body weight and abdominal fat accumulation in obese adults.
• RCT: Antiobesity Effect of Caraway Extract on Overweight and Obese Women.
• RCT: Zinc supplementation improves BMI, body weight, and triglyceride concentration.
• RCT: Big breakfast rich in protein and fat improves glycemic control in type 2 diabetics.
• Roles for central leptin receptors in the control of meal size.

Fatty Liver

• RCT: The Effect of Helicobacter Pylori Eradication on Liver Fat Content in Subjects With Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease.
• Betaine attenuates hepatic steatosis by reducing methylation of MTTP promoter & elevating methylation in mice on high fat diet.
• Initial clinical application of modified Dixon with flexible echo times: hepatic & pancreatic fat assessments in comparison with 1H MRS.
• Treating fatty liver and insulin resistance.
• Surgical Management of Obesity in Patients with Morbid Obesity and Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease.
• Review: Obesity and Liver Disease: The Epidemic of the Twenty-First Century.

Epidemiology

• BMI and Early Kidney Function Decline in Young Adults: A Longitudinal Analysis of the CARDIA Study.
• Inverse association between BMI and suicide?
• The differential gender effect of internalized racism on abdominal obesity in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
• Association between leisure time physical activity and metabolic syndrome: meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies.
• Mortality Risk of Obesity and Underweight Is Overestimated with Self-Reported BMI.
• Ambient indoor temperature inversely associated with BMI.

Reader Suggestion

• Last week we ran: New Dietary Guidelines in Sweden.
• Reader suggests better link is: Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment - Diets among obese individuals.

Evolution, Energetics and Ecology

• Assessing the role of body mass and sex on apparent adult survival in polygynous passerines: a case study of cetti's warblers in central Portugal.
• Effect of photoperiodism on metabolism of male and female redheaded bunting under natural day length.
• Stature, body mass, and brain size: A two-million-year odyssey.

Drugs

• The Paradox of Obesity Drugs.
• Metformin trims fats to restore insulin sensitivity.
• RCT: Efficacy and safety of canagliflozin in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus inadequately controlled with metformin and sulphonylurea.
• RCT: Acute effects of single-dose olanzapine on metabolic, endocrine, and inflammatory markers in healthy controls.
• Review: New Antiobesity Agents: Lorcaserin (Belviq) and Phentermine/Topiramate ER (Qsymia).

Clinical

• RCT: Impact of timing of serving vegetable salad and yogurt on anthropometric measures and cardiovascular risks.
• Preventing binge eating with deep brain stimulation – can compulsive eating be switched-off?
• Review: Long-term Effects of Dieting: Is Weight Loss Related to Health?
• The views and attitudes of health professionals providing antenatal care to women with a high BMI.
• The Effect of an Automated Clinical Reminder on Weight Loss in Primary Care.
• Peer-delivered physical activity interventions: An overlooked opportunity for physical activity promotion.
• RCT: Use of the community-based behavioral weight loss program yields significantly greater weight loss than a self-help approach.
• ​Review: Can inflammatory status define metabolic health?

Pediatric

• Behavioral Mediators of Treatment Effects in the Weight Loss Maintenance Trial.
• How to Screen Obese Children at Risk for Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus?
• Exercise and Insulin Resistance in Youth: A Meta-Analysis.
• What factors influence uptake into family-based obesity treatment after weight screening.
• Pass the popcorn: “Obesogenic” behaviors and stigma in children's movies.
• Exergaming as a Strategic Tool in the Fight against Childhood Obesity: A Systematic Review.
• Association between low IQ and obesity is strongest among adolescents from high SES backgrounds.
• Parental stress increases BMI trajectory in pre-adolescents.

Aging

• In case of obesity, longevity-related mechanisms lead to anti-inflammation.
• Review: Caloric restriction, caloric restriction mimetics, and healthy aging in Okinawa: controversies and clinical implications.
• Rates of Complications and Mortality in Older Patients With Diabetes Mellitus.

