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Tag: obesity

  • Best Diets in 2023: Mediterranean Diet Wins Again

    Best Diets in 2023: Mediterranean Diet Wins Again

    Jan. 3, 2022 – It’s officially 2023, and if history repeats, millions of Americans are likely vowing that this year will be one when they drop those unwanted pounds for good. After all, weight loss usually lands one of the top spots on New Year’s resolution surveys. 

    And just in time, there’s guidance to pick the best plan. Released today are U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings of the best diet plans.

    Once again, the Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes fruits, vegetables, olive oil, and fish, got the top spot, as best diet overall. It’s the sixth consecutive year for that win. But many other diets got top marks as well.

    This year, U.S. News, with the help of more than 30 nutritionists, doctors, and epidemiologists, ranked 24 diets in several categories to help people find a plan that meets their goals, whether it’s finding the best weight loss diet, easiest one to follow, or plans for other goals, such as managing diabetes or heart disease. Two new categories were added: Best Diets for Bone & Joint Health and Best Family-Friendly Diets. 

    In previous years, the publication ranked 40 diets. Even if a diet is no longer ranked, its profile with detailed information remains on the site. 

    “Each year we ask ourselves what we can do better or differently next time,” says Gretel Schueller, managing editor of health for U.S. News. When the publication got feedback from their experts this year, they had requests to consider sustainability of diets and whether they meet a busy family’s needs, in addition to considering many other factors. 

    This year’s report ranks plans in 11 categories.

    The winners and the categories:

    Best Diets Overall

    After the Mediterranean diet, two others tied for second place:

    • DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet, which fights high blood pressure and emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean protein, and low-fat dairy.
    • Flexitarian diet, which focuses on fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods but also allows occasional meat.

    Best Weight Loss Diets

    WW, formerly known as Weight Watchers, got first place. The plan emphasizes not only weight loss but healthier eating and regular activity. The Points program, which assigns specific points to foods, with a daily Points budget, is more personalized than in the past.

    • DASH got second place.
    • Mayo Clinic Diet and TLC diet tied for third place. The Mayo Clinic Diet focuses on fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. It helps people improve their eating habits. The TLC diet (Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes) focuses on vegetables, fruit, lean protein, and reducing cholesterol levels. 

    Best Fast Weight Loss Diets

    The keto diet got first place. It’s a high-fat, low-carb diet that aims to achieve weight loss through fat burning. Four others tied for second place:

    • Atkins, a diet created by the cardiologist Robert Atkins, which begins with very few carbs and then recommends progressively eating more until the weight loss goal is achieved 
    • Nutrisystem, a commercial program that includes prepackaged meals and focuses on high-protein, lower-glycemic foods to stabilize blood sugar levels
    • Optavia, a plan focused on low-carb, low-calorie foods and including fortified meal replacements 
    • SlimFast Diet, a plan of shakes, smoothies, and meal bars to replace two of three meals a day

    Best Diets for Healthy Eating

    • Mediterranean
    • DASH
    • Flexitarian

    Best Heart-Healthy Diets

    • DASH
    • Mediterranean
    • Flexitarian and Ornish tied for third. The Ornish Diet focuses on plant-based and whole foods and limiting animal products. It recommends daily exercise and stress reduction.

    Best Diets for Diabetes

    • DASH
    • Mediterranean
    • Flexitarian

    Best Diets for Bone and Joint Health

    DASH and Mediterranean are in a first-place tie, followed by the flexitarian diet.

    Best Family-Friendly Diets

    This category has a three-way tie: the flexitarian, Mediterranean, and TLC diets. 

    Best Plant-Based Diets

    Mediterranean was first, then flexitarian and the MIND diet. The MIND diet combines the DASH and Mediterranean diets and focuses on “brain-healthy” foods.

    Easiest Diets to Follow

    Flexitarian and TLC tied for first, followed by a tie between DASH and Mediterranean.

    Best Diet Programs (formerly called commercial plans)

    • WW
    • There was a tie for second place between Jenny Craig and Noom, the latter of which focuses on low-calorie foods, with personalized calorie ranges and coaching to help meet goals.

    Methodology

    A variety of factors were considered, such as whether a diet includes all food groups, how easy it is to follow, whether it can be customized to meet cultural and personal preferences, and if it has a realistic timeline for weight loss. 

    Response from Diet Plans

    Representatives from two plans that received mixed reviews in the rankings responded.

    Jenny Craig was ranked second for best diet program but much lower for family-friendly, landing at 22nd place of 24. 

    “Our program is designed to address the needs of the individual through personalized experiences,” Jenny Craig CEO Mandy Dowson says. “We have many families that participate in our program together but are still evaluated separately to determine appropriate individual goals.”

    Its high ranking for best diet program reflects feedback from satisfied members, she says. Among advances will be the new Jenny Fresh program, a line of entrées prepared fresh and delivered to customers’ doors.

    Atkins got second place for best fast weight loss but ranked near the bottom for best overall, best weight loss, diabetes, healthy eating, and heart health. In response, Colette Heimowitz, vice president of nutrition and education for Simply Good Foods, which makes Atkins’s food products, says that low-carb eating approaches are a viable option for anyone today.

    “There are more than 130 independent, peer-reviewed published studies that show the efficacy and safety of low-carb eating,” she says. “The studies have been conducted for several decades and counting.” 

    Expert Perspective

    Samantha Cassetty, a registered dietitian, nutritionist, and wellness expert in New York City and author of Sugar Shock, reviewed the report for WebMD. She was not involved in the rankings.

    “I think what this shows you is, the best diet overall is also the best for various conditions,” she says. For instance, the Mediterranean, the number one overall, also got high ranking for diabetes, heart health, and bone and joint health, she points out.

    For consumers trying to lose weight: “If you see fast weight loss, that should be a red flag. A healthy diet for weight loss is one you can sustain,” she says. 

    She’s not a fan of the programs with prepackaged foods. “It takes the guesswork out, but the portion sizes tend to be unsatisfying. They don’t teach you how to deal with some of the challenges [such as realizing an ‘ideal’ portion size].”

    How to Use the Report

    Schueller’s advice: “Recognize that no diet fits everyone.” When considering which plan to choose, she suggests thinking long-term. 

    “Whatever we choose has to work in the long run,” she says.

    Consumers should consider expenses, meal prep time, and whether the diet fits their lifestyle.

    Ideally, she says, the best diet “teaches you smart food preparation and how to make healthy choices, allows the flexibility to be social and eat with groups, whether family or friends.”

    Before choosing a diet to follow, consult a medical professional for input on the decision, U.S. News cautions.

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  • Obesity Might Lower Milk Production in Breastfeeding Moms

    Obesity Might Lower Milk Production in Breastfeeding Moms

    By Cara Murez 

    HealthDay Reporter

    THURSDAY, Dec. 29, 2022 (HealthDay News) — While 8 of 10 mothers breastfeed their newborns for a short time, the number plummets despite recommendations from experts, in part because milk production falls off.

    Researchers investigating why that happens found that in women who are obese, inflammation may be the culprit.

