Featured

• RCT: Exposure to weight-stigmatizing news articles caused self-perceived overweight women, but not women who did not perceive themselves as overweight, to consume more calories and feel less capable of controlling their eating than exposure to non-stigmatizing articles.
• Perception of female sexual pheromones in male fruit flies rapidly and reversibly decreases fat stores, reduces resistance to starvation, and limits life span.
• RCT: “This study provided no evidence to suggest that energy labelling or single traffic light labelling alone were effective in reducing the energy of fast food items selected from hypothetical fast food menus for purchase.”

Headline versus Study

• Headline 1 - Overweight And Healthy: A Combo That Looks Too Good To Be True.
• Headline 2 - Can you be obese and healthy? Study says no.
• Summary from Annals of Internal Medicine
• Study - No significant association between metabolically healthy obesity and increased combined mortality and cardiovascular events compared to metabolically healthy normal weight in primary analysis of meta-analysis.
• Commentary - New meta-analysis adds to meta-confusion about healthy obesity.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• RCT: Selection of a weight-loss approach on the basis of pretreatment macronutrient intake is unlikely to improve weight outcomes at the end of a 1-year treatment.
• RCT: No effect of a Trial for Reducing Weight Retention in New Mums evaluating a low intensity, postpartum weight management programme.
• In RCTs on infants fed infant formula containing probiotics, prebiotics or synbiotics, the source of funding did not influence the majority of outcomes in favour of the sponsors’ products.
• No significant change in body weight, insulin sensitivity, insulin secretion or clearance, endocrine, glucose, lipid, or cholesterol responses among individuals assigned to consume 1065 ml per day (117 g/d) of HFCS-sweetened beverages added for 2-wks.
• RCT: High-fructose corn syrup and sucrose have equivalent effects on energy-regulating hormones at normal human consumption levels.
• New Zealand Adult Nutrition Survey food intake data found to be invalid.
• Food availability of glucose and fat, but not fructose, increased in the US between 1970 and 2009: analysis of the USDA food availability data system.

Basic Science

• Effects of photoperiod on food intake, activity and metabolic rate in adult neutered male cats.
• When rodents run the research: An automated training regimen coaches rats to willingly submit themselves to repeated brain imaging.
• Estrogen as a neurotransmitter: neuroestrogen.
• Conditioned Place Preference Deficits in Rats in Adulthood Following High Fat and High Sugar Diet Intake in Pre- and Periadolescence: A Test of the Specificity Hypothesis.
• Milk minerals modify the effect of fat intake on serum lipid profile: results from an animal and a human short-term study.
• China and India are eating more meat, driving up humanity’s overall consumption.

Energetics, Evolution and Ecology

• Coping with uncertainty: nutrient deficiencies motivate insect migration at a cost to immunity.
• High metabolic and water-loss rates in caterpillar aggregations: evidence against the resource-conservation hypothesis.
• Selected vaginal bacteria and risk of preterm birth: an ecological perspective.
• Towards an energetic landscape: broad-scale accelerometry in woodland caribou.
• Primate brains, the ‘island rule’ and the evolution of Homo floresiensis.

Food

• RCT: DNA Methylation Pattern in Overweight Women under an Energy-Restricted Diet Supplemented with Fish Oil.
• RCT: High-caloric food supplements in the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
• RCT: Weight maintenance over 12 months after weight loss resulting from participation in a 12-week trial comparing all meal provision to self-directed diet in overweight adults.
• RCT: Whole-body protein turnover response to short-term high-protein diets during weight loss.
• RCT: Short-term consumption of high-protein diets does not disrupt calcium homeostasis and is not detrimental to skeletal integrity.
• Omega-3 fatty acid deficiency disrupts endocytosis, neuritogenesis, and mitochondrial protein pathways in the mouse hippocampus.
• Emotional Eating Moderates the Relationship of Night Eating with Binge Eating and Body Mass.
• Greater red meat intake is associated with unfavorable plasma concentrations of inflammatory and glucose metabolic biomarkers in diabetes-free women.
• Fish oil supplementation ameliorates fructose-induced hypertriglyceridemia and insulin resistance in adult male Rhesus Macaques.
• Review: Plant-Derived Food Ingredients for Stimulation of Energy Expenditure.