Chocolate

• Non-randomized trial: Realistic intake of a flavanol-rich soluble cocoa product associated with HDL-cholesterol increases, but not without anthropometric changes in healthy and moderately hypercholesterolemic subjects.
• RCT: Dark chocolate consumption improves leukocyte adhesion factors and vascular function in overweight men.

Surgery

• Bariatric surgery benefits in type 2 diabetes linked to disease duration.
• RCT: Aspiration therapy leads to weight loss in obese subjects: A pilot study.

Genetics

• Common genetic variation in sFRP5 is associated with fat distribution in men.
• The bigger picture of FTO—the first GWAS-identified obesity gene.
• Commentary: A century after Fisher: time for a new paradigm in quantitative genetics.

General Science

• The Hidden Geometry of Complex, Network-Driven Contagion Phenomena.
• 15% of human codons are dual-use codons (“duons”) that simultaneously specify both amino acids and transcription factor recognition sites.
• Genetics and Genomics for the Prevention and Treatment of Cardiovascular Disease: Update: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association.
• First flight of Lunar plant growth experiment.
• The skin communicates with the liver.
• The seven deadly sins of health and science reporting.
• Age-Related Cognitive Decline Linked to Energy Available to Synapses in Prefrontal Cortex.
• How to Read About Science.
• NIH to experiment with high-risk grants.
• Simulations back up theory that Universe is a hologram.

Scientific Integrity

• Conflicts of Interest in Approvals of Additives to Food Determined to Be Generally Recognized as Safe: Out of Balance.
• Commentary: Conflicts of Interest in the Regulation of Food Safety A Threat to Scientific Integrity.

Commentary

• Fattening Foods: When is a Calorie Not a Calorie?
• 3 Reasons Objectivity Is Scarce on “Healthy Obesity”.
• Science, policy and politics cannot be separated: they are inextricably intertwined.
• How journals like Nature, Cell and Science are damaging science.
• Statins, Static, and the Status Quo: Is Anyone Getting the Signal?
• Is the Food Guide Pyramid and MyPlate Making Your Family Fat?

Announcements

• New Book: Satiation, satiety and the control of food intake: Theory and practice.
• The Current State of Obesity Solutions in the United States - A Workshop.
• 3rd International Conference on Food Digestion, Wageningen, The Netherlands, 11-13 March 2014.
• 3rd International Conference on Recent Advances and Controversies in Measuring Energy Metabolism (RACMEM), October, 2014.

Featured

• RCT: Exposure to weight-stigmatizing news articles caused self-perceived overweight women, but not women who did not perceive themselves as overweight, to consume more calories and feel less capable of controlling their eating than exposure to non-stigmatizing articles.
• Perception of female sexual pheromones in male fruit flies rapidly and reversibly decreases fat stores, reduces resistance to starvation, and limits life span.
• RCT: “This study provided no evidence to suggest that energy labelling or single traffic light labelling alone were effective in reducing the energy of fast food items selected from hypothetical fast food menus for purchase.”

Headline versus Study

• Headline 1 - Overweight And Healthy: A Combo That Looks Too Good To Be True.
• Headline 2 - Can you be obese and healthy? Study says no.
• Summary from Annals of Internal Medicine
• Study - No significant association between metabolically healthy obesity and increased combined mortality and cardiovascular events compared to metabolically healthy normal weight in primary analysis of meta-analysis.
• Commentary - New meta-analysis adds to meta-confusion about healthy obesity.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• RCT: Selection of a weight-loss approach on the basis of pretreatment macronutrient intake is unlikely to improve weight outcomes at the end of a 1-year treatment.
• RCT: No effect of a Trial for Reducing Weight Retention in New Mums evaluating a low intensity, postpartum weight management programme.
• In RCTs on infants fed infant formula containing probiotics, prebiotics or synbiotics, the source of funding did not influence the majority of outcomes in favour of the sponsors’ products.
• No significant change in body weight, insulin sensitivity, insulin secretion or clearance, endocrine, glucose, lipid, or cholesterol responses among individuals assigned to consume 1065 ml per day (117 g/d) of HFCS-sweetened beverages added for 2-wks.
• RCT: High-fructose corn syrup and sucrose have equivalent effects on energy-regulating hormones at normal human consumption levels.
• New Zealand Adult Nutrition Survey food intake data found to be invalid.
• 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.

