Childhood Obesity News keeps track of some of the more improbable proposed causes of and cures for childhood obesity.  Who knows? Some day one of them may prove to be the key that unlocks some secret to stopping the obesity epidemic. David Berreby explains the reason for denying that the diet plus exercise (thermodynamic) model has to be the only one. The human body’s fat metabolism is susceptible to other influences, including temperature. Fat burning can increase when a body is too hot or too cold. Light is another significant factor. A rat study resulted in weight gain among animals who were not allowed a dark night to sleep in, but showed no increase in the weight of their fellow subjects who received the same diet …

“Ultrasound Image of My Large Intestine” What is the role of the microbiome in addiction? Nobody knows for sure, but mounting evidence indicates that the gut plays a large part in the body’s reaction to addictive substances. The question is worth asking. Tens of thousands of bacterial species inhabit our intestinal tracts. They are being intensely investigated, and many discoveries suggest that these bugs can do a vast number of things. Sure, they help us digest food. Some of them regulate fat storage in the body. All of them have their preferences regarding nourishment and environment, and if they are displeased, they can make it known in ways that we find unpleasant. Metabolism, obesity, gene activity, food preferences, neural pathways, the brain—all of these phenomena are …

Yesterday there was an interesting study published in Public Health Nutrition. The study, “Frosting on the cake: pictures on food packaging bias serving size” explored four questions. 1. Do the calories of the foods pictured on fronts of packages exceed the calories stated on the package’s per serving nutrition label? Using cake mixes as an example the authors demonstrated that as pictured, with frosting, the slices of cake on the fronts of packages contained 134{7920e18cf5186565893a18d1f69fa52bf2806dc683a7bfcea51d671d2f7d8125} more calories than the serving size calories published on the packages’ nutritional facts panels. 2. Do people take extra ingredient calories into account when determining serving size? Cornell undergrads were provided with two types of cake mix boxes and asked to estimate the “appropriate” number of calories per serving of cake. One group of …

A VLED is a “very low energy diet”, and it’s defined as one providing fewer than 800 calories per day. These programs are generally administered by physicians, are expensive, often take the form of meal replacement shakes, and usually last for around 12 weeks. Multiple meta-analyses on VLEDs have been conducted, and generally their findings haven’t been particularly exciting. Either they’ve concluded they aren’t worth prescribing, or they’ve concluded that there isn’t sufficient information for a conclusion. Well add another meta-analysis to the pile. This one, published in March in Obesity Reviews, had what I found to be a very odd conclusion, and I’ll get there in a bit. Ultimately the researchers findings were that when compared with a standard, and non-extreme, behavioural weight loss program, 3-5 …