    Prior research has shown that when a person is obese, chronic inflammation starts in the fat and spreads to organs and systems throughout the body. And that inflammation may disrupt absorption of fatty acids from the blood into body tissues.

    These fatty acids are the building blocks for the fats needed to feed a growing infant.

    “Science has shown repeatedly that there is a strong connection between the fatty acids that you eat and the fatty acids in your blood,” said lead author Rachel Walker, postdoctoral fellow in nutritional sciences at Penn State University. “If someone eats a lot of salmon, you will find more omega-3s in their blood. If someone else eats a lot of hamburgers, you will find more saturated fats in their blood.”

    The study is among the first to examine whether fatty acids in blood are also found in breast milk, Walker said.

    “For women who are exclusively breastfeeding, the correlation was very high; most of the fatty acids that appeared in blood were also present in the breast milk,” she said in a university news release.

    But for women with chronic inflammation who were struggling to make enough milk, that link was almost gone, Walker said.

    “This is strong evidence that fatty acids are not able to enter the mammary gland for women with chronic inflammation,” she added.

    For this study, researchers analyzed blood and milk from a study conducted at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and the University of Cincinnati.

    In the original study, researchers recruited 23 mothers who had very little milk despite efforts to stimulate production through frequent breast emptying; 20 mothers with moderate milk production; and a control group of 18 who breastfed exclusively.

    Compared to the other mothers, those with very little milk had significantly higher rates of obesity and biological markers of systemic inflammation.

    While milk and blood fatty acids were strongly linked in the control group, that was not true in the groups with moderate or very low milk production.

    “Breastfeeding has innumerable benefits for both the mother and child, including lower risk of chronic disease for mom and lower risk of infections for baby,” said study co-author Alison Gernand, associate professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State.

    “This research helps us understand what might be happening in mothers with high weight status and inflammation, which down the road could lead to interventions or treatments that allow more moms that want to breastfeed to do so,” Gernand said in the release.

    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends breastfeeding exclusively for a baby’s first six months. Just 25% of mothers do so, citing job pressures and a lack of social support as obstacles.
     

    The findings were recently published in the Journal of Nutrition.

    More information

    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on the importance of breastfeeding.

     

    SOURCE: Penn State University, news release, Dec. 21, 2022

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  • Understanding the “eating just one potato chip is impossible” gene

    Understanding the “eating just one potato chip is impossible” gene

    Newswise — High-calorie foods—high in fat, oil, and sugar—can taste good but often cause overeating, leading to obesity and major health problems. But what stimulates the brain to cause overeating?

    Recently, it has become clear that a gene called CREB-Regulated Transcription Coactivator 1 (CRTC1) is associated with obesity in humans. When CRTC1 is deleted in mice, they become obese, indicating that functioning CRTC1 suppresses obesity. However, since CRTC1 is expressed in all neurons in the brain, the specific neurons responsible for suppressing obesity and the mechanism present in those neurons remained unknown.

    To elucidate the mechanism by which CRTC1 suppresses obesity, a research group led by Associate Professor Shigenobu Matsumura from the Graduate School of Human Life and Ecology at Osaka Metropolitan University focused on neurons expressing the melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R). They hypothesized that CRTC1 expression in MC4R-expressing neurons suppressed obesity because mutations in the MC4R gene are known to cause obesity. Consequently, they created a strain of mice that expresses CRTC1 normally except in MC4R-expressing neurons where it is blocked to examine the effect that losing CRTC1 in those neurons had on obesity and diabetes.

    When fed a standard diet, the mice without CRTC1 in MC4R-expressing neurons showed no changes in body weight compared to control mice. However, when the CRTC1-deficient mice were raised on a high-fat diet, they overate, then became significantly more obese than the control mice and developed diabetes.

    “This study has revealed the role that the CRTC1 gene plays in the brain, and part of the mechanism that stops us from overeating high-calorie, fatty, and sugary foods,” said Professor Matsumura. “We hope this will lead to a better understanding of what causes people to overeat.”

    The research results were published in the FASEB Journal on November 9, 2022.

    ###

    Osaka Metropolitan University is a new public university established by a merger between Osaka City University and Osaka Prefecture University in April 2022. For more science news, see https://www.omu.ac.jp/en/info/research-news/, and follow @OsakaMetUniv_en, or search #OMUScience. 

    Osaka Metropolitan University

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  • Research shows fatty liver disease endangers brain health

    Research shows fatty liver disease endangers brain health

    Newswise — In a study examining the link between non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and brain dysfunction, scientists at the Roger Williams Institute of Hepatology, affiliated to King’s College London and the University of Lausanne, found an accumulation of fat in the liver causes a decrease in oxygen to the brain and inflammation to brain tissue – both of which have been proven to lead to the onset of severe brain diseases. 

    NAFLD affects approximately 25% of the population and more than 80% of morbidly obese people. Several studies have reported the negative effects of an unhealthy diet and obesity can have on brain function however this is believed to be the first study that clearly links NAFLD with brain deterioration and identifies a potential therapeutic target. 

    The research, conducted in collaboration with Inserm (the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) and the University of Poitiers in France, involved feeding two different diets to mice. Half of the mice consumed a diet with no more than 10% fat in their calorie intake, while the other half’s calorie intake contained 55% fat; intended to resemble a diet of processed foods and sugary drinks. 

    After 16 weeks researchers conducted a series of tests to compare the effects of these diets on the body and more specifically, on the liver and the brain. They found that all mice consuming the higher levels of fat were considered obese, and developed NAFLD, insulin resistance and brain dysfunction.  

    The study which was funded by the University of Lausanne and Foundation for Liver Research also showed that the brain of mice with NAFLD suffered from lower oxygen levels. This is because the disease affects the number and thickness of the brain blood vessels, which deliver less oxygen to the tissue, but also due to specific cells consuming more oxygen while the brain is becoming inflamed. These mice were also more anxious and showed signs of depression. 

    By comparison, the mice consuming the healthy diet did not develop NAFLD or insulin resistance, they behaved normally, and their brain was completely healthy.  

    “It is very concerning to see the effect that fat accumulation in the liver can have on the brain, especially because it often starts off mild and can exist silently for many years without people knowing they have it,” said lead author Dr Anna Hadjihambi, sub-team lead in the Liver-Brain Axis group at the Roger Williams Institute of Hepatology and honorary lecturer at King’s College London.  

    To try and combat the dangerous effect that NAFLD has on the brain, the scientists bred mice with lower levels of a whole-body protein known as Monocarboxylate Transporter 1 (MCT1) – a protein specialised in the transport of energy substrates used by various cells for their normal function. 

    When these mice were fed the same unhealthy fat- and sugar-rich diet as those in the initial experiment, they had no fat accumulation in the liver and exhibited no sign of brain dysfunction – they were protected from both ailments. 

    “Identifying MCT1 as a key element in the development of both NAFLD and its associated brain dysfunction opens interesting perspectives,” said Professor Luc Pellerin, director of the Inserm U1313 research unit at the University of Poitiers in France and senior researcher in the study. “It highlights potential mechanisms at play within the liver-brain axis and points to a possible therapeutic target.” 

