Featured

• A computational study of injury severity and pattern sustained by overweight drivers in frontal motor vehicle crashes.
• RCT: Study says snack food ingredient reduced PCBs in Anniston Alabama residents.
• Mortality risks of being overweight or obese are underestimated.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• When individual reported fruit & vegetable consumption was summed, fruit & vegetable intakes were significantly greater in the control group than in a Garden-to-Table program.
• Socioeconomic influences on diet and exercise are often blamed for racial disparities in obesity rates, but new findings question those assumptions.
• Overall, vitamin D, folic acid or multivitamin supplement did not ameliorate the detrimental effect of maternal obesity on the metabolic disturbances in the offspring.
• “Although diet and physical activity are both relevant for obesity prevention, the focus on two behaviours appeared too complex for informal diffusion through peer networks.”
• This study did not find a mediation effect of satiety responsiveness on the association between breastfeeding and weight status in toddlers.
• “Obese and reduced-obese individuals oxidize as much fat as lean both under eucaloric and negative energy balance conditions, which does not support the hypothesis of reduced oxidative capacity in these groups.”
• “This systematic review showed that exercise therapies can lead to a modest increase in levels of exercise activity but overall there was no noticeable change for symptoms of mental health, BMI, and body weight.”
• “We find no evidence that the presence of dollar stores within a reasonably close proximity to the child's residence can increase BMI. In fact, we see an increase in BMI when dollar stores leave a child's neighborhood which we interpret as a sign of neighborhood deterioration.”

Culture Divide

• Career Advice: Why You Need To Put A Candy Dish On Your Desk Today.
• NGO Advocacy: Obesity-Causing Junk Food at Checkout Counters (Even at Whole Foods) Called Out by Consumer Group.

Basic Science

• Acarbose effects on energy balance, body composition, and tissues: A caloric restriction mimetic?
• Metabolic Effects of Rapamycin Are Associated with Enhanced Regulatory Cells in Diet-Induced Obese Mice.
• Hyperglycaemic conditions perturb mouse oocyte in vitro developmental competence via beta-O-linked glycosylation of Heat shock protein 90.
• Adipose tissue metabolism and inflammation are differently affected by weight loss in obese mice due to either a high-fat diet restriction or change to a low-fat diet.

Hormones

• Review: Regulation of glucose metabolism by the ghrelin system: multiple players and multiple actions.
• The effect of short term starvation on galanin, leptin, thyroid hormones, insulin, prolactin, growth hormone, ghrelin and factors involved in energy metabolism in adult goats.
• Neuropeptide Y and leptin sensitivity is dependent on diet composition.
• Ciliary neurotrophic factor in the mouse hypothalamus. A possible role in energy balance homeostasis.
• A novel adipocytokine, omentin, inhibits platelet-derived growth factor-BB-induced vascular smooth muscle cell migration through anti-oxidative mechanism.

Brown Fat

• Vascular rarefaction mediates whitening of brown fat in obesity.
• Brown Adipose Tissue Derived VEGF-A Modulates Cold Tolerance and Energy Expenditure.

Temperature

• Steady-state local sweat rate is determined by the evaporation required for heat balance relative to body surface area.
• Adaptation of sows to rising temperatures.

Clinical

• Obesity Complicates Colorectal Cancer.
• RCT: Obesity and the Odds of Weight Gain Following Androgen Deprivation Therapy for Prostate Cancer.
• Hypothalamic Inflammation: Is There Evidence for Human Obesity?
• RCT: Motivational interviewing targeting diet and physical activity improves adherence to paediatric obesity treatment.

Drugs and Devices

• Catheter-Based Radiorefrequency Renal Denervation Lowers Blood Pressure in Obese Hypertensive Dogs.
• Fat chance: the revitalization of the obesity drug pipeline.
• Leptin therapy gains FDA approval.
• FDA approves weekly GLP-1 agonist for type 2 diabetes.

Commentary

• Dr. Robin Masheb on Food Marketing to Children.
• Ask for Evidence on 5 a day.
• Science journalist, Gary Taubes, gives account of causes of obesity.
• Dr. Arya Sharma: Does Eating More Protein Help Keep The Pounds Off?

Ecology, Evolution, and Energetics

• Energetics of the acrobatic courtship in male golden-collared manakins (Manacus vitellinus).
• Corticosterone, food intake and refueling in a long-distance migrant.
• Sex or candy? Neuroendocrine regulation of the seasonal transition from courtship to feeding behavior in male red-sided garter snakes.

