Featured

• Acarbose, 17-alpha-estradiol, and nordihydroguaiaretic acid extend mouse lifespan preferentially in males.
• Commentary: Implausible results in human nutrition research.
• American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology's cholesterol risk calculator appears to greatly overestimate risk.
• RCT: Larger bowl size increases the amount of cereal that children request, consume and waste.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• Isotopic estimates of sugar intake are related to chronic disease risk factors but not obesity in an Alaska native (Yup'ik) study population.
• RCT: Nicotine patch may increase energy intake during treatment, and does not prevent post-cessation weight gain in postmenopausal smokers.
• There is little evidence that teachers' judgments of pupils' ability are influenced by obesity.
• Gingivitis was not associated with obesity/overweight.
• High BMI should not be considered a contra-indication to mobile bearing knee replacement.

Clinical

• RCT: Efficacy of an acceptance-based behavioral intervention for weight gain prevention in young adult women.
• RCT: Effect of Weight Reduction and Cardiometabolic Risk Factor Management on Symptom Burden and Severity in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation.
• Anti-ghrelin Therapeutic Vaccine: A Novel Approach for Obesity Treatment.
• RCT: Increasing the Number of Chews before Swallowing Reduces Meal Size in Normal-Weight, Overweight, and Obese Adults.
• Maps: States where physicians prescribe more antibiotics also have high obesity rates.

Food

• RCT: Effects of dark chocolate on lipid profile, apo-lipoprotein A-1, apo-lipoprotein B and inflammation in type-2 diabetic patients.
• Intrinsic Rewards, Fruit and Vegetable Consumption, and Habit Strength: A Three-Wave Study Testing the Associative-Cybernetic Model.
• RCT: Visualising future behaviour: Effects for snacking on biscuit bars, but no effects for snacking on fruit.
• High dietary phosphorus intake is associated with all-cause mortality.

Drugs

• Long-term Drug Treatment for Obesity: A Systematic and Clinical Review.
• RCT: Canagliflozin, a sodium glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitor: effects in overweight and obese subjects without diabetes mellitus.
• RCT: High-Dose Nicotine Patch Therapy for Smokeless Tobacco Users.

Exercise

• RCT: The effects of aerobic exercise training at two different intensities in obesity and type 2 diabetes: implications for oxidative stress, low-grade inflammation and nitric oxide production.
• RCT: Different types of resistance training in type 2 diabetes mellitus: effects on glycaemic control, muscle mass and strength.
• Fitter firefighters less prone to injury, even though as a group they are more fit than the general public.
• Meta-analysis: Exercise and drug interventions may provide similar mortality benefits in the secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and the prevention of diabetes.
• Physicians who complete less physical activity may be less likely to encourage patients to engage in physical activity in geographic areas where the adult population is less active.

Protein

• Comparing the value of protein sources for maternal and child nutrition.
• Cohort study: Higher protein intake at baseline was associated with higher self-reported physical function.

Eating Disorders

• Binge eating was associated with a nearly fourfold higher risk of type 2 diabetes in females, regardless of BMI, according to a study presented at Obesity Week.
• Commentary: Anorexia awareness campaigns are unwittingly promoting anorexia.
• Daily self-weighing does not appear to be related to increased disordered eating behavior and is associated with better weight loss outcomes.

Gut Microbiota

• Resting energy expenditure and gut microbiota in obese and normal weight subjects.
• Use of pigs as a potential model for research into dietary modulation of the human gut microbiota.
• Anti-obesity effects of gut microbiota are associated with lactic acid bacteria.

Surgery

• Current status of robotic bariatric surgery: a systematic review.
• Where Are the Health Care Cost Savings With Bariatric Surgery in Obesity Management?
• Medical Indications for Weight-Loss Surgery in Adolescents But Are There Other Equally Important Indications?
• Previous bariatric surgery increases postoperative morbidity after sleeve gastrectomy for morbid obesity.
• Women who have had surgery for obesity have raised risk of preterm babies.
• Patients who have undergone laparoscopic gastric bypass continue to show favorable change in their lipid profiles at 5 years postoperative and take fewer lipid-modifying medications.
• RCT: 60% of type 2 diabetes patients who underwent gastric bypass surgery were in remission at one year, compared with only 6% of patients receiving intensive medical/lifestyle intervention.
• Discharge protocol checklists cut 30-day bariatric surgery readmissions.

