Featured

• Assignment to Weight Loss Treatments Causes a 15% Reduction in All-Cause Mortality: A Meta-Analysis of RCTs.
• Self-reported measures of sucrose intake and objective biomarkers yield opposite associations with BMI, again suggesting the invalidity of self-report dietary measures for obesity research.
• Self-reported vs. measured estimates of dietary sodium, potassium and protein yield different associations with general and abdominal obesity "suggesting that the ability of self-reported dietary information using the diet history questionnaire for investigating diet-obesity relationships is limited."

Headline vs Study

• Headline: Human skin cell to cure obesity, finds study.
• Study: Differentiation of hypothalamic-like neurons from human pluripotent stem cells to investigation the neurophysiology of body weight regulation and evaluation of therapeutic targets for obesity.

Contrary or Null Findings

• Fast-food curb in South LA did not cut obesity rates.
• Away-from-home eating among Brazilian adults was unrelated to obesity.
• RCT: No effect of a combined diet and physical activity intervention (the UPBEAT study) on physical activity in pregnant women.
• No Association of Maternal Gestational Weight Gain with Offspring Blood Pressure and Hypertension at Age 18 Years in Male Sibling-Pairs: A Prospective Register-Based Cohort Study.
• RCT: Resveratrol does not influence metabolic risk markers related to cardiovascular health in overweight and slightly obese subjects.

Scientific Rigor & Scholarly Dialogue

• Apparent Statistical and Reporting Errors in "Effect of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation on impaired glucose tolerance: a pilot randomized study" (see comment in PubMed Commons).
• Of mice and women: News release dupes media on rodent fertility treatment.
• Implausible data, false memories, and the status quo in dietary assessment.
• Article: The National Caries Program was a missed opportunity to develop a scientific understanding of how to restrict sugar consumption to prevent tooth decay.
• Response: The National Caries Program was a missed opportunity to develop a scientific understanding of how to restrict sugar consumption to prevent tooth decay.

Clinical

• RCT: Exercise, but not vitamin D, reduces risk of injury given a fall among older women.
• Obesity is associated with a diurnal thermogenic handicap which could play a role in favoring weight gain by lowering whole-body energy expenditure.
• Higher fitness is associated with a lower risk of incident diabetes.
• RCT: Worksite multiple-component intervention addressing diet and physical activity successfully reduces BMI and obesity levels.
• RCT: Impact of physical activity on energy balance, food intake and choice in normal weight and obese children in the setting of acute social stress.
• Obesity and depression — Co-conspirators.

Surgery

• Altered Drug Disposition Following Bariatric Surgery: A Research Challenge.
• Bariatric Embolization of the Gastric Arteries for the Treatment of Obesity.
• Patients Lacking Sustainable Long-Term Weight Loss after Gastric Bypass Surgery Show Signs of Decreased Inhibitory Control of Prepotent Responses.
• Study identifies comorbidities tied to binge eating in bariatric-surgery candidates.

Pharmaceuticals

• New drug For Crohn's disease targets RNA.
• RCT: Effects of metformin on energy intake and satiety in obese children.
• Obesity and the Use of Antibiotics and Probiotics in Rats.
• RCT: Treatment of euglycemic, obese, middle-aged women with metformin 1700 mg per day reduced insulin resistance and weight compared with placebo.
• Final approval for Saxenda in Europe.

Food & Diet

• Is a paleo diet healthy?
• Obese Individuals Have Higher Preference and Sensitivity to Odor of Chocolate.
• Interaction of mealtime ad libitum beverage and food intake with meal advancement in healthy young men and women.
• Are low-salt diets necessary (or healthy) for most people?
• Woulda coulda shoulda prevented obesity.

Caloric Restriction

• Dietary Fat and Aging Modulate Apoptotic Signaling in Liver of Calorie-Restricted Mice.
• Rapamycin and Dietary Restriction Induce Metabolically Distinctive Changes in Mouse Liver.

Exercise & Physical Activity

• The Feasibility of Reducing Sitting Time in Overweight and Obese Older Adults.
• RCT: Attentional distraction via music has a positive effect on running distance on a field endurance test and on activity intensity during an exercise session in overweight and normal-weight boys.

Economics & Sociology

• Lottery winning and obesity risk. (pdf)
• The association between neighborhood economic hardship, the retail food environment, fast food intake, and obesity: findings from the Survey of the Health of Wisconsin.
• Socioeconomic disadvantage in childhood as a predictor of excessive gestational weight gain and obesity in midlife adulthood.