Basic Science

• Effects of photoperiod on food intake, activity and metabolic rate in adult neutered male cats.
• When rodents run the research: An automated training regimen coaches rats to willingly submit themselves to repeated brain imaging.
• Estrogen as a neurotransmitter: neuroestrogen.
• Conditioned Place Preference Deficits in Rats in Adulthood Following High Fat and High Sugar Diet Intake in Pre- and Periadolescence: A Test of the Specificity Hypothesis.
• Milk minerals modify the effect of fat intake on serum lipid profile: results from an animal and a human short-term study.
• China and India are eating more meat, driving up humanity’s overall consumption.

Energetics, Evolution and Ecology

• Coping with uncertainty: nutrient deficiencies motivate insect migration at a cost to immunity.
• High metabolic and water-loss rates in caterpillar aggregations: evidence against the resource-conservation hypothesis.
• Selected vaginal bacteria and risk of preterm birth: an ecological perspective.
• Towards an energetic landscape: broad-scale accelerometry in woodland caribou.
• Primate brains, the ‘island rule’ and the evolution of Homo floresiensis.

Food

• RCT: DNA Methylation Pattern in Overweight Women under an Energy-Restricted Diet Supplemented with Fish Oil.
• RCT: High-caloric food supplements in the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
• RCT: Weight maintenance over 12 months after weight loss resulting from participation in a 12-week trial comparing all meal provision to self-directed diet in overweight adults.
• RCT: Whole-body protein turnover response to short-term high-protein diets during weight loss.
• RCT: Short-term consumption of high-protein diets does not disrupt calcium homeostasis and is not detrimental to skeletal integrity.
• Omega-3 fatty acid deficiency disrupts endocytosis, neuritogenesis, and mitochondrial protein pathways in the mouse hippocampus.
• Emotional Eating Moderates the Relationship of Night Eating with Binge Eating and Body Mass.
• Greater red meat intake is associated with unfavorable plasma concentrations of inflammatory and glucose metabolic biomarkers in diabetes-free women.
• Fish oil supplementation ameliorates fructose-induced hypertriglyceridemia and insulin resistance in adult male Rhesus Macaques.
• Review: Plant-Derived Food Ingredients for Stimulation of Energy Expenditure.

Fasting

• RCT: Alternate day fasting for weight loss in normal weight and overweight subjects.
• RCT: Short-term water-only fasting: Metabolic and cardiovascular consequences.

Sugar & Sweeteners

• Consumption of added sugars from liquid or solid sources was not associated with changes in adiposity, but liquid added sugars were a risk factor for insulin resistance among youth at risk of obesity.
• Press Statement: Low-Calorie Sweeteners Effective in Preventing and Managing Diabetes.
• Higher intake of SSB and sugars was associated with an increased risk of type I, but not type II, endometrial cancer.
• Relative ability of fat and sugar tastes to activate reward, gustatory, and somatosensory regions.
• Bone quality and strength are greater in growing male rats fed fructose compared with glucose.

Branched Chain Amino Acids

• Circulating branched-chain amino acid concentrations are associated with obesity and future insulin resistance in children and adolescents.
• Leucine supplementation protects from insulin resistance by regulating adiposity levels.

Chocolate

• RCT: The effects of dark chocolate on glycemic control and blood pressure in hypertensive diabetic patients.
• RCT: Effects of dark chocolate and cocoa consumption on endothelial function and arterial stiffness in overweight adults.

