Featured

• Effects of early life exposure to methylmercury in daphnia pulex on standard and reduced food ration.
• Self-monitoring of dietary intake by young women: Online food records completed on computer or smartphone are as [in]accurate as paper-based food records.
• A high multivitamin diet fed to Wistar rat dams during pregnancy increases maternal weight gain later in life and alters homeostatic, hedonic and peripheral regulatory systems of energy balance.

Press Releases and Headlines vs. Studies

• Press Release: “Informing parents that even having 1 or 2 family meals per week may protect their child from overweight or obesity in young adulthood would be important.”
• Study: An observational study demonstrating an association [not causation] between self-reports of BMI and self-reports of family meals – did not test whether telling families anything had any effect on anything.
• Headline: Weight Discrimination Is Surprisingly Rare, Study Finds.
• Study: Perceived weight discrimination and changes in weight, waist circumference, and weight status.
• Commentary: Prof Asheley Cockrell Skinner deconstructs the news report.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Ideas

• “The associations between family meals and TV viewing during dinner with overweight were few and showed significance only in Northern Europe.”.
• “Intake of sugar-sweetened beverages, fast food consumption, nighttime sleep, television-viewing, playing video or computer games, computer use, overall screen time, having a television in the bedroom, amount of indoor or outdoor play, family meals, parental participation in active play, access to play spaces, and perceived safety were not associated with change in BMI z-score, overweight, or obesity in Head Start children.”.
• RCT: Menu labeling with calories and exercise equivalents did not affect calories ordered.
• No clear and consistent effect of sugar or sweeteners on mouse weight or lifespan.
• Rapamycin reduces Drosophila longevity under low nutrition.
• Meta-analysis: “Exercise has no significant effect on anthropometric parameters, blood pressure, total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, 2-h glucose, fasting insulin, and 2-h insulin” .among post-menopausal women.
• RCT: Magnesium replacement does not improve insulin resistance in patients with metabolic syndrome: A 12-week randomized double-blind study.
• “After adjustment, no significant associations were observed between breastfeeding and body composition parameters (BMI Z-score; sum of skinfolds; waist-to-height ratio)".
• “Level of parenting stress was not associated with children's risk of being overweight/obese".
• “There was no significant relationship between occupational stress and …obesity".

Basic Science

• Aging and energetics’ ‘Top 40’ future research opportunities 2010-2013.
• Mouse DXA in space.
• Adipose tissue mitochondrial dysfunction triggers a lipodystrophic syndrome with insulin resistance, hepatosteatosis, and cardiovascular complications.
• Insights and challenges in using C. elegans for investigation of fat metabolism.
• Not so sweet—artificial sweeteners can cause glucose intolerance by affecting the gut microbiota.
• Control of lipid metabolism by tachykinin in drosophila.
• Dynamic regulation of metabolic efficiency explains tolerance to acute hypoxia in humans.
• F1000: Is propensity to obesity associated with the diurnal pattern of core body temperature?

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• Environmental change and long-term body mass declines in an alpine mammal.
• Looking for, not catching, prey drains big cats’ energy.
• Seasonal variation in body mass, body temperature and thermogenesis in the Hwamei, Garrulax canorus.
• Burrowing energetics of the giant burrowing cockroach macropanesthia rhinoceros: An allometric study.
• Mapping ecologically relevant social behaviours by gene knockout in wild mice.

Computational

• Relating tissue/organ energy expenditure to metabolic fluxes in mouse and human: Experimental data integrated with mathematical modeling.
• Computer modeling of obesity links theoretical energetic measures with experimental measures of fuel use for lean and obese men.
• Altered mechano-chemical environment in hip articular cartilage: effect of obesity.
• High-resolution mapping of intracellular fluctuations using carbon nanotubes.

Methods

• In vivo metabolic fingerprinting of neutral lipids with hyperspectral stimulated raman scattering microscopy.
• Imaging lipid metabolism in live Caenorhabditis elegans using fingerprint vibrations.
• The reliability of weight-for-length/height Z scores in children.
• Validity of self-measured waist circumference in adults at risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
• Approach to assessing determinants of glucose homeostasis in the conscious mouse.
• Methodological framework: Discovering foods or nutrients with a causative influence on body weight in free-living settings.
• A new robust method for nonlinear regression.

Models

• Hyperglycemic arterial disturbed flow niche as an in-vitro model of atherosclerosis.
• Estimating human energy intake using mathematical models.

Clinical

• RCT: Weight loss treatment delivered in large versus small groups.
• Mandometer and other technologies to slow food intake.
• Disease severity and staging of obesity: a rational approach to patient selection.
• Characterizing workers participating in a worksite wellness health screening program using blood pressure control, self-monitoring, medication adherence, depression, and exercise.

