Featured

• RCT: Skipping breakfast leads to more (not less) weight loss.
• Branched-chain amino acids in metabolic signalling and insulin resistance.
• RCT: Meal timing during alternate day fasting: Impact on body weight and cardiovascular disease risk in obese adults.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• Review: “…overall the best designed studies (real world studies, with a comparison group) show that calorie labels do not have the desired effect in reducing total calories ordered at the population level.”
• Food Intake Does Not Differ between Obese Women Who Are Metabolically Healthy or Abnormal.
• “Contrary to widely stated claims, LOCF did not produce a conservative (i.e., lower) efficacy estimate compared to MI [multiple imputation].”
• RCT: No effect on BMI of a school-based healthy eating and physical activity program among children.
• “No relationship between the number of sport facilities per 1,000 population and physical inactivity was observed.”
• [T]he traditional risk factors for mortality, including high blood pressure, hypercholesterolaemia, overweight and obesity and diabetes, were not independent predictors of mortality in this population of older men.
• “We found limited evidence of an impact of the school food and nutrient-based standards on total diet among 11-12 year olds”.
• Kids' Bag Lunches Not Meeting Nutrition Guidelines: Bag lunches typically had more salt and fewer fruits, vegetables and whole grains, compared with standards set for school cafeterias.
• In a nationally representative sample of the non-institutionalised US population with diabetes, BMI and waist circumference were not associated with risk of mortality.
• In school-based physical activity program for diabetes prevention, BMI increased (instead of decreasing) in both male and female participants.

Caloric Restriction

• Interaction of growth hormone receptor/binding protein gene disruption and caloric restriction for insulin sensitivity and attenuated aging.
• Calorie restriction increases lipopolysaccharide-induced neuropeptide Y immunolabeling and reduces microglial cell area in the arcuate hypothalamic nucleus.

Exercise

• RCT: The impact of exercise during pregnancy on neonatal outcomes.
• Physically active rats lose more weight during calorie restriction.
• The influence of nighttime feeding of carbohydrate or protein combined with exercise training on appetite and cardiometabolic risk.
• Systematic review and meta-analysis: Exercise significantly reduced gestational weight gain.
• The independent roles of cardiorespiratory fitness and sedentary time on chronic conditions and body mass index in older adults.
• RCT: Inflammatory markers and adipocytokine responses to exercise training and detraining in men who are obese.

Methods

• Evaluating causal relationships between urban built environment characteristics and obesity: a methodological review of observational studies.
• Poor quality of external validity reporting limits generalizability of overweight and/or obesity lifestyle prevention interventions in young adults: a systematic review.
• Comparison of results from different imputation techniques for missing data from an anti-obesity drug trial.
• Scaling of adult body weight to height across sex and race/ethnic groups: relevance to BMI.
• Modern health care as a game theory problem.
• Establishing a Reliable Multiple Reaction Monitoring-Based Method for the Quantification of Obesity-Associated Comorbidities in Serum and Adipose Tissue Requires Intensive Clinical Validation.

Economics

• “Results suggested strategies to tackle obesity must address employed women's everyday financial troubles which may influence weight through more biological pathways than classical correlates of economic disadvantage and weight.”
• The Role of Time in Fast-Food Purchasing Behavior in the United States.

Food

• Food environment and obesity.
• Effects of long-term cycling between palatable cafeteria diet and regular chow on intake, eating patterns, and response to saccharin and sucrose in rats.
• RCT: Breakfast glycaemic index and exercise: Combined effects on adolescents' cognition.
• Personalized weight loss strategies-the role of macronutrient distribution.

Epidemiology

• Obesity Rate Highest in Teens With Disabilities.
• Obesity related risk of sudden cardiac death.
• The Association of Religious Affiliation and Body Mass Index.
• A Pooled Analysis of Body Mass Index and Mortality among African Americans.
• Correlates of sedentary behaviour in 8- to 10-year-old children at elevated risk for obesity.
• Double burden of undernutrition and obesity in Uruguay.
• Differential maternal feeding practices, eating self-regulation, and adiposity in young twins.
• Maternal obesity is associated with alterations in the gut microbiome in toddlers.