    Dr Hadjihambi added: “This research emphasises that cutting down the amount of sugar and fat in our diets is not only important for tackling obesity, but also for protecting the liver to maintain brain health and minimise the risk of developing conditions like depression and dementia during ageing, when our brain becomes even more fragile. 

    King’s College London

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  • Why Are Black Mothers at Higher Risk for Miscarriage?

    Why Are Black Mothers at Higher Risk for Miscarriage?

    NeCara McClendon was 19 weeks pregnant and home on a Tuesday evening after work in August of 2022 when she started to bleed – heavily. 

    At the nearest ER in Fredericksburg, VA, where she lives, medical personnel told her that her cervix was opening. Her baby and the amniotic sac were moving into the birthing canal too early. 

    One doctor told her there was no hope, a second doctor said she needed an expert consult, and a third doctor via telehealth recommended a transfer and a technique in which the mother is tilted head down in a hospital bed to try and avoid miscarriage. 

    The mixed messages were disheartening, Mclendon said. “It felt like they kept giving me a little hope and then taking it away.”

    After the transfer, McClendon found out that the new hospital didn’t offer the tilt treatment. Instead, they gave her medicine and told her to wait. And she did – for 3 days – before an ultrasound showed her son’s legs in the birth canal. 

    The doctor said there was nothing that could be done. McClendon delivered her son the next morning at 19 weeks and 5 days, too young to survive outside her womb. 

    “The days afterward were nonstop crying – asking [myself] why did this happen to me. I started to feel like a failure.”

    Why It Happens

    Miscarriage is more common than many people think. It happens in about 1 in 4 pregnancies, usually in the first trimester. It’s often not clear why it happens. 

    Still, some things raise the risk of miscarriage. Weight is one of them and McClendon is slightly overweight. She also has polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), which means her ovaries produce too many male sex hormones called androgens. PCOS can raise the risk of an early miscarriage in the first 3 months of pregnancy. (McClendon didn’t lose her son until almost the fifth month.)

    But there is another factor: McClendon is Black. 

    In the United States, Black women are  43% more likely than white women to have a miscarriage, according to a 2021 study that looked at more than half a million U.S. women. (A Black mother is also more likely than a white mother to lose her baby after 20 weeks or in delivery (stillbirth), or to lose her life, according to the CDC.)

    “The scandal is we really don’t know [why],” said the study’s lead author, Siobhan Quenby, MD.  “We desperately need more research. It’s not acceptable in 2022 not to know.” 

    Doctors do know that health risk factors for miscarriage like diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure are more common in Black women than white women. 

    But again, the question is why? Factors include differences in biology, society, culture, lifestyle, and medical care, among others. And these can be quite hard to separate out, according to experts. 

    Other lesser-studied biological factors may also play a part. For example, fibroids – muscular tumors that grow on the wall of the uterus — can sometimes cause miscarriage. Almost 25% of Black women aged 18 to 30 have them, compared to 6% of white women. Black women are also two to three times more likely to have recurring fibroids or complications, which could add to the problem. 

    The difference in vaginal microbiota between Black and white women may be involved since the vaginal microbiome has been linked to recurrent miscarriage. 

    But it’s discrepancies in access and use of medical care that could make the biggest difference, said Ana Langer, MD, director of the Women’s Health Initiative at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 

    Black women are less likely to seek adequate prenatal care for any number of reasons, Langer said. These may include lack of insurance, lack of financial and educational resources, lack of nearby health facilities, fear of mistreatment, and more. Even the perception of racial discrimination in society at large can delay prenatal care, according to some research. 

    The effect of race in medical settings can be hard to unpack. In one striking study, the death rate of Black newborns, which is three times higher than white newborns in the U.S., was cut in half when they were cared for by a Black doctor. But oddly, physician race did not affect the mother’s outcomes, the study found. Researchers continue to study these issues.

    After the Miscarriage

    Since August, McClendon and her partner have been trying to find an in-person grief counselor they could see as a couple. But so far, they’ve had no luck. So they’ve been making their way on their own – with some success. “I won’t say it gets better, but you handle it better,” she said. 

    The grief comes in waves, she says. Some days they’re OK and other days the pain unexpectedly resurges. The approach of the baby’s due date has been particularly hard. 

    “This past Saturday was supposed to be the date of my baby shower,” McClendon said. A day intended to celebrate McClendon and her future son turned into a day to remember what she had lost. It was a tough day. But she made it through. “It started off sad, but it eventually turned OK,” she said.

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  • The TikTok Trend That Triggered a Diabetes Drug Shortage

    The TikTok Trend That Triggered a Diabetes Drug Shortage

    Nov. 29, 2022 – Weight loss advice is everywhere you look on social media, but one trend sweeping TikTok has led to shortages of an important diabetes drug. 

    Ozempic, a weekly injection that helps boost insulin sensitivity in people with type 2 diabetes, also suppresses appetite, which leads to weight loss. Stories of celebrities using the drug off-label to lose a few pounds have led to an explosion of interest. And now people with diabetes – people whose lives could be saved by the drug – are having trouble finding it.

    Kim Kardashian and Elon Musk

    In the spring, Kim Kardashian pulled off a dramatic weight loss to fit into Marilyn Monroe’s dress for the Met Gala. Soon rumors began to circulate that she’d used Ozempic to do it. Just this week, new Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted about his own use of Ozempic and its sibling drug, Wegovy.

    Variety dubbed Ozempic “the worst kept secret in Hollywood – especially given that its most enthusiastic users are not pre-diabetic and do not require the drug.” The rich and famous are spending $1,200 to $1,500 a month to get access. 

    As so often happens, high-profile use sparked a trend. Videos on TikTok hashtagged #ozempic have amassed more than 275 million views, and #ozempicweightloss has more than 110 million.

    This raises concerns about who, exactly, is watching these videos, and what message they’re receiving.

    “Forty-two percent of Americans have obesity, and even more have overweight. That’s affecting our younger people and our adolescents,” says Caroline Apovian, MD, co-director of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “They’re looking at TikTok and other social media outlets for help.”

    A new study shows how damaging this can be: Researchers analyzed 1,000 videos with nutrition, food, and weight-related hashtags, with over 1 billion views combined. They found that nearly all included messages glorifying weight loss and thinness.

    At Last, an Effective Weight Loss Drug

    Ozempic is Danish drug company Novo Nordisk’s brand name for semaglutide, which works by mimicking a naturally occurring hormone known as GLP-1. It travels to your brain and helps you feel full on less food. That leads to weight loss. In one 68-week study, semaglutide helped people lose an average of 15% of their body weight. But it’s not a miracle drug: You still have to change your eating habits and stay physically active.

    The FDA approved Ozempic to treat people with type 2 diabetes in 2017. Four years later, Novo Nordisk received the green light for a higher-dose version meant specifically for people with obesity. Wegovy is approved for use only if you have a BMI of at least 27 with one or more weight-related ailments, or a BMI of 30 or more with none.