Epidemiology

• Lower obesity rate during residence at high altitude among a military population with frequent migration: A quasi experimental model for investigating spatial causation.
• Identification of Direct and Indirect Social Network Effects in the Pathophysiology of Insulin Resistance in Obese Human Subjects.
• Methylation at CPT1A locus is associated with lipoprotein subfraction profiles.
• Systematic Review and Meta-analysis: Maternal BMI and the Risk of Fetal Death, Stillbirth, and Infant Death.

Exercise

• Irisin in response to acute and chronic whole-body vibration exercise in humans.
• Caloric Expenditure and Exercise Intensity on Fighter Pilots during Combat Flight.
• Factors behind Leisure-Time Physical Activity Behavior Based on Finnish Twin Studies: The Role of Genetic and Environmental Influences and the Role of Motives.
• Self-affirmation promotes physical activity.

Food

• RCT: The impact of oligofructose on stimulation of gut hormones, appetite regulation, and adiposity.
• RCT: Evaluation of yellow pea fibre supplementation on weight loss and the gut microbiota.
• Effect of dietary pulse intake on established therapeutic lipid targets for cardiovascular risk reduction: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.
• RCT: Liberalizing complex carbohydrates and reducing fat achieved glycemia below current treatment targets and lower postprandial FFAs in Gestational Diabetes.
• RCT: Chronic consumption of a high polyphenol content cranberry beverage improved glucoregulation and HDL cholesterol in healthy but overweight humans.
• RCT: Pectin is not pectin: Effect of different physicochemical properties of dietary fiber on appetite and energy intake.
• Organic food consumption and the incidence of cancer in a large prospective study of women in the United Kingdom.
• CDC Salt Guidelines Too Low for Good Health, Study Suggests.
• Dietary sugar in healthy female primates perturbs oocyte maturation and in vitro pre-implantation embryo development.

Culture

• The Deep Fried South: A Literary Analysis of Nutrition Knowledge of Students and Adults in Alabama.
• The dieting experience: A Jewish perspective.
• Obesity Literacy and Culture among African American Women in Florida.

Methods

• Time to Correctly Predict the Amount of Weight.
• Measurement site influences abdominal subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissue in obese adolescents before and after exercise.
• Obesity as Assessed by Body Adiposity Index and Multivariable Cardiovascular Disease Risk.

Psychology

• Low glucose relates to greater aggression in married couples.
• RCT: Effect of violent and non-violent video games on stress markers and test meal intakes in overweight young men.
• Biased attentional processing of food cues and modification in obese individuals.
• Slim by Design or by Willpower? Replies to Herman and Polivy and to Roberto, Pomeranz, and Fisher.
• Kids, candy, brain and behavior: Age differences in responses to candy gains and losses.

Video

• Rocio Pereira: Diabetes Risk in Mexican Americans.
• Lotta Granholm: Western Diet And The Brain: Food For Thought.
• Wearable RDT reader that runs on Google Glass that is useful for real-time tracking of diseases, medical conditions, and provides a valuable tool for mobile health.
• Mind Over Milkshake: How Your Thoughts Fool Your Stomach.

General Science

• Dealing with Irreproducibility.
• Time to consign what doesn’t work to the trash bin?
• I Am Right, You Are Wrong: How Biased Assimilation Increases the Perceived Gap between Believers and Skeptics of Violent Video Game Effects.
• Brown and Polar Bear Y Chromosomes Reveal Extensive Male-Biased Gene Flow within Brother Lineages.
• Joel Elmquist on mentoring.
• A guide for the innovator.
• Teacher Removed for 'Dangerous' Science Projects.
• U.S. Biomedical Research 'Unsustainable,' Prominent Researchers Warn.
• Cost-Related Motivations for Conducting Research.
• Five Reasons Why Zebrafish Make Excellent Research Models.
• Amoeba Eats Cells Alive.
• An extraordinary slide presentation: How Americans die.
• Tiny, Prehistoric Animal Hints at Herbivore Origins.

Announcements

• WHO/Cochrane Collaboration/Cornell University Summer Institute for Systematic Reviews in Nutrition for Global Policy Making.
• The Measures Registry is a searchable database of diet and physical activity measures relevant to childhood obesity research.
• 55th Annual American College of Nutrition Conference.
• 4th Short Course on Statistical Genetics and Genomics.