Transgenerational Findings

• Novel theory connects mothers to childhood obesity: Evolution is the cause, and moms are the cure.
• Maternal body size prior to pregnancy, gestational diabetes and weight gain: associations with insulin resistance in children at 9-10 years.

Stigma

• Do the Plus Size Awards 'promote obesity'? Fat chance.
• Experiencing Weight Bias in an Unjust World: Impact on Exercise and Internalization.
• The Bad Taste of Social Ostracism: The Effects of Exclusion on the Eating Behaviors of African American Women.

Drugs

• Leptin Therapy in People with a Normal Leptin Gene.
• Haloperidol and rimonabant increase delay discounting in rats fed high-fat and standard-chow diets.

Surgery

• RCT: Use of positive pressure in the bariatric surgery and effects on pulmonary function and prevalence of atelectasis.
• Simplified gastric bypass.
• Psychological predictors of bariatric surgery attrition.
• Health-Related Quality of Life following Bariatric Surgery: A Systematic Review of Prospective Long-Term Studies.

Psychology

• Body Image Concerns, Muscle-Enhancing Behaviors, and Eating Disorders in Males.
• “Three studies demonstrate that exposure to drug (but not supplement) marketing for weight management encourages unhealthy consumer behavior, due to consumers' reliance on erroneous beliefs about health remedies.”
• Association of weight-focused social comparisons with diet and activity outcomes in overweight and obese young women.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• The energetics of a Malagasy rodent, Macrotarsomys ingens (Nesomyinae): a test of island and zoogeographical effects on metabolism.
• The foraging benefits of being fat in a highly migratory marine mammal.
• Evolutionary cell biology: Two origins, one objective.
• Geometric factors influencing the diet of vertebrate predators in marine and terrestrial environments.

Policy Related

• Can Government Regulate Portion Sizes?
• New York State's open records laws modified to protect biomedical research.
• FDA Finalizes Menu Label Rules.
• Considering the Potential Effect of Federal Policy on Childhood Obesity.

Commentary

• The Tipping Point in Obesity.
• Of Epidemic Proportions:  The Primary Colors of Obesity.
• Report| McKinsey Global Institute - How the world could better fight obesity.
• David Katz: Want Health? Try the Truth.
• Antibiotics, C-Sections, and Childhood Obesity.
• Active Moms May Be the Cure for Obesity.
• Why are educated adults slim-Causation or selection?
• An Experiment Begins with Calories Everywhere.
• The Gravity of Weight: The daunting science of weight control.
• How calorie-focused thinking about obesity and related diseases may mislead and harm public health. An alternative.
• Calories: Nothing Is Better Than Junk Data.
• Non-Genetic Evolution as Obesity Villain.
• Ending the Cycle of Blame in US Health Care.
• Critiquing US Health Care.
• Consequences of obesity and weight loss: a devil's advocate position.

Basic Science

• When fed during the day, mice, typically nocturnal animals, are less likely to explore novel objects and remember fearful places.
• Glucose uptake in brown fat cells is dependent on mTOR complex 2-promoted GLUT1 translocation.
• Nutrient-sensing nuclear receptors coordinate autophagy.

General Science

• F1000 Recommendation: Phylogenomics resolves the timing and pattern of insect evolution.
• F1000 Recommendation: Economics in the age of big data.
• U.S. urged to clarify extent of funding moratorium on risky virus research.
• Special Section on Moving Toward a Cumulative Science: Maximizing What Our Research Can Tell Us.
• Rat Study Suggests Schizophrenia May Stem from Surplus Brain Protein.
• Do Men Overperceive Women’s Sexual Interest?
• Ancient Egyptian Mummy Wearing Jewels Found.
• Obesity and poly cystic ovary syndrome.
• Impact of Spin in the Abstracts of Articles Reporting Results of Randomized Controlled Trials in the Field of Cancer.
• Consequences of obesity and weight loss: a devil's advocate position.
• Leveraging population admixture to characterize the heritability of complex traits.

Video

• Cathrine Hoyo: "Developmental Origins of Obesity: The Nest Cohort in Durham, NC."
• Carl J. Lavie: "Stressing the Importance of Physical Activity to Patients of All Ages."
• Angela Brooks-Wilson: “Genetics of Healthy Aging.”

Announcements

• Advanced Gene Mapping Course - The Rockefeller University, New York - Feb. 9-13, 2015.