Exercise

• RCT: Aerobic exercise but not resistance exercise reduces intrahepatic lipid content and visceral fat and improves insulin sensitivity in obese adolescent girls.
• RCT: Multicomponent intervention to reduce daily sedentary time.
• RCT: The effect of a supplemental telephonic physical activity coaching program for treating obesity (thesis).
• RCT: Supervised exercise prevented excessive gestational weight gain in normal weight but not overweight or obese women.
• Video: Maternal Inactivity: 45-Year Trends in Mothers' Use of Time.
• Validation of a Novel Protocol for Calculating Estimated Energy Requirements and Average Daily Physical Activity Ratio for the US Population: 2005-2006.
• Eating breakfast was associated with higher moderate and vigorous physical activity on weekends.

Epidemiology

• New Zealand study finds correlation between church attendance and adolescent obesity.
• Total adipose tissue in women and visceral adipose tissue in men positively associated with obesity-related cancer risk.
• Poverty's latent effect on adiposity during childhood.
• Between 1965 and 2010, mothers physical activity significantly decreased.

Clinical

• RCT: Weight reduction with intensive risk factor management resulted in a reduction in atrial fibrillation symptom burden and severity.
• RCT: No statistically significant effect of Daily Text Messaging for Weight Control Among Racial and Ethnic Minority Women.
• RCT: Greater weight loss among men participating in a commercial weight loss program: A pooled analysis of two RCTs.
• RCT: No Effect of Caloric Restriction on Salivary Cortisol Levels in Overweight Men and Women.
• RCT: Yeast hydrolysate can reduce body weight and abdominal fat accumulation in obese adults.
• Sex, weight status, and chronic kidney disease among African Americans: the Jackson Heart Study.
• Hypogonadal obese men with and without diabetes mellitus type 2 lose weight and show improvement in cardiovascular risk factors when treated with testosterone.
• The Energy Balance Study: The Design and Baseline Results for a Longitudinal Study of Energy Balance

Surgery

• Patients losing 15% weight by either medical or surgical treatments can attain similar FM:LBM loss ratios and can maintain WL for 1 y.
• Tools for prescribing and implementing obesity treatment plans: ASBP’s obesity algorithm for use by clinicians.

Pharmaceuticals

• RCT: A comparative study of five centrally acting drugs on the pharmacological treatment of obesity.
• RCT, secondary endpoints: Impact of interleukin-1ß antibody (canakinumab) on glycaemic indicators in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
• Naltrexone-induced increases in cortisol are associated with emotional and restrained eating, while naltrexone-induced increases in nausea are associated with binge eating and higher adiposity among a sample of overweight/obese women.
• New funds raised for beloranib study.
• Popular morning-after pill may not work for millions of women over a certain weight level.
• PAR2 identified as an inflammatory marker for obesity; a novel PAR2 antagonist reduces weight by 10% in obese rats.
• Commentary: Diet Drugs Work: Why Won’t Doctors Prescribe Them?
• The bitter pill: clinical drugs that activate the human bitter taste receptor TAS2R14.
• Review: Enteroendocrine hormone mimetics for the treatment of obesity and diabetes.

Aging

• The spatiotemporal dynamics of a metabolic network that regulates longevity in yeast.
• Longevity and Diet. Myth or pragmatism?
• Growth Signaling in Aging and Disease.

Policy Related

• New Dietary Guidelines in Sweden.
• Menu calorie labeling survey: "Almost all who read calorie information when available use the information at least sometimes."
• Taxes, Subsidies, and Advertising Efficacy in Changing Eating Behavior: An Experimental Study.

School

• RCT(School-Based): Calcium-vitamin D-fortified milk is as effective on circulating bone biomarkers as fortified juice and supplement but has less acceptance.
• Education and Health in Schools: A Survey of Parents.
• The Massachusetts BMI letter: A qualitative study of responses from parents of obese children.