    “These drugs are dominating my practice, because they’re so effective,” says Amanda Velazquez, MD, director of obesity medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The drug is considered safe, “so the majority of patients are good candidates.”

    More Demand Than Supply

    As word spread about how well Ozempic and Wegovy worked, social media posts helped drive even more people to seek out the drugs. Now demand is outpacing the supply – according to the FDA, starter doses of Ozempic will have limited availability through January. 

    “In Hollywood, people are losing 10 pounds, getting it for $1,500 a month, and depleting stores for people who have such severe obesity that they have congestive heart failure and diabetes,” Apovian says. “These are people who are going to die, and you’re taking it away just for cosmetic weight loss. That is deplorable.”

    In addition to huge demand, Wegovy also had a disruption in its supply chain. Right now, it isn’t available at all in lower doses, which is helping to spike off-label demand for Ozempic. Novo Nordisk expects to have these problems sorted out by the end of the year, with distribution following soon after.

    The Price of Access

    With a list price of $1,350 a month, Wegovy costs as much as many mortgages. And Medicaid, Medicare, and many insurance companies don’t cover it. Although obesity is a disease, the insurance industry treats weight loss as more of a vanity issue – so even if you could find the drug, you might not be able to afford it. 

    “We’re seeing that roughly half the prescriptions we write aren’t being covered,” Apovian says. “And for the half that are covered, we have to do prior authorization, which takes days, and it’s laborious.” In some instances, she says, insurance companies withdraw authorization after 3 months if they don’t see enough weight coming off.

    It’s not like you can take Wegovy for 3 months, lose some weight, and expect it to stay off, either. The medication requires a real commitment, potentially for life. That’s because once the semaglutide leaves your system, your appetite returns. In one study, people regained two-thirds of the weight they’d lost within a year of stopping.

    Many see a double standard in the insurance companies’ refusal to cover a drug that could prevent serious illness or death. 

    “They’re saying it’s not cost-effective to give the 42% of Americans who have a BMI over 30 Wegovy. Did they say this when statins came out?” Apovian says. “Why are they doing this with antiobesity agents? It’s the culture. The culture isn’t ready to adopt obesity as the disease that it is.”

    Unpleasant Side Effects

    Let’s assume you’re one of the lucky ones – your insurance covers Wegovy, and you can actually find some. You might discover that using it is no walk in the park. Common side effects include gastrointestinal issues like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. 

    “The way we counteract that is to start very slowly at a low dose of these medications,” Apovian says. “We only go up when the patient doesn’t have nausea or it gets better.”

     

    Elise Davenport was excited to try Wegovy. “I did my online research. I’m the type who’s interested in early adoption, tech gadgets and stuff,” says the 40-year-old technical writer. “I wanted to try it because I’d tried so many other things that failed, or hadn’t worked long-term.”

    With a BMI over 30, Davenport qualified for the drug. She signed up for an online program that guaranteed insurance coverage and started taking it in October 2021. At first, the side effects were mild, just a touch of nausea and diarrhea. And the results were impressive. She found it easy to feel satisfied with smaller portions and lost her cravings for sugar and highly processed foods. The weight fell off, roughly 5 pounds a week. 

    It turns out, that’s too much, too fast. Apovian and Velazquez say their patients lose more like 2 pounds each week, with careful monitoring. 

    By early December, Davenport’s side effects were ramping up. Because of shortages in lower dosages, the online program wasn’t able to adjust hers right away. She felt nauseated all the time, bad enough that brushing her teeth made her vomit and she had to force herself to eat. Some weeks, she managed less than 500 calories a day. Her sleep patterns became erratic. And then her depression, which medication had kept under control for years, spiraled.

    “I remember sitting on the floor of my bathroom crying, thinking I’d rather carry the extra weight,” she says. “I used to take a lot of enjoyment from food, and I had none of that anymore. It was such a joyless experience at that point.” 

    Eventually, her dosage was reduced and the symptoms let up, but her primary care doctor encouraged her to stop. By the time she did, in March, she’d lost 55 pounds. So far, she’s gained back about 10.

    More Than Just Weight Loss

    Even though Davenport’s experience wasn’t a good one, with better monitoring, she’d be willing to try again. For one thing, seeing how easy it was to eat less with medical help helped to undo years of shame.

    “Our culture treats obesity like a moral failing. I realized I’d been made to feel that way by doctors and programs – that I wasn’t doing enough,” she says. “This drug made me realize there are legit physiological things going on in my body, things that are often excluded from the conversation.”

    Apovian and Velazquez say their patients regularly discover similar things.

    “Obesity is not a disease of willpower. Medications are not the easy way out,” Velazquez says. “This is a chronic, relapsing medical condition, and because of that, we should treat it how we treat diabetes, high blood pressure, all these other conditions. We’d never hold back medication for individuals coming in with high blood pressure, tell them to work on willpower and withhold drugs they’d qualify for.”

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  • Weight-Loss Surgery Slashes Odds for Heart Attack in Very Obese People

    Weight-Loss Surgery Slashes Odds for Heart Attack in Very Obese People


    By Cara Murez 

    HealthDay Reporter


    WEDNESDAY, Nov. 16, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Getting bariatric surgery may significantly help prevent heart attacks, strokes and angina in very obese people, a new study finds. The study participants were also affected by what’s known as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which is often linked with obesity.
     

    While studying patients who had a body mass index (BMI) higher than 40 and NAFLD, researchers from Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Ohio State University found these patients were 50% more likely to suffer heart attacks, strokes and angina.

    But the new findings “provide evidence in support of bariatric surgery as an effective therapeutic tool to lower elevated risk of cardiovascular disease for select individuals with obesity and NAFLD,” said study author Dr. Vinod Rustgi, director of the Center for Liver Diseases and Liver Masses at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. “These finding are tremendously impactful for many reasons.”

    Rustgi and his colleagues used a medical insurance database for the years 2007 to 2017.

    They found nearly 87,000 adults ages 18 to 64 who had obesity and NAFLD, about 64% of whom were women. About 35% of these patients had bariatric surgery, while 65% received nonsurgical care.

    The patients who had bariatric surgery had a 49% decrease in the risk of developing heart attacks, heart failure or ischemic strokes (those caused by a blockage). They were also far less likely to experience angina, plaque buildup in the arteries or arterial blood clots, researchers found.

    About 697,000 people died of heart disease in 2020 in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women.

    NAFLD, along with a more advanced form of liver disease known as NASH, is a rapidly increasing cause of liver disease, according to the study. This happens when too much fat is stored in liver cells, triggering an inflammatory state. NAFLD is more common in people with obesity and type 2 diabetes.

    Bariatric surgery can offer heart health benefits because of the positives that happen with weight reduction, according to the researchers.


    Continued

    An earlier study by Rustgi and colleagues found that bariatric surgery could also significantly reduce the risk of cancer — especially obesity-related cancers — in obese individuals with NAFLD.

    “Although bariatric surgery is a more aggressive approach than lifestyle modifications, it may be associated with other benefits, such as improved quality of life and decreased long-term health care burden,” Rustgi said in a Rutgers news release.
     

