Featured

• How Food Controls Aggression in Drosophila.
• The Academic Urban Legend of Spinach.
• Weight Loss Nudges: Market Test or Government Guess?

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• The Myth of Comfort Food - comfort foods do not provide comfort beyond that of other foods (or no food).
• “Overall, the results suggest that additional wealth may exacerbate rather than alleviate weight problems [among women].”
• “Surprisingly, oxytocin treatment of ob/ob mice was accompanied by a worsening of basal glycemia and glucose tolerance.”
• Among young adults “Consumption of fruit and vegetables, and physical activity, despite popular beliefs, were not associated with protection against weight gain.”
• RCT: School-Based Smart-Phone Obesity Prevention Trial for Adolescent Boys in Low-Income Communities finds no effect on BMI, waist circumference, percent body fat, or physical activity.
• RCT: Water with Food Intake Does Not Influence Caloric Intake After Gastric Bypass.
• Neighbourhood obesogenicity was not associated with BMI in the overall sample.
• No Effect of Caloric Restriction or Exercise on Radiation Repair Capacity.
• Genetic risk scores associated with baseline lipoprotein subfraction concentrations do not associate with their responses to fenofibrate.

Low Carbohydrate Diets

• RCT: Low-carbohydrate diet more effective for weight loss and cardiovascular risk factor reduction than a low-fat diet.
• Commentary: Point-by-point criticism of the methods and questions asked by the above RCT.
• Commentary: NYT's 'A call for a low-carb diet that embraces fat'.
• Commentary: Why Atkins-style high fat low carb diet wins for weight loss.
• Meta-analysis: 'Significant weight loss was observed with any low-carbohydrate or low-fat diet. Weight loss differences between individual named diets were small. This supports the practice of recommending any diet that a patient will adhere to in order to lose weight.'
• Long-Term Low Carbohydrate Diet Leads to Deleterious Metabolic Manifestations in Diabetic Mice.

Clinical

• September 3 issue of JAMA loaded with obesity papers.
• "Overweight/obese male partners of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass patients also lose weight during the first 9 months post-surgery."
• RCT: A community-based, culturally relevant intervention to promote healthy eating and physical activity among middle-aged African American women in rural Alabama.
• Cancer survivors' uptake and adherence in diet and exercise intervention trials: An integrative data analysis.
• RCT: Pregnant women randomized to conventional weight loss techniques (weekly group support meetings, advice about nutrition and diet and keeping food and exercise diaries) had lower gestational weight gain and lower prevalence of large-for-gestational-age newborns.

Food

• RCT: Isoflavone supplement composition and equol producer status affect gene expression in adipose tissue in postmenopausal women.
• RCT: Consumption of wholegrain rye products reduced subsequent ad libitum energy intake in young healthy men.
• RCT: Low glycaemic index foods are of less value in glycaemic control in the evening than the morning.

Exercise

• Area Of The Brain That Motivates Us To Exercise.
• RCT: Time-Based Physical Activity Interventions for Weight Loss.
• RCT: Impact of the Healthy Eating and Exercise Lifestyle Programme on depressive symptoms in overweight people with heart disease and diabetes.

Breakfast

• NPR talks to UAB's Emily Dhurandhar about breakfast and weight loss.
• Breakfast Skippers Vindicated…a bit.
• Why eating the right breakfast is so important - Skipping the morning meal could lead to overeating later in the day.
• Patricia Sheridan's Breakfast With...Gary Taubes.

Caloric Restriction

• Acute calorie restriction as a modulator of anxiety-like behavior.
• Caloric restriction can improve learning ability in C57/BL mice via regulation of the insulin-PI3K/Akt signaling pathway.
• Severe (50%) caloric restriction with or without estrogen deficiency (via ovariectomy) during the growth period in rats is equally detrimental to bone-related biomarkers and structural parameters.

Economics

• Cumulative effects [association] on weight due to an initial occupational choice as a blue collar worker.
• The Economic Causes and Consequences of Overweight and Obesity in the United States.
• “Accumulated years of morbid obesity (i.e. obesity associated with a body mass index above 40) has a large negative impact [association] on employment status.”

Mathematical

• Spatiotemporal modelling of physical activity for understanding function, disability and health.
• Prediction of blood sugar in people according to such inputs as age, simulation level, BMI, and diet by using of fuzzy control and Adaptive Nero-Fuzzy Inference System.

Brown Fat

• Variation in genes keyed to thermogeneis across modern and archaic humans suggest independent cold adaptations mechanisms might have developed in different non-African human groups.
• Brown, Beige, and White: The New Color Code of Fat and Its Pharmacological Implications.

Psychology

• Motives for eating tasty foods associated with binge-eating. Results from a student and a weight-loss seeking population.
• Prompting healthier eating: Testing the use of health and social norm based messages.
• Dysfunctional involvement of emotion and reward brain regions on social decision making in excess weight adolescents.
• The role of pre-treatment proactive coping skills in successful weight management.

TV

• RCT: Action-Related Television Content Increases Food Intake.
• A higher number of screens in a child's bedroom was associated with higher adiposity, more total screen time and lower sleep efficiency.

