Obesity & Energetic Offerings, July 19, 2013

David Allison, PhD, Distinguished Professor, University of Alabama

For several months now, my colleagues at the University of Alabama have been compiling a weekly list of selected obesity related articles in a list they call Obesity and Energetic Offerings.

Obesity & Energetic Offerings are brought to you by the UAB NORC and Office of Energetics and compiled by David B. Allison, Michelle Bohan-Brown, Emily Dhurandhar, John Dawson, and Andrew Brown.

The following is a selection of articles from this week’s list  – the link headings are theirs, not mine:

Featured

• RCT: Posting calorie benchmarks had no direct impact on food purchases – and may have promoted a slight (i.e., marginally significant) increase in calorie intake.
• Childhood Obesity Prevention Programs: Comparative Effectiveness Review and Meta-Analysis.

Findings Contrary Hypotheses or Popular Ideas

• The inclusion of toys in food packages was not shown per se to lead to an increase in the caloric intake of children.
• Self-report physical activity levels have increased since 2001.
• RCT: High protein diets do not lead to renal dysfunction in type 2 diabetics.

Transgenerational Effects

• Paternal obesity initiates metabolic disturbances in two generations of mice with incomplete penetrance to the F2 generation and alters the transcriptional profile of testis and sperm microRNA content.
• DNA hypomethylation of inflammation-associated genes in adipose tissue of female mice after multigenerational high fat diet feeding.

Stigma

• Obese Boy Scouts Aren’t Welcome at Camp.
• Why Shame And Blame Tactics For Obesity Will Backfire.
• Is obesity disgusting? An investigation of weight-based discrimination in the workplace.
• The Love Song of the Headless Fatty and Other Observations.
• The Obesity Stigma.
• Weighing Women Down: Messages on Weight Loss and Body Shaping in Editorial Content in Popular Women’s Health and Fitness Magazines.

Nutrition Education

• Nutrition Education in the K-12 Curriculum: The Role of National Standards – Workshop Summary.
• A District Wellness Policy: The Gap between Policy and Practice.
• Europe considers calorie labeling on alcoholic beverages.

Obesity and Mortality

• Re: “Obesity and US Mortality Risk Over the Adult Life Course”.
• The Authors Reply.
• How the war on obesity went pear-shaped.

Methods

• Brown adipose tissue mapping in rats with combined intermolecular double-quantum coherence and Dixon water-fat MRI.
• Measuring food intake with digital photography.
• Validation of a digital photographic method for assessment of dietary quality of school lunch sandwiches brought from home.
• Monitoring metabolic responses of single mitochondria within poly(dimethylsiloxane) wells: study of their endogenous reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide evolution.
• Real-time monitoring of adipocyte differentiation using a capacitance sensor array.
• MR Fat Fraction Mapping: A Simple Biomarker for Liver Steatosis Quantification in Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Patients.
• Systematic Review of Predictive Equations for Assessing Fat and Fat-Free Mass in Healthy Children and Adolescents Using Multicomponent Molecular Models as the Reference Method

Food

• Potential health concerns of dietary phosphorus: cancer, obesity, and hypertension.
• RCT: Postprandial effect of dietary fat quantity and quality on arterial stiffness and wave reflection.
• The effect of an intervention on schoolchildren’s susceptibility to a peer’s candy intake.

Exercise

• Regional fat mobilization and training type on sedentary, premenopausal and overweight and obese women.
• The epigenetics of fat: Altered states.
• REGARDS study based at UAB suggests that moving more may lower stroke risk.
• RCT: Differential effects of endurance training and weight loss on plasma adiponectin multimers and adipose tissue macrophages in younger, moderately overweight men.
• RCT: Acute aerobic exercise differentially alters acylated ghrelin and perceived fullness in normal-weight and obese individuals.

Epidemiology

• Study Points To A Sharp — And Somewhat Mysterious — Drop In Childhood Obesity.
• Neighbourhood food environments and body mass index among New York City adults.
• Association of sleeping patterns on mental distress and overweight risk under shifting light conditions in north Norway.
• Trends in the association of parental history of obesity over 60 years.
• Secular trends of height, weight and BMI in young adult Brazilian military students in the 20th century.
• Exercise associated with lower risk of stroke.
• Fast-food restaurant density is positively related to BMI, but non-chain restaurant density is negatively associated with BMI.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• Mitochondrial Acclimation Capacities to Ocean Warming and Acidification Are Limited in the Antarctic Nototheniid Fish, Notothenia rossii and Lepidonotothen squamifrons.
• Beyond the Paleolithic prescription: incorporating diversity and flexibility in the study of human diet evolution.
• Mitonuclear protein imbalance as a conserved longevity mechanism.

Drugs

• RCT: Metformin for Weight Loss and Metabolic Control in Overweight Outpatients With Schizophrenia and Schizoaffective Disorder.
• Antipsychotic-Induced Insulin Resistance and Postprandial Hormonal Dysregulation Independent of Weight Gain or Psychiatric Disease.
• RCT: Weight maintenance and additional weight loss with liraglutide after low-calorie diet-induced weight loss.

Commentary

• Are sugar-sweetened beverages the whole story?
• A View from the Surgeon General: The National Prevention Strategy — Working Together to Become a More Healthy and Fit Nation.
• Do Clinical Trials Work?
• Obesity, exercise, and healthy eating all rising.
• Lethal Placebos?

Clinical

• Efficacy and safety of long-term low-calorie diet in severely obese patients non-eligible for surgery.
• Examining Social Influence on Participation and Outcomes among a Network of Behavioral Weight-Loss Intervention Enrollees.
• RCT: Weight and metabolic effects of dietary weight loss and exercise interventions in postmenopausal antidepressant medication users and non-users.
• RCT: Weight Loss Success in Metabolic Syndrome by Telephone Interventions.
• Evidence based recommendations for optimal protein intake in older adults.
• Calcium plus vitamin D3 supplementation for 12 weeks augmented body fat and visceral fat loss in very-low calcium consumers during energy restriction.
• Effect of dairy proteins on appetite, energy expenditure, body weight, and composition: a review of the evidence from controlled clinical trials.

Caloric Restriction

• Molecular mechanisms underlying genotype-dependent responses to dietary restriction.
• Caloric restriction modifies structure of gut microbiome.

Book Reviews

• Fad Food Nation: A skeptical survey of the claims being made about food, health and the environment.
• Nutritional Genomics: The Impact of Dietary Regulation of Gene Function on Human Disease.
• Mythbusters: Credibilising strategies in popular nutrition books by academics.

Basic Science

• Mice injected with PYY3-36 and PP eat less, gain less fat, and tend not to develop insulin-resistance.
• Evidence of sugar sensitive genes in the gut of a carnivorous fish species.
• Wrap up warm to avoid heart attacks in winter.
• The metabolic cost of maintaining a synapse during development.
• Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome.
• Effect of dietary lipid structure in early postnatal life on mouse adipose tissue development and function in adulthood.
• Mrap2 knockout mice susceptible to obesity.

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@DrSharma
Kananaskis, AB