Fasting

• RCT: Alternate day fasting for weight loss in normal weight and overweight subjects.
• RCT: Short-term water-only fasting: Metabolic and cardiovascular consequences.

Sugar & Sweeteners

• Consumption of added sugars from liquid or solid sources was not associated with changes in adiposity, but liquid added sugars were a risk factor for insulin resistance among youth at risk of obesity.
• Press Statement: Low-Calorie Sweeteners Effective in Preventing and Managing Diabetes.
• Higher intake of SSB and sugars was associated with an increased risk of type I, but not type II, endometrial cancer.
• Relative ability of fat and sugar tastes to activate reward, gustatory, and somatosensory regions.
• Bone quality and strength are greater in growing male rats fed fructose compared with glucose.

Branched Chain Amino Acids

• Circulating branched-chain amino acid concentrations are associated with obesity and future insulin resistance in children and adolescents.
• Leucine supplementation protects from insulin resistance by regulating adiposity levels.

Chocolate

• RCT: The effects of dark chocolate on glycemic control and blood pressure in hypertensive diabetic patients.
• RCT: Effects of dark chocolate and cocoa consumption on endothelial function and arterial stiffness in overweight adults.

Exercise

• RCT: Aerobic exercise but not resistance exercise reduces intrahepatic lipid content and visceral fat and improves insulin sensitivity in obese adolescent girls.
• RCT: Multicomponent intervention to reduce daily sedentary time.
• RCT: The effect of a supplemental telephonic physical activity coaching program for treating obesity (thesis).
• RCT: Supervised exercise prevented excessive gestational weight gain in normal weight but not overweight or obese women.
• Video: Maternal Inactivity: 45-Year Trends in Mothers' Use of Time.
• Validation of a Novel Protocol for Calculating Estimated Energy Requirements and Average Daily Physical Activity Ratio for the US Population: 2005-2006.
• Eating breakfast was associated with higher moderate and vigorous physical activity on weekends.

Epidemiology

• New Zealand study finds correlation between church attendance and adolescent obesity.
• Total adipose tissue in women and visceral adipose tissue in men positively associated with obesity-related cancer risk.
• Poverty's latent effect on adiposity during childhood.
• Between 1965 and 2010, mothers physical activity significantly decreased.

Clinical

• RCT: Weight reduction with intensive risk factor management resulted in a reduction in atrial fibrillation symptom burden and severity.
• RCT: No statistically significant effect of Daily Text Messaging for Weight Control Among Racial and Ethnic Minority Women.
• RCT: Greater weight loss among men participating in a commercial weight loss program: A pooled analysis of two RCTs.
• RCT: No Effect of Caloric Restriction on Salivary Cortisol Levels in Overweight Men and Women.
• RCT: Yeast hydrolysate can reduce body weight and abdominal fat accumulation in obese adults.
• Sex, weight status, and chronic kidney disease among African Americans: the Jackson Heart Study.
• Hypogonadal obese men with and without diabetes mellitus type 2 lose weight and show improvement in cardiovascular risk factors when treated with testosterone.
• The Energy Balance Study: The Design and Baseline Results for a Longitudinal Study of Energy Balance

Surgery

• Patients losing 15% weight by either medical or surgical treatments can attain similar FM:LBM loss ratios and can maintain WL for 1 y.
• Tools for prescribing and implementing obesity treatment plans: ASBP’s obesity algorithm for use by clinicians.

