Featured

• Trapping the dynamic acyl carrier protein in fatty acid biosynthesis.
• A modeling approach for compounds affecting body composition.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• Candy consumption in childhood is not predictive of weight, adiposity measures or cardiovascular risk factors in young adults: the Bogalusa Heart Study.
• RCT: Slower eating speed lowers energy intake in normal-weight but not overweight/obese subjects.
• RCT: No significant effect of physical activity mentors to increase the daily steps of older adults in the primary care setting: a pilot study.
• Meta-analysis: The evidence from RCTs does not convincingly show that pyruvate is efficacious in reducing body weight.
• RCT: By 8 months, no significant effect of a culturally tailored cable television delivered weight control program for Black women on BMI.
• RCT: Intervention showed no significant effect on child step counts per minute despite increasing time that staff delivered structured activity.
• RCT: No significant difference between the groups in physical activity after lifestyle intervention in general practice for elderly.
• RCT: In study exploring changes in physical activity, sedentary behaviors and hypothesized mediators in girls, there were significant between group erences in favor of the intervention group for self-reported but not objective sedentary behavior and no group-by-time effects for any of the physical activity outcomes or hypothesized mediators.
• RCT: A weight-loss intervention that focuses on daily self-weighing does not cause adverse psychological outcomes.
• Quercetin caused no significant reduction in body weight or adipose tissue sizes in rats.

Basic

• Integrated phenotypic and activity-based profiling links Ces3 to obesity and diabetes.
• Interleukin-17–producing innate lymphoid cells and the NLRP3 inflammasome facilitate obesity-associated airway hyperreactivity among mice.
• Ampicillin-Improved Glucose Tolerance in Diet-Induced Obese C57BL/6NTac Mice Is Age Dependent.
• Study's findings among mice suggest that oral peptide-YY signaling can affect taste-related behavior towards lipids.

Stigma

• Bias against obese persons among medical students.
• “Balancing the Scales” Theatre Workshop Trains Professionals in Obesity Sensitivity.
• Video: Student takes on prejudice against overweight people.

Interpreting Funding Associations

• Systematic review of financial conflicts of interest and conclusions regarding the association between sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain finds association -  editorial notes “A major limitation of this study is that it cannot assess which interpretation of the available evidence is truly accurate”.
• Do Financial Conflicts of Interest Bias Research? Author argues that scientists should not suspend their skepticism and choose as a default hypothesis that bias is the cause.
• Effect of funding source on publication bias is not so clear cut.

Caloric Restriction

• Anthropometric, Hemodynamic, Metabolic, and Renal Responses during 5 Days of Food and Water Deprivation.
• Therapeutic fasting in patients with metabolic syndrome and impaired insulin resistance.
• Fasting therapy - old and new perspectives.
• Caloric restriction, caloric restriction mimetics, and healthy aging in Okinawa: controversies and clinical implications.
• Identifying evolutionarily conserved genes in the dietary restriction response using bioinformatics and subsequent testing in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Food

• RCT: Diets naturally rich in polyphenols improve fasting and postprandial dyslipidemia and reduce oxidative stress.
• RCT: The effects of weight loss and salt reduction on visit-to-visit blood pressure variability.
• Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: dietary Fatty acids for healthy adults.
• Nutritional Value of Meals at Full-service Restaurant Chains.
• Does modifying the thick texture and creamy flavor of a drink change portion size selection and intake?
• A systematic review of experimental studies show consistent evidence that norms influence food choices.

Drugs

• RCT: Comparing the GLP-1 receptor agonist liraglutide to a sulphonylurea as add on to metformin in patients with established type 2 diabetes during Ramadan.
• Dental considerations for patients taking weight-loss medications.
• Adiponectin signaling and metabolic syndrome.
• Restricted access to standard or high fat chow alters sensitivity of rats to the 5-HT2A/2C receptor agonist 1-(2,5-dimethoxy-4-methylphenyl)-2-aminopropane.
• The year ahead for six new obesity treatments.

Evolution, Energetics, and Ecology

• Multiple paternity in wild house mice (Mus musculus musculus): effects on offspring genetic diversity and body mass.
• Energetics of the acrobatic courtship in male golden-collared manakins (Manacus vitellinus).
• Plant DNA is challenging preconceptions about the evolution of life, including the human species.

