Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Ideas

• A more ‘healthful’ food environment associated with less obesity among the rich, but with higher obesity lower-income African Americans.
• No difference in energy expenditure among children between the school year and the summer months.
• After moderate intensity exercise, a meal with a high-fat/low-carbohydrate ratio had a less favorable metabolic impact than an isoenergetic, isoproteic low-fat/high-carbohydrate meal.
• Candy consumption among adults not associated with adiposity or select cardiovascular risk factors.
• RCT: No effect of magnesium supplementation on body composition and muscle strength in middle-aged overweight women.
• RCT: A high-fibre bean-rich diet was as effective as a low-carbohydrate diet for weight loss, although only the bean-rich diet lowered atherogenic lipids.
• RCT: No effect of low sucrose diet on weight or body composition.
• Neighborhood walkability associated with less physical activity and more obesity.
• Adolescents who went to McDonald’s and Subway bought about the same number of calories at each, despite Subway's reputation as a healthier place.

Aging

• Fasting and Caloric Restriction?
• Lactobacillus salivarius strain FDB89 induced longevity in Caenorhabditis elegans by dietary restriction.
• Young blood reverses heart decline in old mice.

Video & Audio

• Brian Parks “A systems genetics approach to study obesity, dietary interactions, and the microbiome"
• Radio: David Allison on Myths of Obesity.
• Radio: Adam Drewnowski on economics and geography of obesity.

Gary Taubes Essay and Comments

• Re: The science of obesity: what do we really know about what makes us fat?
• Re: The science of obesity: what do we really know about what makes us fat? An essay by Gary Taubes.
• The science of obesity: what do we really know about what makes us fat? An essay by Gary Taubes.

Surgery

• Overweight patients achieve ideal body weight following curative gastrectomy resulting in better long-term prognosis.
• Occipital C1-C2 neuromodulation decreases body mass and fat stores and modifies activity of the autonomic nervous system in morbidly obese patients - A pilot study 
• Swallowable gastric balloons as an aid for weight loss: A pilot feasibility study.
• Duodenal–jejunal bypass improves glucose metabolism and adipokine expression independently of weight loss in a diabetic rat model.

Sugar-Related

• Gut hormone release and appetite regulation in healthy non-obese participants following oligofructose intake. A dose-escalation study. 
• Really? most of the added sugar in our diets comes from sugary drinks.
• Scientific review of Robert Lustig’s fat chance.
• Reduced prevalence of obesity in children with primary fructose malabsorption: a multicentre, retrospective cohort study.
• Sucralose affects glycemic and hormonal responses to an oral glucose load.
• Consumption of added sugars among U.S. adults, 2005–2010.

Stigma

• The affective and interpersonal consequences of obesity: Weight and the stereotype content model.
• The stigmatization of obesity among Gypsy and Hungarian children.
• Weight bias as a function of personality, attributions and contact experiences.

Schools/Community

• RCT: A 20-month school-based intervention on BMI shows benefit in girls, but not in boys.
• Meta-analysis: Educational interventions are effective in treatment, but not prevention, of childhood obesity and its consequences.

Psychology

• I know not to, but I can't help it: Weight gain and changes in impulsivity-related personality traits.
• Different paths towards obesity: Exploring the relation between obesity and insecurity.
• More schooling appears to reduce the risk of obesity. evidence from U.K. twins.

Policy Related

• Consumer Understanding of Calorie Amounts and Serving Size: Implications for Nutritional Labelling.
• Is less always more? The effects of low-fat labeling and caloric information on food intake, calorie estimates, taste preference, and health attributions.
• An interesting NIH grant: INFLUENCE OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY RHETORIC ON PUBLIC HEALTH OUTCOMES IN JUDICI…
• NEJM Editorial asserts "There is robust scientific support for various alternative strategies for presenting calorie information to consumers...."

Methods

• Zinc-α2-glycoprotein as a marker of fat catabolism in humans.
• Environment feature extraction and classification for Context aware Physical Activity monitoring.
• How to investigate within-subject associations between physical activity and momentary affective states in everyday life.
• Self-report based adolescent obesity prevalence estimates are likely biased downward because of selective non-responding.
• A multilevel approach to estimating small area childhood obesity prevalence at the census block-group level.
• Measurement of subcutaneous adipose tissue thickness by near-infrared.
• Analyzing weight loss intervention studies with missing data: Which methods should be used?
• Use of scanning electron microscopy to monitor nanofibre/cell interaction in digestive epithelial cells.
• Modeling energy expenditure in children and adolescents using quantile regression.
• Establishing a standard definition for child overweight and obesity worldwide: international survey.
• Animals in research: Zebrafish.

Gut Microbiota

• Composition of dietary fat source shapes gut microbiota architecture and alters host inflammatory mediators in mouse adipose tissue.
• Differences in gut microbiota composition between obese and lean children: a cross-sectional study.

Genetics

• Genome-wide meta-analysis of observational studies shows common genetic variants associated with macronutrient intake.
• FTO predicts weight regain in the Look AHEAD clinical trial.
• Genome-wide association of single-nucleotide polymorphisms with weight loss outcomes after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery.

General Science

• Group heterogeneity increases the risks of large group size: A longitudinal study of productivity in research groups.
• Research team developing system that could diagnose a disease simply by patients blowing into a device.
• Incidental exposure to no-smoking signs ironically boosts cigarette-approach tendencies in smokers.
• COPE's new Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers: background, issues, and evolution.
• NIH Details Impact of 2013 Sequester Cuts.
• How to stop Excel errors driving austerity economics.
• Careful: Your big data analytics may be polluted by data scientist bias.