Surgery

• Bariatric surgery in elderly patients. A comparison between gastric banding and sleeve gastrectomy with five years of follow up.
• Omentin changes following bariatric surgery and predictive links with biomarkers for risk of cardiovascular disease.
• Surgery Improves the Cavernosal Neuronal, Vasorelaxation, and Contraction Mechanisms for Erectile Dysfunction As Result of Amelioration of Glucose Homeostasis in a Diabetic Rat Model.
• Systematic review: 'Very few bariatric surgery studies report long-term results with sufficient patient follow-up to minimize biased results'.

Methods

• Lead author of major paper on self-reported food intake states “I agree that self-reported energy intakes should not be used for investigating associations between energy intake and health-related outcomes,” but indicates that they may be useful for other purposes.
• Breath acetone to monitor life style interventions in field conditions: An exploratory study.
• Systems Genetics Analysis of obesity in a Porcine Model using WISH Network Method.
• Using molecular genetic information to infer causality in observational data: Mendelian randomisation.
• Clinical Studies With Food Highlight Limitations of Nutrition Research.
• Response to Letter to the Editor: “Food Frequency questionnaire is an effective method for measuring micronutrient intake.”
• The impact of missing data in a longitudinal cohort study on the risks of colorectal cancer and mortality associated with change in body size.

Brains

• Pilot RCT: Individuals on a structured behavioral weight loss program had a change in brain activation on MRI towards low calorie vs high calorie foods at the end of a six month period; small sample sizes and other study limitations demand caution along with experimental follow-up.
• Metabolic costs and evolutionary implications of human brain development.

Epidemiology

• Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders associated with subsequent obesity.
• Obesity as a causal risk factor for deep venous thrombosis. A Mendelian randomisation study.
• Risks and Benefits of Green Spaces for Children: A Cross-Sectional Study of Associations with Sedentary Behavior, Obesity, Asthma, and Allergy.
• Higher socieconomic status is associated with better dietary quality, as quantified by NHANES AHEI-2010 based on self-reported dietary recall.

Stigma

• At school entry, a high BMI is a risk factor associated with victimization and bullying perpetration, with obese children particularly likely to be victims and aggressors.
• Weight Stigma Mediates the Association Between BMI and Self-Reported Health.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• Evolutionary Preferences for Physical Formidability in Leaders.
• Proxies of food intake and energy expenditure for estimating the time–energy budgets of lactating northern fur seals Callorhinus ursinus.
• Dietary specializations and diversity in feeding ecology of the earliest stem mammals.

Scientific Integrity

• Publication bias in the social sciences: Unlocking the file drawer.
• Why null results rarely see the light of day (with summary of previous article in one chart).

Policy Related

• Consumers’ Valuation of Soft Drinks Labeled with Calorie and Sweetener Information: The Impact of Taste.
• From the Paralympics to Public Health: Increasing Physical Activity Through Legislative and Policy Initiatives.
• Authors writing about taxation effects on obesity follow their hearts rather than data.
• Policy Implications of a Literature Review of Bariatric Surgery in Older Adults.
• New Guidance for Heart and Obesity Risk Screening from USPSTF.
• Commentary: "Prevailing prices do not reflect the true societal costs of foods ... both negative health and economic consequences of poor nutrition could be mitigated by a national system of subsides and taxes to facilitate more sensible dietary choices."

Commentary

• David Katz: “Obesity on The Nile.”
• F1000 Commentary on “Dynamic model predicting overweight, obesity, and extreme obesity prevalence trends.”
• A Diet by Any Other Name Is Still About Energy.
• The nutrient density approach to healthy eating: challenges and opportunities.

Basic Science

• Acute mTOR inhibition induces insulin resistance and alters substrate utilization in vivo.
• Lower mitochondrial proton leak and decreased glutathione redox in primary muscle cells of obese diet-resistant vs. diet–sensitive humans.
• Muscle ectopic fat deposition contributes to anabolic resistance in obese sarcopenic old rats through eIF2? activation.
• Long-term inhibition of miR-21 leads to reduction of obesity in db/db mice.
• Adipocyte ALK7 links nutrient overload to catecholamine resistance in obesity.

General Science

• Parenting from before conception.
• Dogs: Scientist’s Best Friend.
• Adaptive Plasticity: Bichir fish raised in a terrestrial environment grow in ways that make them more successful walkers.
• Hard, harder, hardest: principal stratification, statistical identifiability, and the inherent difficulty of finding surrogate endpoints.
• Longitudinal network analysis: After a move, the microbial community in the new house rapidly converges to the microbial community of the occupants’ former house.
• Systematic Review and Meta-analysis: No evidence that testosterone supplementation increases risk for major adverse cardiovascular events, and a protective role of testosterone treatment was found in men with metabolic diseases.
• F1000 Commentary on "Creativity as a decision".
• F1000 Commentary on "An educational intervention designed to increase women's leadership self-efficacy."

Announcements

• Dr. Kishore Gadde Named New Director of Allen A. Copping In-Patient Research Unit.
• Dr. David Katz takes on the job of curating the childhood obesity domain for About.com.
• Dr. Wendy Demark-Wahnefried named chair-elect for Obesity Society section on cancer.
• Conference: “Impact of George Washington Carver: Innovations in Food and Nutrition Sciences in the 21st Century.” - October 30, 2014  |  9 am - 7 pm  |  Tuskegee University.
• Apply for a scholarship to 'Integrating Primary Care and Commercial Providers into Obesity Management' in London by Sept. 16.