    The findings were published recently in the journal JAMA Network Open.


    More information

    The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more on weight-loss surgery.

     

    SOURCE: Rutgers University-New Brunswick, news release, Nov. 14, 2022



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  • Weight-Loss Drug, Approved for Adults, Shows Promise in Kids

    Weight-Loss Drug, Approved for Adults, Shows Promise in Kids

    Nov. 10, 2022 — The prospect of being involved in a research program that might help her lose weight intrigued Emmalea Zummo. At 15, the self-assured, energetic teenager from Jeanette, PA, weighed 250 pounds – enough to be considered obese. The trial she learned about through her endocrinologist was for a drug called semaglutide. 

    Before joining the study, Emmalea had exhausted a reservoir of strategies. 

    “She had been doing a variety of exercise programs, was involved in countless sports and activities to stay active, as some of her early doctors said that would work,” Davina Zummo, Emmalea’s mother, says. “She counted calories, did a gluten-free diet, limited what she ate, when she ate, and how much.” 

    Emmalea cut out all snacks, junk food, and sweets, but nothing made a difference, Zummo says: “She felt defeated.”

    The FDA last year approved semaglutide, which was developed initially as a treatment for type 2 diabetes, for weight loss in adults. But researchers wanted to know if the drug, which targets areas of the brain that regulate appetite, also could help adolescents lose weight. Emmalea was curious, too. 

    Although often teenagers can be judgmental of each other, Emmalea’s friends “were happy for me, constantly motivating and supportive,” she says.

    Today, Emmalea, now nearly 18, says the medication helped her lose 75 pounds, giving a boost to the lifestyle and diet coaching she received throughout the 68-week study. 

    Parents of teens like Emmalea who struggle with obesity hear the same refrain: If their kids slash the sugar, eat healthy snacks instead of junk foods, and exercise regularly, the results will follow. 

    But for many overweight youths — as with adults — shedding pounds often proves frustrating. Gains come and go, despite good intentions. 

    Could medication help? 

    A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that semaglutide can indeed lead to small but meaningful losses of excess bodyweight. Whether that’s enough to tip the scales, as it were, toward overall better health is unclear, but the findings have specialists in child health optimistic. 

    “There is a real need for safe and effective medications to treat obesity,” says Silva Arslanian, MD, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and a co-author of the new study. 

    “Typically, we make lifestyle recommendations: Eat more vegetables; don’t eat fried food; don’t drink soda,” Arslanian says. Unfortunately, she says, we live in a world where “it can be very hard to make those changes.”

    Many experts agree that medication should be part of the conversation.

    “It’s exciting to see this treatment becoming available. And the study results suggest few side effects, so the drug was safe and tolerable,” says Amanda Staiano, PhD, a researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. “Although not approved yet by the FDA, semaglitude and other new medications are transforming obesity treatment for adolescents. It’s going to be an exciting time for treating obesity.”

    Staiano stresses, however, that lifestyle and behavioral counseling are key for the success of any obesity treatment, including drugs like semaglutide. 

    Daniel Weghuber, MD, a pediatrician at Paracelsus Medical University in Salzburg, Austria, says that although obesity is “not an issue of lack of willpower, this drug seems to enable people who are living with obesity to adhere to the recommendations that they have been following for years and years but were not able to achieve the goal. I think that this is important. It enables people to achieve their goals.”

    In the new study, 201 obese or overweight boys and girls between the ages of 12 and 18 received either once-weekly injections of semaglutide or sham shots. They also all received lifestyle interventions — counseling on healthy nutrition and physical activity — throughout the nearly 16-month study.   

    By the end of the study, 75% of the adolescents who received semaglutide had lost and kept off at least 5% of their excess body weight, compared to 17% of those who got the sham injections. On average, those treated with the drug lost 33.7 pounds, compared to an average of just 5.3 pounds in the other group.

    Weghuber said the research suggests the combination of lifestyle changes and obesity medications “will open up a new chapter” for treating adolescents with obesity. 

    More than 340 million children and adolescents worldwide aged 5-19 were overweight or obese in 2016. In the United States, obesity affected 22.2% of 12- to 19-year-olds from 2017 to 2020, according to the CDC.   

    Obesity is linked with decreased life expectancy and higher risk of developing serious health problems such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, sleep apnea, and certain cancers. Teenagers with obesity are also more likely to have depression, anxiety, poor self-esteem, and other psychological issues.

    While obesity in children has long been a public health concern, the problem has worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, Melissa Ruiz, MD, with the Pediatric Diagnostic Center in Ventura, CA, says. Some of her patients who had been “chubby” pre-pandemic had weight gains of 20-30 pounds at post-pandemic clinic visits, she estimates.

    Ruiz and other experts say parents should discard the notion that obesity is something children – or adults — are doing to themselves, or that they are failing their children by not keeping their weight in check. 

    “There are genetic components that figure into obesity, and we have to acknowledge that,” Ruiz says.  

    Parents should seek help from their child’s pediatrician. “If the pediatrician cannot help you, ask, ‘Where can I go?’ Say, ‘I understand that you might not be trained in this yet’ and ask for a reference for someone who can help,” Ruiz says. 

    But medication should not be considered an all-in remedy, according to one expert. 

    “Medication is a last resort, only after behavioral interventions fail and after exploring the range of behavioral strategies to weight loss, including changing dietary patterns such as timing and meal plan,” says Lydia Bazzano, MD, PhD, a nutrition researcher at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans.

    Medication and even surgery have a place, but only if patients have exhausted all the dietary and lifestyle options, Bazzano says. “You don’t want the adolescent to have a lifetime of medication. Medication should only be used to kickstart the child to the point he should be — and then maintain that weight,” she says.

    Adolescent obesity is a very difficult subject to navigate, Bazzano adds. “You have to engage the entire family, and not just the child. It has to be at the level of the whole family, and that can be very challenging. If the entire family engages together, there can be a modest weight loss.”

    And Bazzano says she’s not impressed with the weight loss seen in the latest study. A 5% drop in body weight is helpful, she says, but “that’s not enough of a decrease to say the child is out of the risky range.”

    Staiano thinks experts need more information about semaglutide before they should start prescribing it to kids. 

    “We need to see long-term outcomes from chronic medication use and whether weight rebounds when adolescents stop using the medication,” she says. 

    “How long should the medication be prescribed? For the rest of their lives? How do we support patients who are able to lose such a significant amount of weight? How do we ensure these treatments — behavioral counseling, medications, and weight loss surgery — are accessible and financially within reach of families?”

    Emmalea, who stopped taking semaglutide about a year ago, has maintained her weight thanks to concentrating on a well-balanced diet and exercise. While she says she’s pleased with her progress and “feels comfortable in my own skin,” she doesn’t consider her current weight of 171 pounds to be the end zone. “I’d like to be somewhere between 145-150,” says the 5’4” high school senior.

    Still, she says, “I don’t strictly monitor myself because thinking of food in a negative way is not healthy and can actually lead to worsening a food disorder.”