Psychology

• Resourcefulness, Academic Stress, Dispositional Optimism, and Eating Styles among Fifth and Sixth Graders.
• Child Behavioural Problems and Body Size among 2-6 Year Old Children Predisposed to Overweight. Results From the “Healthy Start” Study.
• Personality Traits, Education, Physical Exercise, and Childhood Neurological Function as Independent Predictors of Adult Obesity.
• Hot and cool executive functioning and food approach behavior in middle childhood.
• People are able to accurately recognize social influences on food intake and this recognition is facilitated by the presence of mimicked eating, not by matching the total amount eaten.

Methods

• Model-based measurement of food portion size for image-based dietary assessment using 3D/2D registration.
• Validation of a new tool to measure responsiveness and structure in the feeding context : the Authoritative Feeding Practices Questionnaire.
• Estimation of 24-h energy expenditure in dairy cows using the 13C bicarbonate dilution method.
• Energy Expenditure Compared to Physical Activity Measured by Accelerometry and Self-Report in Adolescents: A Validation Study.
• Questions and answers to the validity of the doubly labeled water method in high-fat and sucrose-feeding mice irrespective of obesity proneness.
• Designing a Robust Activity Recognition Framework for Health and Exergaming using Wearable Sensors.
• Chemical imaging of lipid droplets in muscle tissues using hyperspectral coherent Raman microscopy.
• Modelling the Joint Effect of Social Determinants and Peers on Obesity Among Canadian Adults with Fuzzy Cognitive Maps.

Mathematics

• Elucidating the interactions between human gut microbiota and host through metabolic modeling.
• A Study of Temporal Action Sequencing During Consumption of a Meal.
• A modeling approach for compounds affecting body composition.
• Mechanical Analysis of Single Myocyte Contraction in a 3-D Elastic Matrix.

Ghrelin

• Stimulatory effect of ghrelin on food intake in bullfrog larvae.
• Ghrelin administration enhances neurogenesis but impairs spatial learning and memory in adult mice.
• Correlations between plasma ghrelin and parameters of fat metabolism in early lactating dairy cows.

Epidemiology

• Dietary Patterns Are Associated With Incident Stroke and Contribute to Excess Risk of Stroke in Black Americans.
• Inflammatory Dietary Pattern Linked to Depression among Women.
• Review: A majority of cross-sectional studies indicate that shiftwork increases weight gain and the prevalence of obesity. On the other hand, half of cohort studies show higher frequency of meal intake and/or poor nutrition quality in the shift workers.
• The prevalence of overweight and obesity in students from different altitudinal zones of Jujuy was highest in the highlands, according to three international references (IOTF, CDC and WHO) with good agreement.
• Higher BMI is associated with increased plaque buildup and greater heart disease risk in patients with type 2 diabetes.
• PTSD symptoms are associated with an increased risk of becoming overweight or obese among women.

Genetics

• EMR-linked GWAS study: Investigation of variation landscape of loci for BMI in children.
• Study of Severely Obese Family Leads to Gene Discovery.
• Effects of level of nutrient intake and age on mammalian target of rapamycin, insulin, and insulin-like growth factor-1 gene network expression in skeletal muscle of young Holstein calves.
• RAP1 Protects from Obesity through Its Extratelomeric Role Regulating Gene Expression.
• Prevention of neuromusculoskeletal frailty in slow-aging Ames dwarf mice: longitudinal investigation of interaction of longevity genes and caloric restriction.

Evolution, Energetics and Ecology

• Is natural hatching asynchrony optimal? An experimental investigation of sibling competition patterns in a facultatively siblicidal seabird.
• Species of sacoglossan sea slug that assimilate the photosynthetic organelles in the algae they eat – role in energetics and survival?
• Energetic adjustments in freely breeding-fasting king penguin: does colony density matter?