Pharmaceuticals

• RCT: A comparative study of five centrally acting drugs on the pharmacological treatment of obesity.
• RCT, secondary endpoints: Impact of interleukin-1ß antibody (canakinumab) on glycaemic indicators in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
• Naltrexone-induced increases in cortisol are associated with emotional and restrained eating, while naltrexone-induced increases in nausea are associated with binge eating and higher adiposity among a sample of overweight/obese women.
• New funds raised for beloranib study.
• Popular morning-after pill may not work for millions of women over a certain weight level.
• PAR2 identified as an inflammatory marker for obesity; a novel PAR2 antagonist reduces weight by 10% in obese rats.
• Commentary: Diet Drugs Work: Why Won’t Doctors Prescribe Them?
• The bitter pill: clinical drugs that activate the human bitter taste receptor TAS2R14.
• Review: Enteroendocrine hormone mimetics for the treatment of obesity and diabetes.

Aging

• The spatiotemporal dynamics of a metabolic network that regulates longevity in yeast.
• Longevity and Diet. Myth or pragmatism?
• Growth Signaling in Aging and Disease.

Policy Related

• New Dietary Guidelines in Sweden.
• Menu calorie labeling survey: "Almost all who read calorie information when available use the information at least sometimes."
• Taxes, Subsidies, and Advertising Efficacy in Changing Eating Behavior: An Experimental Study.

School

• RCT(School-Based): Calcium-vitamin D-fortified milk is as effective on circulating bone biomarkers as fortified juice and supplement but has less acceptance.
• Education and Health in Schools: A Survey of Parents.
• The Massachusetts BMI letter: A qualitative study of responses from parents of obese children.

Psychology

• Tempting food words activate eating simulations.
• The consumption-reducing effect of the color red on consuming food does not depend on achromatic (Michelson) contrast and extends to rubbing cream on the skin.
• A test of the resource security and the BMI reference point hypotheses of body dissatisfaction amongst adolescents in eight countries.
• Overweight is not associated with a general tendency to react impulsively, but instead by impulsive responding toward palatable food.
• Poor sleep quality was strongly associated with mood disturbance and poor quality of life among extremely obese patients.

Stigma

• RCT: Exposure to weight-stigmatizing news articles caused self-perceived overweight women to consume more calories and feel less capable of controlling their eating than exposure to non-stigmatizing articles.
• Obesity and hotel staffing: Are hotels guilty of ‘lookism’?
• Weighing the stigma of weight: An fMRI study of neural reactivity to the pain of obese individuals.

Methods

• Using Sagittal abdominal diameter to Identify Overweight Children at Most Risk for the Development of Cardiometabolic Disease.
• Analysis of breath volatile organic compounds as a noninvasive tool to diagnose nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in children.
• Points of significance: Significance, P values and t-tests.
• Standardization of collection requirements for fasting samples.
• Validation of a Novel Protocol for Calculating Estimated Energy Requirements and Average Daily Physical Activity Ratio for the US Population: 2005-2006.
• A five year longitudinal study comparing BMI and waist circumference on the prevalence of childhood obesity.
• mHealth approaches to child obesity prevention: successes, unique challenges, and next directions.
• Just-in-Time Support Bra for Emotional Eating.

General Science

• Against storytelling of scientific results.
• Scientific journals should stop trying to be exciting - and focus on being right.
• Some scientists may aspire to meet the proxy goals used to evaluate productivity instead of real, important insights.
• The price of a retracted paper.
• Points of significance: Significance, P values and t-tests.
• Baseball and Schadenfreude.
• Letter from PLoS rebutting Science’s “Who’s afraid of peer review?”
• Fighting invasive brown tree snakes in Guam using poisoned mouse paratroopers.

Commentary

• The Hothead’s Guide to Herbal Supplements.
• America’s Obesity Epidemic May Be Caused By Its Favorite Drug (antibiotics).
• Building the science for a population health movement.
• Energy intake and obesity: Ingestive frequency outweighs portion size.
• The Merits of Subtyping Obesity.
• The unrelenting fall of the pharmacological treatment of obesity.

Announcements

• Sense About Science: "Christmas Reading Room 2013."
• UAB names Caloric Restriction & Aging Expert, Dr. Steven Austad as new Biology Chair.