Diet

• Can we use the epigenetic bioactivity of caloric restriction and phytochemicals to promote healthy ageing?
• RCT: Whey protein preloads are more beneficial than soy protein preloads in regulating appetite, calorie intake, anthropometry, and body composition of overweight and obese men.
• Ginseng modestly yet significantly improved fasting blood glucose in people with and without diabetes : A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled clinical trials.
• “Healthy Lifestyles” rising as dieting falls.
• Metabolic determinants of body weight after cats were fed a low-carbohydrate high-protein diet or a high-carbohydrate low-protein diet ad libitum for 8 wk.
• Mutant worms gorge on sugar and stay lean.

Food

• RCT: Effects of cactus fiber on the excretion of dietary fat in healthy subjects.
• Interesterified fat or palm oil as substitutes for partially hydrogenated fat in maternal diet can program obesity in adult offspring of mice.
• RCT: Carbohydrate modified diet & insulin sensitizers reduce body weight & modulate metabolic syndrome measures in normoglycemic women with midlife weight gain.
• Evidence of anti-obesity and mixed hypolipidemic effects of extracts from pink shrimp (Penaeus brasiliensis and Penaeus paulensis) processing residue in mice.

Exercise

• RCT: Effects of post-exercise milk consumption on whole body protein balance in youth.
• Responsiveness to change of self-report and device-based physical activity measures in the living well with diabetes trial.

Drugs

• RCT: Prevention of metabolic disorders with telmisartan and indapamide in a Chinese population with high-normal blood pressure.
• Molecular pathophysiology of metabolic effects of antipsychotic medications.
• RCT: Naltrexone to counteract antipsychotic-associated weight gain.
• RCT: Correcting oral contraceptive pharmacokinetic alterations due to obesity.

Epidemiology

• Population distribution of the sagittal abdominal diameter (SAD) from a representative sample of US adults: Comparison of SAD, waist circumference and body mass index for identifying dysglycemia.
• Dietary sodium, added salt, and serum sodium associations with growth and depression in the U.S. general population.
• Sleep duration and obesity among adults: A meta-analysis of prospective studies.
• Sleep duration and total and cause-specific mortality in a large US cohort: Interrelationships with physical activity, sedentary behavior, and body mass index.

Economics

• Trading height and weight for education in the marriage market.
• Cost–effectiveness of whole-of-community obesity prevention programs: an overview of the evidence.
• Study findings suggest an adult male labor market penalty for being overweight or obese as a teenager.
• FTC urged to reduce marketing of unhealthy foods to kids.

Surgery

• Systematic review of laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding in patients with BMI = 35 kg/m².
• Collateral weight loss in children living with adult bariatric surgery patients: A case control study.

Stigma

• Where skinny people sit in restaurants.
• Weight bias in healthcare as great as in fashion?

Psychology

• The effect of effort and weight controllability on perceptions of obese individuals.
• In good company. The effect of an eating companion's appearance on food intake.
• Piqued curiosity can boost learning power.

Policy Related

• Too fat for society? William Bogart and 'Regulating obesity? Government, society and questions of health'.
• Analyzing the effects of daily physical education in middle schools on obesity: Evidence from Pennsylvania’s active schools program.
• Proposed US Food and Drug Administration guidance for industry on distributing medical publications about the risks of prescription drugs and biological products: A misguided approach.

General Science

• Young, brilliant and underfunded.
• The evolution of sleep: 700 million years of melatonin.
• Why Saying Is Believing — The Science Of Self-Talk.
• UAB graduate leads Ebola containment efforts in Nigeria.
• At the interface of math and science.
• Select light spectra affect gonad color in the sea urchin Lytechinus variegatus.
• Use of placebo controls in the evaluation of surgery: A systematic review.
• The new rechargeable solar battery could make solar energy more affordable.
• Nobel prize for medicine goes to discoverers of brain’s 'inner GPS'.

Commentary

• Antibiotics: Had enough?
• Bias in Nutrition Obesity Literature.
• Healthy obese versus unhealthy lean: the obesity paradox.
• David Katz: Ducks, geese, faith, and fatty livers.
• Nature, facing “considerable rise” in retractions, blames lawyers for opaque and delayed notices.
• Retraction challenges: Cleaning up the literature can be difficult.
• Setting the record straight: Scientists are taking to social media to challenge weak research, share replication attempts in real time, and counteract hype.
• Is obesity a disease? Taking obesity seriously.
• Processed Food: Can’t we just say what we mean?
• Randomized clinical trials and observational studies are more often alike than unlike: The importance of assessing the methodological rigor.

Announcements

• November 22nd: 16th Annual Conference - Frontiers in diabetes research.
• 4th International conference on food digestion to be held in Naples, Italy, March 17-19, 2015.
• The 2015 sports science summit to be held in London, UK, January 13th-15th, 2015.
• 75th American Diabetes Association scientific session - call for abstracts January 5th.