Obesity & Energetic Offerings, July 5, 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

• Metabolic mystery: aging, obesity, diabetes, and the ventromedial hypothalamus.
• Historic variations in winter indoor domestic temperatures and potential implications for body weight gain.
• Want To Create An Innovative Environment In Life Sciences?
• RCT: Sleep Restriction Causes Weight Gain

Headline vs. Study

• Headline: Raisins may lower food intake, help prevent diabetes.
• Study: 26 children studied over 4 day period, no measures of diabetes of glucose metabolism.

Contrary

• RCT: Among depressed adolescents, exercise did not reduce weight.
• Obesity not associated with adverse treatment in emergency room.
• We find no evidence of a quick return on investment in weight loss treatment from reduced medical expenditures, although this may occur over longer periods.
• Girls in schools with more positive perceptions of the neighborhood environment surrounding the school were less physically active and number of food stores near school was positively related to physical activity.
• Screening negative for diabetes did not lead to overt long-term changes in lifestyle, despite a high perception of risk of developing diabetes.

Anthropology

• Attractiveness of women’s body: Body mass index, waist-hip ratio, and their relative importance.
• Local Interpretations of Global Trends: Body Concerns and Self-Projects Enacted by Young Emirati Women.

Basic

• Antenatal corticosteroid exposure at term increases adult adiposity: An experimental study in sheep.
• Roles of fat body trophocytes, mycetocytes and urocytes in the American cockroach, Periplaneta americana under starvation conditions: An ultrastructural study.
• Systemic ghrelin administration alters serum biomarkers of angiogenesis in diet-induced obese mice.
• Identification of a novel interorgan mechanism favoring energy storage in overnutrition.
• Temperature-Sensing Fat Cells.
• Inactivation of Taste Genes Causes Male Sterility.
• A novel link between circadian clocks and adipose tissue energy metabolism.

Behavior

• Paper & Video: Hunger can be taught: Hunger Recognition regulates eating and improves energy balance.
• Dietary variety is associated with larger meals in female rhesus monkeys.
• Systematic review suggests grocery shopping to a predetermined list is a cost-effective means for reducing obesity.
• RCT: The Effects of Caloric Preload and Dietary Restraint on Smoking and Eating Behavior.
• Examining social influence on participation and outcomes among a network of behavioral weight-loss intervention enrollees.

Bone

• In obese postmenopausal women, bone microarchitecture and strength are not commensurate to greater body weight.
• The interrelationship between bone and fat: From cellular see-saw to endocrine reciprocity.
• Energy-restricted diet benefits body composition but degrades bone integrity in middle-aged obese female rats.

Caloric Intake

• The effects of dietary restriction on oxidative stress in rodents.
• Calorie restriction alleviates the age-related decrease in neural progenitor cell division in the aging brain.
• Gastrointestinal morphological alterations in obese rats kept under hypercaloric diets.

Clinical

• RCT: Effects of etanercept monotherapy vs. etanercept and narrowband ultraviolet B (NB-UVB) phototherapy in obese psoriasis patients.
• RCT: Intensive lifestyle intervention targeting weight loss and increased physical activity is effective in older individuals to produce sustained weight loss and improvements in fitness and cardiovascular risk factors.
• RCT: Infancy-Onset Dietary Counseling of Low-Saturated-Fat Diet Improves Insulin Sensitivity in Healthy Adolescents 15-20 Years of Age.
• RCT: Comprehensive Behavioral-Motivational Nutrition Education Improves Depressive Symptoms following Bariatric Surgery.
• RCT: A 6-week diet and exercise intervention alters metabolic syndrome risk factors in obese Chinese children aged 11–13 years.
• RCT: Anti-obesity effect of Gynostemma pentaphyllum extract (actiponin).
• UAB testing new treatment for obese, type 2 diabetics.

Commentary

• Forecasting the End of the Obesity Epidemic.
• Obesity Pop Science — Not So Much Science.
• Obesity is not a disease.

Evolution, Ecology, and Energetics

• Bitter taste enhances predatory biases against aggregations of prey with warning coloration.
• Evolution of sperm structure and energetics in passerine birds.
• Ancient predator lacked jaw strength to leverage own fangs.