Epidemiology

• Neighborhood Disadvantage, Preconception Health Behaviors and Infant Birthweight: A Preliminary Study.
• The relationship between early life modifiable risk factors for childhood obesity, ethnicity and BMI at age 3 years: findings from the Born in Bradford birth cohort study.

Psychology

• Treatment Beliefs and Preferences for Psychological Therapies for Weight Management.
• Prenatal Parental Separation and Body Weight, Including Development of Overweight and Obesity Later in Childhood.

Stigma

• France rejects ban on underweight models, cites discrimination.
• Weight Isn't Selling: The Insidious Effects of Weight Stigmatization in Retail Settings.
• A content analytic comparison of fitspiration and thinspiration websites.

Policy

• U.S. doctors need support in adjusting to new payment models.
• Commentary: Socially Engineering Food Choices Doesn't Work.
• Nutrition facts as Food Contaminants - "we argue that these attempts to enforce healthy eating can be perceived by French consumers as something that is both foreign to their culture and symbolic of utilitarian values that are inconsistent with the Frenchness of food enjoyment." (pdf)
• Decision-making and Obesity Policy: Self-control, Mental Accounting, and Menu Labels.

Intergenerational Effects

• Maternal diabetes, gestational diabetes and the role of epigenetics in their long term effects on offspring.
• Sexual dimorphism in the effect of maternal obesity on placental mitochondrial function.

Ecology, Evolution, & Energetics

• Predator cues have contrasting effects on lifespan of Pardosa milvina (Araneae: Lycosidae).
• Intra-specific plasticity in parental investment in a long-lived single-prey loader.

Methods

• Automated Extraction of Food Intake Indicators from Continuous Meal Weight Measurements.
• A new method for assessing distribution of the adipose tissue using 3D body scanning technology. (pdf)
• The platform trial: An efficient strategy for evaluating multiple treatments.
• Researchers develop diabetes progression prediction tool.
• Working with parents to prevent childhood obesity: Protocol for a primary care-based eHealth study.

Mathematical

• Estimating prevalence of overweight or obese children and adolescents in small geographic areas using publicly available data to design effective interventions.
• Predicting successful long-term weight loss from short-term weight-loss outcomes.

Engineering

• Engineer studies how mechanical forces affect adipocytes.
• Change in knee contact force with simulated change in body weight.

Basic

• Johns Hopkins researchers identify 'missing culprit' in heart failure.
• Fueling Up Skeletal Muscle to Reduce Obesity: A TrkB Story.
• Sirt3 prevents maternal obesity-associated oxidative stress and meiotic defects in mouse oocytes.
• Photoperiod regulates lean mass accretion, but not adiposity, in growing f344 rats fed a high fat diet.
• New research on appetite-suppressing bacteria could help fight obesity.

Commentary

• Cancer risk and weight: Our body and "pathologies of space".
• Eat righteously.
• Denial, Doubt, and Prevailing Bias.
• The Health at Every Size Paradigm and Obesity: Missing Empirical Evidence May Help Push the Reframing Obesity Debate Forward.
• Breast Milk Becomes a Commodity, With Mothers Caught Up in Debate.
• The myth of high-protein diets.
• What doctors know about obesity.

General

• The effects of climate-induced elevated seawater temperature on the covering behavior, righting response, and Aristotle's lantern reflex of the sea urchin Lytechinus variegatus.
• Functional genomic analysis reveals overlapping and distinct features of chronologically long-lived yeast populations. (pdf)
• With new nonstick coating, the wait, and waste, is over.
• Vitamin D prevents diabetes and clogged arteries in mice.

Video & Audio

• Dr. Chip Lavie: The obesity paradox, why thinner can mean sicker.
• Enette Larson-Meyer: "Human Milk, Exercise and Honey: Exploring the Obesoprotective Effect of gut peptides."
• Bruce Yee: "A Systems Science Approach to the Obesity Epidemic and Prevention of Diabetes."

Announcements

• Three faculty positions are available in UAB’s Department of Nutrition Sciences.
• The Department of Biology at UAB seeks faculty applicants with research emphasis in aging biology.
• UAB Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Obesity Research.
• Short Course on Mathematical Sciences in Obesity Research, 6/22/2015 - Fri 6/26/2015 Birmingham AL.
• Your weight matters national convention: August 13-16, 2015
• 10th Congress of the International Society of Nutrigenetics and & Nutrigenomics: May 23-26, 2016.
• International Weight Stigma Conference: September 18-19, 2015.
• TOS partners with Nurse Practitioners to offer obesity treatment course: June 9-14, 2015
• Vital connections: Science, society and sustaining health concludes the sustaining health dialogue commissioned of Meteos by the Wellcome Trust.