Food

• Vegetables containing phytochemicals with potential anti-obesity properties: A review.
• Mouse strain-dependent variation in obesity and glucose homeostasis in response to high-fat feeding.
• RCT: Consumption of low-fat dairy foods for 6 months improves insulin resistance without adversely affecting lipids or bodyweight in healthy adults.
• Control of protein and energy intake - brain mechanisms.
• RCT: Preordering school lunch encourages better food choices by children.
• RCT: Oatmeal shows satiety advantages over cereal in study.
• High-fat, low-carbohydrate diet alters myocardial oxidative stress and impairs recovery of cardiac function after ischemia and reperfusion in obese rats.
• RCT: Effect of Lactobacillus gasseri SBT2055 in fermented milk on abdominal adiposity in adults.
• Paleolithic diet is associated with unfavorable changes to blood lipids in healthy subjects.
• The interactions of dietary tomato powder and soy germ on prostate carcinogenesis in the TRAMP model.

Exercise

• Exercise and caloric restriction modulate resident immune cells in adipose tissues differently in spite of an equivalent body weight reduction.
• Physical activity and physical activity induced energy expenditure in humans: measurement, determinants, and effects.
• RCT: Moderate-intensity high-volume aerobic exercise produces greater improvements in sexual function, testosterone, and fat mass than smaller exercise volume.
• More rigorous workplace physical activity studies produce weaker results: a systematic review.
• RCT: Being active between mental work and a meal may create a negative energy balance following mental work.
• RCT: Only combined aerobic and resistance training reduced body fat in older men.
• RCT: In PE classes, a mastery approach, which allows children to drive their own physical activity, elicits more time spent in MVPA.
• Listening to music during exercise increase the metabolic efficiency by improvement of perceived exertion rate and increased anaerobic threshold.
• Educating the Student Body: Taking physical activity and physical education to school - Report Release Meeting May 32, 2013.

Epidemiology

• The associations of perceived neighborhood disorder and physical activity with obesity among African American adolescents.
• Population-adjusted street connectivity, urbanicity and risk of obesity in the U.S. 
• The geographic concentration of U.S adult obesity prevalence and associated social, economic, and environmental factors.

Evolution, Ecology, & Energetics

• The lifespan-reproduction trade-off under dietary restriction is sex-specific and context-dependent.  
• Basal metabolic rate can evolve independently of morphological and behavioural traits.
• Costs of colour change in fish: food intake and behavioural decisions.
• The effect of hydration state and energy balance on innate immunity of a desert reptile.

Drugs

• Efficacy and safety of lorcaserin in obese adults: A meta-analysis of 1-year randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and narrative review on short-term RCTs.  
• Association of long-term treatment of hypogonadal men with testosterone with sustained weight loss.
• US patent for vaccine treatment of obesity is awarded.
• Clinical utility of phentermine/topiramate (Qsymia™) combination for the treatment of obesity.

Commentary

• Ascent to altitude as a weight loss method: The good and bad of hypoxia inducible factor activation.
• Standards and classification: A perspective on the 'obesity epidemic'.
• Energy efficiency as a unifying principle for human, environmental, and global health.
• Articulating Fatness: Obesity and the Scientific Tautologies of Bodily Accumulation in Neoliberal Times.
• Wishful thinking about food deserts.
• Can a weight loss of one pound a week be achieved with a 3500-kcal deficit? Commentary on a commonly accepted rule.
• Obesity treatment paradigms should target those at risk for diabetes.

Clinical

• Parent-only vs. parent-child (family-focused) approaches for weight loss in obese and overweight children: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
• RCT: Stress management can facilitate weight loss in Greek overweight and obese women.
• RCT: Executive function training with game elements for obese children.
• In Trials, weight loss is associated with an increase in both bound and unbound testosterone levels.
• Packaged diet foods may spur more weight loss.
• The internal circadian clock increases hunger and appetite in the evening independent of food intake and other behaviors.

Body Composition

• Of mice, rats and men: Trabecular bone architecture in mammals scales to body mass with negative allometry.
• Getting to the height of the matter: the relationship between stature and adiposity in pre-pubertal children.
• Evidence for two types of brown adipose tissue in humans.

Basic

• Cloning of the heart fatty acid-binding protein (H-FABP) gene and its tissue-specific expression profile in the Lanzhou fat-tailed sheep, Ovis aries.
• Extract of Cinnamomum cassia twigs inhibits adipocyte differentiation via activation of the insulin signaling pathway in 3T3-L1 preadipocytes.
• Role of circadian clock gene expression in metabolic adaptation upon switching from high to low carb diets with replacement by fat.
• Evidence for transgenerational metabolic programming in Drosophila.
• Exposure to light at night increase weight and accelerates aging and carcinogenesis in female 129/Sv mice.
• Metabolic regulation of brain response to food cues.
• Developmental origins of a novel gut morphology in frogs.

Announcements

• 3rd Short Course on Statistical Genetics and Genomics.
• IOM Webcast and Meeting: Creating Equal Opportunities for a Healthy Weight - A Workshop - June 6-7, 2013.
• IOM Weight of the Nation for Kids airs Tuesday, May 7, beginning at 5:30 pm ET/PT.
• Using mice in research: Everything not in the literature - Jackson Laboratory webinar May 16, 2013.
• Q&A with the USDA –Webinar July 9, 2013.