Psychology

• Tempting food words activate eating simulations.
• The consumption-reducing effect of the color red on consuming food does not depend on achromatic (Michelson) contrast and extends to rubbing cream on the skin.
• A test of the resource security and the BMI reference point hypotheses of body dissatisfaction amongst adolescents in eight countries.
• Overweight is not associated with a general tendency to react impulsively, but instead by impulsive responding toward palatable food.
• Poor sleep quality was strongly associated with mood disturbance and poor quality of life among extremely obese patients.

Stigma

• RCT: Exposure to weight-stigmatizing news articles caused self-perceived overweight women to consume more calories and feel less capable of controlling their eating than exposure to non-stigmatizing articles.
• Obesity and hotel staffing: Are hotels guilty of ‘lookism’?
• Weighing the stigma of weight: An fMRI study of neural reactivity to the pain of obese individuals.

Methods

• Using Sagittal abdominal diameter to Identify Overweight Children at Most Risk for the Development of Cardiometabolic Disease.
• Analysis of breath volatile organic compounds as a noninvasive tool to diagnose nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in children.
• Points of significance: Significance, P values and t-tests.
• Standardization of collection requirements for fasting samples.
• Validation of a Novel Protocol for Calculating Estimated Energy Requirements and Average Daily Physical Activity Ratio for the US Population: 2005-2006.
• A five year longitudinal study comparing BMI and waist circumference on the prevalence of childhood obesity.
• mHealth approaches to child obesity prevention: successes, unique challenges, and next directions.
• Just-in-Time Support Bra for Emotional Eating.

General Science

• Against storytelling of scientific results.
• Scientific journals should stop trying to be exciting - and focus on being right.
• Some scientists may aspire to meet the proxy goals used to evaluate productivity instead of real, important insights.
• The price of a retracted paper.
• Points of significance: Significance, P values and t-tests.
• Baseball and Schadenfreude.
• Letter from PLoS rebutting Science’s “Who’s afraid of peer review?”
• Fighting invasive brown tree snakes in Guam using poisoned mouse paratroopers.

Commentary

• The Hothead’s Guide to Herbal Supplements.
• America’s Obesity Epidemic May Be Caused By Its Favorite Drug (antibiotics).
• Building the science for a population health movement.
• Energy intake and obesity: Ingestive frequency outweighs portion size.
• The Merits of Subtyping Obesity.
• The unrelenting fall of the pharmacological treatment of obesity.

Announcements

• Sense About Science: "Christmas Reading Room 2013."
• UAB names Caloric Restriction & Aging Expert, Dr. Steven Austad as new Biology Chair.

Featured

• A closed-loop synthetic gene circuit for the treatment of diet-induced obesity in mice.
• Calories and portion sizes in recipes throughout 100 years: An overlooked factor in the development of overweight and obesity?

Findings Contrary to Popular Hypotheses or Beliefs

• The concept of 'metabolic syndrome' in dogs does not appear to have merit.
• SSB consumption did not appear to mediate the association between the screen activities and changes in anthropometric measures.
• Living in a food desert was not significantly associated with BMI after potential covariates were considered.
• No Association of Obesity and Eating in the Absence of Hunger Among College Students in a Mexican-USA Border City.
• Refutation of dirty electricity hypothesis in obesity: epistemological arguments and trans-disciplinary study using an instrumental variable.
• Meta-analysis: No significant association was found between weight loss and overall HRQL improvement.
• Obese patients with no signs of metabolic disease are at a greater risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease than metabolically unhealthy people of normal weight.

Headline vs. Study

• Headline: BMI or measure of obesity does not play significant role in weight loss operation, says study; Study: Patients' diabetes status, quality of life, eating behavior, IDEAL WEIGHT LOSS, and willingness to assume mortality risk to LOSE WEIGHT were associated with whether patients proceeded with gastric banding as opposed to gastric bypass.
• Headline 1: Newly identified gene could explain why up to 90% of obesity cases are inherited; Headline 2: Researchers prove the cause of the obesity epidemic is genetic; Study: Study findings suggest that loss of the ciliary protein CEP19 causes morbid obesity in mice and associated with morbid obesity in humans.