SSBs, Sugar & Sweeteners

• Effects of a nonnutritive sweetener on body adiposity and energy metabolism in mice with diet-induced obesity.
• The Role of Fructose, Sucrose, and High-fructose Corn Syrup in Diabetes.
• RCT: Effect of SSB ingestion during ‘spin’ classes on health and fitness parameters, quality of life and mood in recreational exercisers.
• Projected effects of taxes on sugar sweetened beverages: a meta-analysis.
• The role of low-calorie sweeteners in diabetes.
• Survey: Kids less thirsty for water than their parents.

Transgenerational

• Two-generation diet-induced obesity model producing mice with increased amount of body fat in early adulthood.
• Maternal Obesity Caused by Overnutrition Exposure Leads to Reversal Learning Deficits and Striatal Disturbance in Rats.
• Fetal and Early-Postnatal Developmental Patterns of Obese-Genotype Piglets Exposed to Prenatal Programming by Maternal Over- and Undernutrition.
• Exposure to a High-Fat Diet During Development Alters Leptin and Ghrelin Sensitivity and Elevates Renal Sympathetic Nerve Activity and Arterial Pressure in Rabbits.

Temperature

• Some physiological effects of deep underground mining in intense heat and the relationship with physical work capacity and functional work capacity.
• City-Scale Expansion of Human Thermoregulatory Costs.
• 'Elevated ambient indoor temperatures are associated with low BMI levels. Further research is needed to establish the potential causal nature of this relationship.'

Policy Related

• Should Child Obesity be an Issue for Child Protective Services?: A Call for More Research on this Critical Public Health Issue.
• Non-randomized study shows association between dining in restaurant with calorie menu labeling was associated with better food choices in full-service restaurants.
• 40% of large US firms will levy surcharges against employees that cannot or will not meet specific health criteria next year, 67% by 2015.
• 67% of employees who must participate in an employer's wellness plan to get full health coverage are required to meet weight-related wellness goals, but 59% have no coverage for fitness training, registered dietitian counseling, obesity drugs, or bariatric surgery.
• Lowering the threshold for a normal fasting plasma glucose level may increase medical costs despite its potential benefit in diabetes prevention.
• Odds of enacting state laws addressing obesity are mostly unrelated to state variation in education, population density, income, political party structure and obesity prevalence; however, a negative but weak association suggests that state governments that enact the most laws are those with relatively low obesity prevalence.
• Three Reasons “Get Tough” Backfires.

Ethics and Scientific Integrity

• Identifying ethical and scientific challenges raised by nutrigenomics / nutrigenetics research, with emphasis on 'biohype'.
• Non-publication of large RCTs: cross sectional analysis.

Basic Science

• Early postnatal maternal deprivation in rats can influence the fate of adipose tissue proliferation, presumably leading to obesity later in life.
• 'Smarter' blood pressure guidelines could prevent many more heart attacks and strokes.
• Breath test for blood glucose levels to begin testing next year.
• A Mendelian randomization study of Abdominal obesity and lower gray matter volume.
• The regulatory effects of resistant starch on glycaemic response in obese dogs.

Commentary

• Try it, you might learn to like it: The case for taste bud rehab.
• Fixing Food Stamps for All? Could be a SNAP.
• Health at an Impasse: The Case for Getting Past Collusion.
• What's new with measuring cholesterol?
• How Early Should Obesity Prevention Start?
• Are Sugar and Sloth the Causes of Obesity -- Or Just Convenient Whipping Boys for Meat?

Video

• Paul A.S. Breslin - "Anticipatory digestive responses to foods".
• Sleep Deprivation Disrupts Human Brain Reactivity in Response to Food Desire.
• The Sodium Story.
• Not all obesity is equal.

General Science

• The Necessity of RCTs.
• Mitochondrial genomes suggest the origin of dogs was 18,000 - 30,000 years ago in Europe.
• NYT: Wait, wasn't South China supposed to be the origin of dogs?
• How, if and why species form.
• How I faced my fears and learned to be good at math.
• The Myth of 'I'm Bad at Math'.
• Policy: Twenty tips for interpreting scientific claims.
• Coldblooded does not mean stupid.
• Baseline tumor growth and immune control in laboratory mice are significantly influenced by subthermoneutral housing temperature.
• Hope for hemophiliacs as experimental gene therapy shows promise in a canine model.
• Satellite built by high-school students launched on Minotaur I rocket.

Announcements

• FDA Reopens Comment Period for Draft Guidance on Medical Foods.