Epidemiology

• Misreporting and misclassification: implications for socioeconomic disparities in BMI and obesity.
• School year versus summer differences in child weight gain: A narrative review.

Exercise

• Meta-analysis: Exercise is efficacious for reducing percent body fat in overweight and obese children and adolescents. Insufficient evidence exists to suggest that exercise reduces other measures of adiposity.
• RCT: Nutrition education added to internet-based information and exercise at the work place for weight loss in a racially diverse population of overweight women.
• Colorado stride (COSTRIDE): testing genetic and physiological moderators of response to an intervention to increase physical activity.
• RCT: An eight month exercise intervention alters resting state synchrony in overweight children.

Ghrelin

• Ghrelin levels after a cold pressor stress test in obese women with binge eating disorder.
• Ghrelin receptor regulates high fructose corn syrup-induced adipose inflammation and insulin resistance in mice.

Clinical

• RCT: Steps ahead trial to reduce unhealthy weight gain in the lower Mississippi Delta.
• RCT: A text messaging-assisted lifestyle weight loss trial among overweight adults in Beijing.
• RCT: Self-Efficacy, Quality of Life, and Weight Loss in Overweight/Obese Endometrial Cancer Survivors (SUCCEED): A Randomized Controlled Trial.
• RCT: Findings from a study of 70 women suggest that supplementing dietary caraway extract may be beneficial for obesity management and weight loss.
• RCT: Study findings suggest no difference in postprandial thrombotic risk profiles between participants on a low-fat diet and a diet high in monounsaturated fatty acids.
• Association of displaying traffic-light nutritional labels in a university cafeteria on students’ food choice.

Policy

• CMS coverage for obesity management.
• American Diabetes Association releases 2014 Standards of Medical Care.

Socioeconomic

• Economic development, urbanisation, technological change and overweight: what do we learn from 244 demographic and health surveys.
• Econometric analysis suggests that there is no causal relationship between credit card debt and obesity for either men or women; but suggestive evidence regarding trouble paying bills among women.
• Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Study: Environmental effects on obesity.

Surgery and Devices

• The Acute Effects of a New Type of Implantable Gastric Electrical Stimulators Featuring Varied Pulse Widths on Beagle Dogs' Food Intake and Gastric Accommodation.
• Findings from longitudinal investigation of weight loss trajectories among bariatric surgery patients that were severely obese suggest that though there was substantial weight loss among participants, the improvement in other cardiometabolic outcomes varied.

Methods

• Accelerometer data reduction in adolescents: effects on sample retention and bias.
• Mortality risk of obesity and underweight is overestimated with self-reported BMI.
• Association of run-in periods with weight loss in obesity randomized controlled trials.
• Study investigates the utility of small area estimation techniques to monitor obesity prevalence and dietary patterns in developing.

Transgenerational Effects

• Role of prenatal undernutrition in the expression of serotonin, dopamine and leptin receptors in adult mice: Implications of food intake.
• Epidemiological findings suggest that birthweight is a partial mediator of the associations between parental diabetes and participants’ type 2 diabetes.

Chronobiology

• Variants of circadian-related genes affect energy expenditure.
• Body weight gain in rats fed a high-fat diet produces chronodisruption in activity/inactivity circadian rhythm.

Commentary

• Adherence to diets for weight loss.
• Adherence to diets for weight loss—Reply.
• Diabesity: Palliating, curing or preventing the dysmetabolic diathesis.
• Obesity, diabetes mellitus, atherosclerosis and chronic periodontitis: a shared pathology via oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction?
• Multivitamins Revisited, Again: Mission, Methods and Muddled Messages.
• The difference between being big and having obesity.
• The Future of Fat.

General

• Sex-trapolation in the Latest Brain Science.
• Microbiota modulate behavioral and physiological abnormalities associated with neurodevelopmental disorders among mice.
• Findings from GWAS analysis among Mexican and Latin American individuals identifies SLC16A11 as a novel candidate gene for type 2 diabetes with a possible role in triacylglycerol metabolism.
• To lay groundwork for future medicine, South China researchers isolate a fluorescent protein in jellyfish DNA and inject it into pig embryos to engineer piglets that glow under black lights.
• The next frontier for 3D printing: human organs.
• Archaeologists discover that ancient villagers cultivated vineyards in Spain.

Announcements

• Obesity Action Coalition welcomes new board members and chair Ted Kyle.