Featured

• Resveratrol: Anti-obesity mechanisms of action.
• Can foraging behaviour reveal the eco-evolutionary dynamics of habitat selection?
• Antibiotics in early life and obesity.
• Mild Electrical Stimulation Increases Stress Resistance and Suppresses Fat Accumulation via Activation of LKB1-AMPK Signaling Pathway in C. elegans.

Scientific Rigor & Dialogue

• Comment: Order of Magnitude Misestimation of Weight Effects of Children's Meal Policy Proposals.
• Retraction: “Modeling Potential Effects of Reduced Calories in Kids' Meals with Toy Giveaways”.
• Letter: An Unjustified Conclusion from Self-report-based Estimates of Energy Intake.
• Reply: “Guided precisely by the principle of respect for the public’s faith in biomedical science, we have endeavored to correct this misinterpretation in the media, and we welcome the opportunity to do so here.”
• Study: Televised medical talk shows—what they recommend and the evidence to support their recommendations: a prospective observational study.
• Commentary: Scientists tallied up all the advice on Dr. Oz's show. Half of it was baseless or wrong.
• Letter 1: Linear extrapolation results in erroneous overestimation of plausible stressor-related yearly weight changes.
• Letter 2: Determining the culprit: stress, fat, and/or carbohydrates.
• Reply: Stress, Depression, and Metabolism: Replies to Bohan Brown et al. and Barton and Yancey.
• Commentary: How Many Calories Make a Pound of Fat?

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• There was no statistically significant difference in BMI among children who had dinner with family more or less frequently (see page 681).
• Low-glycemic diets may not improve cardiovascular outcomes when compared to high-glycemic diets.
• No link found between multivitamin use and improved cardiovascular health in middle-aged women.
• “Distance from full-service supermarkets was unrelated to weight or dietary quality…thus policy and interventions that focus merely on improving access may not be effective.”
• "This study provides little support for the notion that exposure to food outlets in the home, school and commuting neighbourhoods increase the risk of obesity in children."
• Among adolescents (but not children) fast food consumption is associated with less obesity.
• Eating More Fruit at Dinner Associated with Higher BMI.
• RCT: 16-week vitamin D3 supplementation to healthy immigrants from South Asia, the Middle East, or Africa and now living in Norway with low vitamin D status did not improve HbA1c, fructosamine, lipid profiles, or BMI.
• Vitamin D Highlights: No Convincing Evidence?
• Eating high fat chow, but not drinking sucrose or saccharin, enhances the development of sensitization to the locomotor effects of cocaine in adolescent female rats.

Policy Related

• Removing This (or Not), Adding That (or Not): A Classification of 'Healthy Food' Claims.
• FDA prices 'lost pleasure' of junk food into calorie count rule.
• Selective Consumption Tax Policy and Income-Expenditure Elasticities of Obesity-Linked Consumption Goods.

Clinical

• Future management of human obesity: understanding the meaning of genetic susceptibility.
• Roles of Caloric Restriction, Ketogenic Diet and Intermittent Fasting during Initiation, Progression and Metastasis of Cancer in Animal Models: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
• Obesity in the ICU.

Mortality

• Competing risks of death in younger and older postmenopausal breast cancer patients.
• BMI, Obesity & mortality: three grand challenges.
• The dynamic association of body mass index and all-cause mortality in multiple cohorts and its impacts.
• BMI and all-cause mortality among middle-aged and older adults in Taiwan: a population-based cohort study.

Food

• Intermittent access to liquid sucrose differentially modulates energy intake and related central pathways in control or high-fat fed mice.
• Role of Glycemic Index in the Context of an Overall Heart-Healthy Diet.
• Effects of High vs Low Glycemic Index of Dietary Carbohydrate on Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors and Insulin Sensitivity.
• RCT: A Lower-Carbohydrate, Higher-Fat Diet Reduces Abdominal and Intermuscular Fat and Increases Insulin Sensitivity in Adults at Risk of Type 2 Diabetes.
• Withdrawal of dietary phytoestrogens in adult male rats affects hypothalamic regulation of food intake, induces obesity and alters glucose metabolism.
• Consumption of ready-made meals and increased risk of obesity: findings from the Observation of Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Luxembourg (ORISCAV-LUX) study.

Drugs

• Radio-controlled mouse hints at new diabetes treatment.
• RCT: Effects of Metformin on Energy Intake and Satiety in Obese Children.
• Differential efficacy of nicotine replacement among overweight and obese women smokers.
• A rationally designed monomeric peptide triagonist corrects obesity and diabetes in rodents.
• Inhibiting peripheral serotonin synthesis reduces obesity and metabolic dysfunction by promoting brown adipose tissue thermogenesis.
• Ricin vaccine: pilot study brings optimism.
• ‘Unparalleled’ Results In Animal Trials Treatment To Cure Adult-onset Diabetes, Obesity.