Surgery

• Efficacy of Metabolic Surgery on HbA1c Decrease in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients with BMI <35 kg/m2-a Review.
• Is left gastric artery embolization next "big thing" in the fight against obesity?

Stigma

• Attitudes towards obesity in the Swedish general population – The role of one's own body size, weight satisfaction, and controllability beliefs about obesity.
• Weighing the stigma of weight: An fMRI study of neural reactivity to the pain of obese individuals.
• Obesity stigma: a persistent problem, a possible solution.

Sugar

• Dietary sugar and blood pressure: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
• The Metabolic and Endocrine Response and Health Implications of Consuming Sugar-Sweetened Beverages: Findings From Recent RCTs.

Psychology

• Quality of life in overweight and obese children and adolescents: a literature review.
• Controlling Parental Feeding Practices and Child Body Composition in Ethnically and Economically Diverse Preschool Children.

Policy Related

• Exploring the Acceptability of a Tax on Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Brief Evidence Review.
• Lowering the price of “good” foods would be better than taxing “bad” foods in reducing obesity.
• Exploring the Acceptability of a Tax on Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Insight Work.
• A Proposal for Congressionally Mandated Federal Regulation of Child-Directed Food and Beverage Television Advertisements to Combat Childhood Obesity.
• New York City launches ad campaign conveying negative health impact of excessive sugary drink consumption.
• Fighting obesity with a carrot: the relationship between WIC's recent policy change and childhood obesity trends.
• Creating Equal Opportunities for a Healthy Weight - IOM Workshop Summary.

Methods

• Short-term Precision Error in Dual Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry Bone-Mineral-Density and Trabecular-Bone-Score Measurements; and Effects of Obesity.
• SAR Computation and Channel Modeling of Body Area Networks.
• Residual Gastric Volume Estimated with a New Radiological Volumetric Model: Relationship with Weight Loss After Laparoscopic Sleeve Gastrectomy.
• Measuring Sensory and Marketing Influences on Consumers' Choices among Food and Beverage Product Brands.
• Does the type of weight loss diet affect who participates in a behavioral weight loss intervention? A comparison of participants for a plant-based diet versus a standard diet trial.
• Alcohol, NAFLD, Other: The Uneven Distribution of Liver Fat Estimated from MRI and its Clinical Importance.
• Energy expenditure by multisensor armband in overweight and obese lactating women validated by doubly labeled water.

Food

• RCT: Weight maintenance over 12 months after weight loss resulting from participation in a 12-week trial comparing all meal provision to self-directed diet in overweight adults.
• RCT: In short-term study, Oatmeal Beats Ready-to-Eat Breakfast Cereal at Improving Appetite Control.
• RCT: Effect of calcium in combination with magnesium and lactulose on body fat mass in middle-aged Japanese women.

Epidemiology

• The Spatial Accessibility of Fast food Restaurants and Convenience Stores in Relation to Neighborhood Schools.
• Neighborhood commuting environment and obesity in the United States: An urban–rural stratified multilevel analysis.
• Americans' Desire to Shed Pounds Outweighs Effort.
• [Purportedly] Obesogenic and Youth Oriented Restaurant Marketing in Public Housing Neighborhoods.
• Waist circumference is increasing alongside a stabilization in BMI - children appear to be getting fatter and the additional adiposity is being stored centrally.
• Interventions that reduce high blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose address about half of excess risk of coronary heart disease and three-quarters of excess risk of stroke associated with high BMI.
• Observational study's findings suggest that higher BMI and larger waist circumference are associated with increased risk of hearing loss in women. 
• Epidemiological findings suggest that compared with white toddlers, the risk of obesity was higher among Hispanic toddlers and American Indian Alaska Native toddlers, but lower among black toddlers.
• Abdominal obesity and lower gray matter volume: a Mendelian randomization study.

Energetics, Evolution and Ecology

• Normal glucose metabolism of healthy carnivores mimics diabetes pathology of non-carnivores.
• Hibernation Patterns of Dwarf Lemurs in the High Altitude Forest of Eastern Madagascar.