Epidemiology

• Timing of energy intake during the day is associated with the risk of obesity in adults.
• Association between water consumption and body weight outcomes: a systematic review.

Exercise

• RCT: Mechanical muscle function and lean body mass during supervised strength training and testosterone therapy in aging men with low-normal testosterone levels.
• People eat less after harder workouts: small study.
• A Six Months Exercise Intervention Associated with Genome-wide DNA Methylation Pattern in Human Adipose Tissue.
• Self-reported versus objectively assessed exercise adherence.
• How Exercise Can Calm Anxiety.
• Effects of exercise and lifestyle modification on fitness, insulin resistance, skeletal muscle oxidative phosphorylation and intramyocellular lipid content in obese children and adolescents.

Food

• Beyond weight loss: a review of the therapeutic uses of very-low-carbohydrate (ketogenic) diets.
• RCT: Daily consumption of a synbiotic yogurt decreases energy intake but does not improve gastrointestinal transit time.
• Three dissimilar high fat diets differentially regulate lipid and glucose metabolism in obesity-resistant Slc:Wistar/ST rats.

Genetics

• Pitfalls of predicting complex traits from SNPs.
• Whole genome sequencing in support of wellness and health maintenance.
• Obesity genomics: assessing the transferability of susceptibility loci across diverse populations.

Methods

• Global metabolomic profiling of human serum from obese individuals by liquid chromatography-time-of-flight/mass spectrometry to evaluate the intake of breakfasts prepared with heated edible oils.
• Parent-Reported Height and Weight as Sources of Bias in Survey Estimates of Childhood Obesity.
• Fruit and vegetable consumption and body mass index: a quantile regression approach.
• Dynamic model predicting overweight, obesity, and extreme obesity prevalence trends.

Milk

• Commentary – Three Daily Servings of Reduced-Fat Milk. An Evidence-Based Recommendation?
• Commentary – Sweetened milk consumption ‘undermines’ child diet.
• Milk protein for improved metabolic health: a review of the evidence.
• Human Milk Sharing: Evolutionary Insights and Modern Risks.

Policy

• Food Industry Firms’ Economic Incentives to Provide Nutritional Information to the Market: European Breakfast Cereals, Snacks, and Soft Drinks Industries.
• Cost-Effectiveness of Fiscal Policies to Prevent Obesity.
• Shame, Blame, and the Emerging Law of Obesity Control.
• Incentivizing Wellness in the Workplace. Sticks (Not Carrots) Send Stigmatizing Signals.
• CMS Questions Value for Bariatric Centers of Excellence.
• Obesity and people with disabilities: The implications for health care expenditures.

Stigma

• The influence of social norms upon behavioral expressions of implicit and explicit weight-related stigma in an interactive game.
• Substance use more stigmatized than smoking and obesity.
• The qualities of fat: Bodies, history, and materiality.
• RCT: Public reactions to obesity-related health campaigns.

Sugars

• Comparison of productivity of colonies of honey bees, Apis mellifera, supplemented with sucrose or high fructose corn syrup.
• Fructose, and the Follies of History.
• Sugar and space? Not the case: Effects of low blood glucose on slant estimation are mediated by beliefs.
• Fructose-Containing Sugars, Blood Pressure, and Cardiometabolic Risk: A Critical Review.
• Commentary: Are sugar-sweetened beverages the whole story?

Transgenerational

• Maternal high-fat diets cause insulin resistance through inflammatory changes in fetal adipose tissue in mice.
• Maternal obesity and diabetes induces latent metabolic defects and widespread epigenetic changes in isogenic mice.
• Female obesity: Short- and long-term consequences on the offspring.

General Science

• Do Financial Conflicts of Interest Bias Research? Scientists should not suspend their skepticism and choose as a default hypothesis that bias is present.
• Observations Generate hypotheses. Observational Studies Test Hypotheses. Association Implies Causality (Sometimes).
• Female crickets assess relatedness during mate guarding and bias storage of sperm towards unrelated males.
• Occasionally libertarian: Experimental evidence of self-serving omission bias.
• Why You Should Mentor — And How To Do It.
• Paper Raises Hundreds Of Questions About The Integrity Of Stem Cell Research Group.
• Educators Take Aim at STEM Myths.

For a complete list and to directly join this list, please click here.

@DrSharma
Edmonton, AB