    When she embarked on the study, she wasn’t sure it would be effective for her. But because of her interest in medicine and research, she says, she wanted to be involved: “I thought that if it didn’t help me, at least it might others.” 

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  • Defect in Gene Caused Massive Obesity in Mice Despite Normal Food Intake

    Defect in Gene Caused Massive Obesity in Mice Despite Normal Food Intake

    Newswise — DALLAS – Oct. 28, 2022 – A faulty gene, rather than a faulty diet, may explain why some people gain excessive weight even when they don’t eat more than others, UT Southwestern researchers at the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense have discovered.

    The findings, published in Cell Metabolism, describe how a defect in a gene called Ovol2 caused mice with normal activity levels and food intake to become obese as they reached adulthood due to problems generating body heat. If the same holds true in humans, who share a nearly identical gene and its protein product, the findings could eventually help identify potential treatments for obesity.

    “Most cases of obesity are caused by overeating or by lack of physical activity, but our research has shown that a mutation of a little-studied gene called Ovol2 causes massive obesity – due solely to a defect in thermogenesis, or heat production,” said study leader Zhao Zhang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine who co-led this study with Nobel Laureate Bruce Beutler, M.D., Professor of Immunology and Director of the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense.

    About 42% of people in the U.S. are obese, a condition that drives up the risk of many other health problems including heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer. Although researchers agree obesity appears to stem from an interplay between a person’s genes and his or her environment, the genes that play important roles in the most common forms of obesity aren’t well understood, and the most famous obesity mutations in mice and humans cause a voracious appetite.

    To learn more about basic mechanisms of obesity, Drs. Zhang and Beutler and their colleagues used a chemical to generate random mutations in the DNA of mice. In a particular family of mice, obesity began at about 10 weeks of age – young adulthood for the rodents – and continued until the animals were massively overweight. The researchers identified the responsible mutation in a gene called Ovol2.

    “No one had associated this gene with obesity before,” Dr. Beutler said, “because it’s essential for life. The mutation we created was mild enough to allow survival but damaging enough to reveal a striking metabolic defect.”

    The obese mice experienced a 556% increase in fat weight, accompanied by a 20% reduction in lean weight, compared to littermates who had not undergone mutagenesis. Experiments showed the obese animals weren’t able to maintain their core body temperature when exposed to cold, which appeared to result from an inability to effectively use a type of tissue called brown fat, the primary function of which is to generate heat. Further tests suggested that the healthy Ovol2 gene suppressed development of white fat, the main tissue responsible for energy storage.

    When the researchers overexpressed the normal Ovol2 protein, they found that animals gained far less weight than wild-type controls in mice fed a high-fat diet. The authors said these findings suggest Ovol2 is a key player in energy metabolism – which probably holds true for humans since the human Ovol2 protein is very similar to the mouse version. Eventually, said Dr. Zhang, doctors may be able to treat obesity by giving patients drugs that drive up Ovol2 function.

    Drs. Beutler and Zhang are inventors on a patent related to these findings.

    UT Southwestern is a Nutrition Obesity Research Center, one of 12 in the nation funded by the National Institutes of Health and the only one in Texas. The Center supports work by more than 150 UT Southwestern scientists to investigate the causes, prevention, and treatment options for obesity.

    Dr. Beutler is a Regental Professor who holds the Raymond and Ellen Willie Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research, in Honor of Laverne and Raymond Willie, Sr. He received the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of how the innate immune system is activated.

    Other UTSW researchers who contributed to this study include Yiao Jiang, Lijing Su, Sara Ludwig, Xuechun Zhang, Miao Tang, Xiaohong Li, Priscilla Anderton, Xiaoming Zhan, Mihwa Choi, Jamie Russell, Chun-Hui Bu, Stephen Lyon, Darui Xu, Sara Hildebrand, Lindsay Scott, Jiexia Quan, Rochelle Simpson, Qihua Sun, Baifang Qin, Tiffany Collie, Meron Tadesse, and Eva Marie Y. Moresco.

    This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (K99 DK115766, R00 DK115766, R01 AI125581, and U19 AI100627) and the Lyda Hill Foundation.

    About UT Southwestern Medical Center

    UT Southwestern, one of the nation’s premier academic medical centers, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institution’s faculty has received six Nobel Prizes, and includes 24 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 18 members of the National Academy of Medicine, and 14 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators. The full-time faculty of more than 2,900 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UT Southwestern physicians provide care in more than 80 specialties to more than 100,000 hospitalized patients, more than 360,000 emergency room cases, and oversee nearly 4 million outpatient visits a year.

    UT Southwestern Medical Center

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  • Increased mitochondria and lipid turnover reduces risk for liver cancer

    Increased mitochondria and lipid turnover reduces risk for liver cancer

    Newswise — Alcohol consumption and hepatitis C viral infection are known risk factors for causing hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common form of liver cancer. Apart from these, obesity-associated nonalcoholic fatty liver disease has emerged as a major contributing factor for hepatocellular carcinoma in Western societies. The mechanisms underlying obesity-induced liver cancer are not well understood.

    A new study published this week in the journal Science Advances by University of Chicago researchers showed that in a mouse model, deletion of the BNIP3 protein resulted in decreased turnover of mitochondria and lipid droplets that led to the development of fatty liver and, ultimately, liver cancer. In human liver cancer, they also showed that loss of BNIP3 expression was linked to increased lipids and worse prognosis.

    “My lab is interested in mitochondria and the turnover of mitochondria in normal physiological settings, but also in cancer. In our studies, we work on a protein called BNIP3 that functions as a mitochondrial cargo receptor,” said Kay Macleod, PhD, senior author of the paper and a professor in the Ben May Department for Cancer Research at the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Normally, this protein is significantly upregulated in the liver in response to fasting in mice, where it plays a role in protecting the liver from fat accumulation; however, eliminating this protein caused fatty liver. So we studied this further to understand the underlying mechanisms of how loss of BNIP3 leads to lipid accumulation in the normal liver as well as liver cancer.”

    To understand BNIP3 involvement in the prevention of lipid accumulation and fatty liver condition, liver cancer was induced using chemical carcinogens in two sets of mice, one with BNIP3 intact and the other with BNIP3-deleted. The research team observed that tumors developed earlier and grew faster in BNIP3-deleted mice. Moreover, these tumors were full of fat, whereas tumors in BNIP3-intact mice were smaller and didn’t have lipids in them. When these tumors were followed over time, BNIP3-intact mice also developed lipid accumulation similar to that of BNIP3-deleted mice. More interestingly, BNIP3 had been silenced, suggesting that there is a selection for loss of BNIP3 in liver cancer as the disease progresses.

    These findings were consistent with human liver cancer patient data that reported a better prognosis in patients who had BNIP3 and less lipids in their tumors compared to patients who had a very high expression of genes involved in lipid synthesis. The data again suggests that BNIP3 is acting to suppress tumorigenesis in hepatocellular carcinoma by preventing lipid accumulation. Then the next question is how does BNIP3 regulate lipids?