Economics

• The Economics of Information, Deep Capture, and the Obesity Debate.
• On the Role of Social Media in the ‘Responsible’ Food Business: Blogger Buzz on Health and Obesity Issues.

Drugs

• Functional Rescue of Obesity-causing Human Melanocortin-4 Receptor Mutants: Insights for Pharmacological Chaperon Drugs.
• The emergency contraception product marketed as Plan B may not work for women with excess weight.
• CEO of the maker of Contrave, a new experimental weight-loss drug, is excited about new drug, but will it sell?
• Limits on rosiglitazone-containing meds overturned by FDA.
• Green Light for Contrave.
• Evaluation of phentermine and topiramate versus phentermine/topiramate extended-release in obese adults.

Commentary

• Vitamin D and energy homeostasis—of mice and men.
• The relationship between gestational weight gain and fetal growth: time to take stock?
• That Pesky Obesity Virus.
• The Wobbly Link of Poverty to Obesity.

Clinical

• Systematic review on the effectiveness of embedding catgut therapy for simple obesity.
• RCT: Telehealth Weight Management Intervention for Adults with Physical Disabilities.
• RCT: Moderate concentrations of supplemental oxygen worsen hypercapnia in obesity hypoventilation syndrome.
• RCT: Health effect of the New Nordic Diet in adults with increased waist circumference.
• Comprehensive obesity management in 2013: Understanding the shifting paradigm.

Caloric Restriction

• Resolvin D1 primes the resolution process initiated by calorie restriction in obesity-induced Steatohepatitis.
• Interleukin-8 and interleukin-10, brain volume and microstructure, and the influence of calorie restriction in old rhesus macaques.
• Effects of age on changes of body composition through caloric restriction in overweight and obese women.

Basic Science

• IL-15 is required for post-exercise induction of the pro-oxidative mediators PPARδ and SIRT1 in male mice.
• Diet-Induced Obesity Reduces the Responsiveness of the Peripheral Taste Receptor Cells.
• Dietary epigenetics in cancer and aging.
• High Glucose Exposure Promotes Activation of Protein Phosphatase 2A in Rodent Islets and INS-1 832/13 β-Cells by Increasing the Posttranslational Carboxylmethylation of Its Catalytic Subunit.
• High fat fed obese Gpx1-deficient mice exhibit defective insulin secretion but protection from hepatic steatosis and liver damage.
• Association of Rapid Weight Loss on Oxidative Stress Markers and the Expression of the Metabolic Syndrome in Obese Individuals.
• Expression of Allograft inflammatory factor 1 (AIF-1), a new adipokine, is increased in obese women and associated with unfavorable phenotypes in a small observational study.
• Anti-obesity effects of gut microbiota are associated with lactic acid bacteria.
• Association between the seven-repeat allele of the dopamine-4 receptor gene (DRD4) and spontaneous food intake in pre-school children.

Video

• Nuts and death – NEJM animated video explanation.
• Christopher Kuzawa: "Epigenetic, developmental and intergenerational influences on US cardiovascular health disparities".

​General Science

• Stroke mortality is down, but the reason remains a mystery.
• Schadenfreude Found To Be Biological In Nature, Linked To Feelings Of Envy.
• A commentary on Pitfalls of predicting complex traits from SNPs.
• New Housecat-Size Feline Species Discovered.
• On the impoverishment of scientific education.
• Policy: Twenty tips for interpreting scientific claims.
• Psychologists strike a blow for reproducibility.
• When Mice Mislead.
• FDA orders 23andMe to halt sales of DNA test kit.

Announcements

• The next International Academy on Nutrition and Aging meeting (Albuquerque, USA, July 10 & 11, 2014).
• 7th International Immunonutrition Workshop, “Eating for Preventing” - Carovigno, Brindisi, Italy from the 1st to the 3rd  of May, 2014.