Dogs, Cats, Horses

• Evaluation of the oral 13 C-bicarbonate technique for measurements of energy expenditure in dogs before and after body weight reduction.
• Canine and feline obesity: a One Health perspective.
• Study explores the role of gut bacteria in the development of obesity in dogs.
• How often do primary care veterinarians record the overweight status of dogs?
• Fat adults, fat kids, fat pets: how we're driving the obesity pandemic.
• Ancient DNA reveals history of horse domestication.
• Equine Obesity: Researchers Investigate Molecular Biology.

Economics

• Unemployment and Health Behaviors Over the Business Cycle: a Longitudinal View.
• ‘Big box stores and obesity’.
• The Impact of Obesity on Consumer Bankruptcy.

Psychology

• Mindfulness and Weight Loss: A Systematic Review.
• Food sharing and empathic emotion regulation: an evolutionary perspective.
• Classically conditioned responses to food cues among obese and normal weight individuals: Conditioning as an explanatory mechanism for excessive eating.

Epidemiology

• Hypoglycemia increased risks for CV events, death in patients with diabetes on insulin.
• Are park proximity and park features related to park use and park-based physical activity among adults? Variations by multiple socio-demographic characteristics.
• Association of Adult Knee Height, Age at First Birth, Migration, and Current Age on Adult Physical Function of Bangladeshi Mothers and Daughters in the United Kingdom and Bangladesh.
• Associations between Vascular Health Indices and Serum Total, Free and Bioavailable 25-Hydroxyvitamin D in Adolescents.
• The association of Gestational Weight Gain with the Development of Gestational Hypertension in Obese Women.
• Habitual sleep duration is associated with BMI.

Exercise

• RCT: Gender differences on effectiveness of a school-based physical activity intervention for reducing cardiometabolic risk.
• RCT: The effects of persuasive communication and planning on intentions to be more physically active and on physical activity behaviour among low active adolescents.

Surgery

• Effects of bariatric surgery for knee complaints in (morbidly) obese adult patients: a systematic review.
• Outcomes of Laparoscopic Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass in Super-Super Obese Patients.
• Obese children may be 'wired from birth' to crave sugar.

Methods

• What Everyone Should Know about Statistical Correlation.
• Suggestions for Better Data Presentation in Papers: An Experience from a Comprehensive Study on National and Sub-national Trends of Overweight and Obesity.
• An Automated and Robust Framework for Quantification of Muscle and Fat in the Thigh.

Stigma

• Preschoolers show less trust in physically disabled or obese informants.
• The internalization of weight bias is associated with severe eating pathology among lean individuals.

Aging

• Obesity superimposed on aging magnifies inflammation and delays the resolving response following myocardial infarction.
• Feeling young may be more important than being young.
• Flavonoids may be 'important to promoting broad health and wellbeing in aging'.
• Discovery may hold clues to treatments that slow aging, prevent age-related chronic disease.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• Feeding across the food web: The interaction between diet, movement and body size in estuarine crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus).
• Microsatellite frequencies vary with body mass and body temperature in mammals, suggesting correlated variation in mutation rate.
• Impacts of acute elevated seawater temperature on the feeding preferences of an Antarctic amphipod toward chemically deterrent macroalgae.

Commentary

• Did the American Medical Association make the correct decision classifying obesity as a disease?
• NORC researchers find behavioral response to health interventions.
• Book Review: 'The Big Fat Surprise' by Nina Teicholz.
• BMJ Editorialist asks "Are some diets “mass murder”?
• Losing weight makes your lungs a potent CO2 emitter.
• The SkepVet and the Media.
• Do time-restricted eating habits reduce obesity?
• Is Weight Loss Overrated?
• Maybe Arguing with Your Spouse Will Make You Fat.
• Normal weight individuals who develop Type 2 diabetes: the personal fat threshold.

Basic Science

• Researchers make blood vessels grow by shining a light on skin.
• Leptin mediates the increase in blood pressure associated with obesity.
• White-to-brown metabolic conversion of human adipocytes by JAK inhibition.
• KCNK10, a Tandem Pore Domain Potassium Channel, Is a Regulator of Mitotic Clonal Expansion during the Early Stage of Adipocyte Differentiation.
• The Impact of Neutrophil Proteinase 3 on IGFBP-3 Proteolysis in Obesity.

General Science

• Greenland's ice sheet could melt quicker than previously predicted.
• Nature: Featured Stories of 2014.
• Million-Mummy Cemetery Unearthed in Egypt.
• Reproducibility project: cancer biology: Time to do something about reproducibility .
• Exoplanets Could Soon be Detected.
• The association between exaggeration in health related science news and academic press releases: retrospective observational study.
• Discontinuation and non-publication of surgical randomised controlled trials: observational study.
• Rapid evolutionary responses of life history traits to different experimentally-induced pollutions in Caenorhabditis elegans.
• Guinea Pigs Can Be Source of Serious Strep Infection.
• Extra vitamin E protected older mice from getting common type of pneumonia.
• Grand Challenges in Evolutionary Developmental Biology.

Announcements

• Denise Wilfley named Rudolph University Professor of Psychiatry.
• UAB’s federal research funding up significantly.
• UAB seeks post-doctoral fellows in obesity research.
• UAB recruiting faculty in nutrition and obesity.
• UAB recruiting faculty interested in nutrition and cancer.
• Open faculty positions at UAB.