    When BNIP3 was reintroduced using lentivirus into hepatocellular carcinoma cells that lacked BNIP3, tumor cells stopped accumulating lipids, and they didn’t multiply or grow as fast as the ones that lacked BNIP3. The researchers showed that this was happening due to BNIP3 causing turnover of lipids with mitochondria in a degradative cellular process that they call “mitolipophagy.”

    Fatty liver is a growing health issue in Western societies because of diet. “Eating too much food and eating the wrong kind of food causes extra fat to be stored in the liver. When liver cells (hepatocytes) get overburdened with lipids, they undergo death, which leads to regenerative growth of liver cells. If this process is uninterrupted, it leads to hepatocellular carcinoma,” Macleod said.

    Next, her team wondered how reduced lipid droplet turnover prevents hepatocellular carcinoma. Lipid droplets store a variety of lipids that are used to make cell membranes. If a cell is growing or multiplying, it requires a lot more membrane. BNIP3 will limit the number of phospholipids in the cell thereby limiting the lipids required for new cell generation.

    “BNIP3 is both preventing initiation of tumors and also limiting progression of tumors that are already formed by preventing them from growing faster or becoming more aggressive,” Macleod said.

    This work suggests that for a hepatocellular carcinoma to actually to form, it has to get rid of BNIP3. This implies that if there was a way to somehow prevent BNIP3 from being silenced, this could limit liver tumor growth or prevent fatty liver in the first place.

    “I think the most exciting thing is that BNIP3 does more than just promote the turnover of mitochondria. By promoting the interaction and functionality of the mitochondria, it is actually regulating other organelles in the cell,” Macleod said.

    Much attention has been paid to tumor metabolism and how to target this process in cancers. Most of that tends to focus on amino acids and glucose metabolism but not as much on lipid biology. Understanding more about how lipid metabolism is deregulated in cancer has not been as heavily researched. The researchers’ future work focuses on understanding how BNIP3 is regulated in disease conditions as well as with age. Meanwhile, they are also interested in a number of other genes that play important roles in response to nutrient stress.

    The study, “Lipid droplet turnover at the lysosome inhibits growth of hepatocellular carcinoma in a BNIP3- 3 dependent manner” was supported by NIH R01 849 CA200310 and NIH T32 CA009594. Additional authors include Damian Berardi, Althea Bock-Hughes, Alexander Terry, Lauren Drake and Grazyna Bozek from the University of Chicago.

    University of Chicago Medical Center

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  • 7 Cereals Can No Longer Claim ‘Healthy’ Label Under FDA Rule

    7 Cereals Can No Longer Claim ‘Healthy’ Label Under FDA Rule

    Oct. 13, 2022 — Generations of Americans grew up being told that breakfast cereals like Corn Flakes and Raisin Bran were healthy ways to start their days.

    But now, under new federal guidelines, those cereals and other mainstays of the breakfast table can no longer make that claim.

    The guidance was proposed after the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, “as well as the release of the related national strategy, which aims to end hunger, improve nutrition and physical activity, reduce diet-related diseases and close disparity gaps by 2030,” the FDA wrote in a press release.

    To be considered “healthy,” foods must meet certain criteria. The FDA used cereal as an example to illustrate how the guidelines affect how food will be presented to consumers.

    For that “healthy” label, cereals need three-fourth ounces of whole grains and no more than 1 gram of saturated fat, 230 milligrams of sodium, and 2.5 grams of added sugars, CNBC reported.

    Here are seven common American brands that don’t meet the “healthy” label standards:

    • Raisin Bran (9 grams of added sugars)
    • Honey Nut Cheerios (12 grams of added sugars)
    • Corn Flakes (300 milligrams of sodium; 4 grams of added sugars)
    • Honey Bunches of Oats, Honey Roasted (8 grams of added sugars)
    • Frosted Mini Wheats (12 grams of added sugars)
    • Life (8 grams of added sugars)
    • Special K (270 milligrams of sodium; 4 grams of added sugars)

    “Nutrition is key to improving our nation’s health,” said Xavier Becerra, Health and Human Services secretary. “Healthy food can lower our risk for chronic disease. But too many people may not know what constitutes healthy food. FDA’s move will help educate more Americans to improve health outcomes, tackle health disparities and save lives.”

     

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  • These 7 Cereals Can No Longer Claim ‘Healthy’ Label Under FDA Rule

    These 7 Cereals Can No Longer Claim ‘Healthy’ Label Under FDA Rule

    Oct. 13, 2022 — Generations of Americans grew up being told that breakfast cereals like Corn Flakes and Raisin Bran were healthy ways to start their days.

    But now, under new federal guidelines, those cereals and other mainstays of the breakfast table can no longer make that claim.

    The guidance was proposed after the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, “as well as the release of the related national strategy, which aims to end hunger, improve nutrition and physical activity, reduce diet-related diseases and close disparity gaps by 2030,” the FDA wrote in a press release.

    To be considered “healthy,” foods must meet certain criteria. The FDA used cereal as an example to illustrate how the guidelines affect how food will be presented to consumers.

    For that “healthy” label, cereals need three-fourth ounces of whole grains and no more than 1 gram of saturated fat, 230 milligrams of sodium, and 2.5 grams of added sugars, CNBC reported.

    Here are seven common American brands that don’t meet the “healthy” label standards:

    • Raisin Bran (9 grams of added sugars)
    • Honey Nut Cheerios (12 grams of added sugars)
    • Corn Flakes (300 milligrams of sodium; 4 grams of added sugars)
    • Honey Bunches of Oats, Honey Roasted (8 grams of added sugars)
    • Frosted Mini Wheats (12 grams of added sugars)
    • Life (8 grams of added sugars)
    • Special K (270 milligrams of sodium; 4 grams of added sugars)

    “Nutrition is key to improving our nation’s health,” said Xavier Becerra, Health and Human Services secretary. “Healthy food can lower our risk for chronic disease. But too many people may not know what constitutes healthy food. FDA’s move will help educate more Americans to improve health outcomes, tackle health disparities and save lives.”

     

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  • Moms Eating Ultra-Processed Food Raises Kids’ Obesity Risk

    Moms Eating Ultra-Processed Food Raises Kids’ Obesity Risk

    Oct. 7, 2022 – Moms who consume ultra-processed food during pregnancy may contribute to their children being obese or overweight in childhood and adolescence, a new study suggests. 

    Among the 19,958 mother-child pairs studied, 12.4% of children developed obesity or overweight in the full study group, and the children of those mothers who ate the most ultra-processed foods (12.1 servings/day) had a 26% higher risk of obesity/overweight, compared with those with the lowest consumption (3.4 servings/day), reports Andrew T. Chan, MD, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues. 

    The results were published online in the journal BMJ. 

    The study shows the potential benefits of limiting ultra-processed food during reproductive years to decrease the risk of childhood obesity, the study authors note. Ultra-processed foods, such as packaged baked goods and snacks, fizzy drinks, and sugary cereals, which are linked to an increase in adult weight, are frequently included in modern Western diets.  

    But the relationship between parents eating highly processed meals and their children’s weight is unclear across generations, the researchers note. 

    “Overall awareness of the importance of diet in one’s personal health, as well as in the health of their families, is something that we hope will be a source of change, and certainly does start with promoting and educating people about the importance of diet during those critical periods,” Chan said in an interview.

    He said it is important not to blame mothers for their kids’ health, as there are other things at play beyond just education. “It requires a concerted effort to ensure that we break down the social and economic barriers to access to healthy foods so that it becomes actually feasible for many women to be able to have access to a diet that will promote health for both themselves and their kids.”

    Does Eating Ultra-Processed Food During Pregnancy Make Kids Obese?

    In this study, investigators looked at whether eating ultra-processed food throughout pregnancy and while raising kids increased the likelihood of children and teens being overweight or obese.

    The study team evaluated 14,553 mothers and their 19,958 children using data collected from two large studies. Males comprised 45% of the children in the cohort. The children spanned from 7 to 17 years of age.

    Childhood obesity or overweight has been linked to maternal consumption of highly processed meals during child-rearing. 

    “We know that lifestyle during pregnancy is important for not only the health of the baby, but also the health of the mother. So, it does represent an opportunity for people to think critically about what they can do to really optimize their health, and it becomes a period of time where people are maybe thinking a little bit more about their health and are more open to new dietary counseling and also more motivated to effect change,” Chan says.

    It’s important for women to consider their diet, Chan says. Women need to take into account “what kinds of foods they are eating and, if possible, try to avoid ultra-processed foods that have very refined ingredients and a lot of additives and preservatives, because they tend to really have a higher content of those dietary factors that we think lead to overweight and obesity,” he says.

    Physical activity is also important during the reproductive years and pregnancy, and people should aim to sustain physical activity during pregnancy and beyond, Chan notes. 

    The findings may be limited, as they were based on self-reported questionnaires and some mother-children pairs stopped taking part in the study during follow-up. Most of the mothers were from similar personal and family educational backgrounds, had comparable social and economic backgrounds, and were primarily white, which limits how this study can apply to other groups of people, the researchers noted. 

    “Staying healthy isn’t something that you should really start doing in middle age or late adulthood, it is really something that should be promoted at a young age, and certainly during young adulthood, because of the influence that it has on your long-term health, but also the potential influence it might have on your family’s,” Chan says.

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  • Obesity Starts in the Developing Brain: Study

    Obesity Starts in the Developing Brain: Study

    Oct. 5, 2022 — What if a baby’s developing brain at the critical time just before birth and in the early days afterward establishes the lifetime risk for obesity?

    Previous research has suggested that human genes associated with obesity determine whether a person will have a hard time maintaining a healthy weight later in life. For decades, researchers have looked for links between genetic variants and body mass index (BMI), explains Robert Waterland, PhD, professor of pediatrics-nutrition at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX.  But the problem is the genetic ties found so far don’t explain weight gain and who is most at risk, he says. 

    So could there be more behind rising obesity rates than genetics and lifestyle?

    In their new study published in Science Advances, Waterland and his team looked at the possibility that environmental influences – such as poor nutrition and stress – during a critical window of brain development might influence obesity risk.

    The research team led by Harry MacKay, PhD, a postdoctoral associate in pediatrics-nutrition at Baylor, focused on a tiny section of the brain called the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus, which regulates the body’s energy balance between food intake, physical activity, and metabolism.

    They studied mice in the first few weeks of life and found that the arcuate nucleus undergoes extensive growth in a critical window of time when brains are particularly sensitive to programming, which will later determine how well the body senses whether it is hungry and when the body has enough food.

    The scientists focused on epigenetics and worked to bookmark which genes would and would not be used in different cells. A big surprise in the research came when the investigators compared their epigenetic data in mice to human data and found that the regions targeted for epigenetic maturation in the mouse arcuate nucleus overlapped strongly with human genomic regions associated with BMI.

    Waterland says that even though the work did not address when the epigenetic changes happen in humans, previous research has shown it happens earlier in humans than in mice. 

    “My hunch is that the same epigenetic development that we have documented in the early postnatal mouse actually occurs during late fetal development in humans,” he says. 

    If that is the case, “a big, big concern is the very high prevalence of maternal obesity in the U.S. and many developed countries in the world,” which may be affecting the health of new babies.

    If future weight problems begin before birth or in those first weeks of life, some might feel doomed to a fate of obesity. But Waterland says the focus on genetics in earlier research wasn’t particularly encouraging either since it’s very difficult to change your genetics. 

    “At least if we understand how environment affects development, then at least we can look for ways to improve this in the future,” he says. 

    It’s too early to say whether obesity is actually a neurodevelopment disorder, Waterland explains, but if early research like this continues to build evidence, public health interventions to curb the worldwide obesity epidemic could focus more on prenatal and early life nutrition, healthy weight gain, and stress reduction.

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  • Better Body Image: Accepting Your Body at Any Size

    Better Body Image: Accepting Your Body at Any Size

    No matter what your scale says, being comfortable in your own skin is up to you. It can be tough, in a society that prizes unrealistic images. But it’s possible, and it starts with what you say when you look in the mirror.

    One of the first rules of achieving a healthy and happy body image is to stop allowing “put-downs” in front of the mirror, says Lori Osachy, body image expert and lead therapist at The Body Image Counseling Center in Jacksonville, Fla.

    “Even if in the beginning that means you have to jump in front of the mirror and shout, ‘You’re awesome,’ and then immediately jump back out, that’s OK,” she says. “The goal is to retrain your brain how to think positively about your reflection and your body.”

    Over time, telling yourself that you’re beautiful, even if you don’t believe it at first, will improve your confidence, she says. The psychology behind this technique is called “cognitive behavioral therapy,” a method that psychologists and therapists use to stop negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones instead.

    Robyn Silverman, PhD, body image expert and author, agrees that “faking” confidence will eventually turn bad body thoughts into good ones, though it takes time.

    To speed up the process, Silverman suggests posting notes with positive messages on your mirror to remind yourself of your good qualities. Those notes don’t always have to be about your looks. Jotting down things about your character will help you develop a more positive attitude toward your reflection.

    Be Your Own Body Image Advocate

    You would never tell your friend she looks fat in a bathing suit, or tell your coworker his arms are scrawny, so why would you tell yourself that?

    “Treat yourself as you would treat others, and you’ll find negative thoughts will lessen over time,” says Leslie Goldman, MPH, body image expert and author of Locker Room Diaries.

    Ditch the things in your life that make you feel inferior, whether that is body-bashing friends, fashion magazines with supermodels, or TV shows that portray men and women in an unrealistic, sexist way, Silverman says. If a family member or roommate makes you feel bad about the way you look, talk to them directly and establish a “fat-talk-free policy,” she says.

    If an advertisement or TV commercial makes you feel bad about yourself, examine it closer and look for the ways it’s trying to sell you something. “Remember, if we didn’t feel inferior to the models in the ads, we wouldn’t want to buy the product,” Silverman says.

    Look Beyond the Scale

    All too often, people get hung up on the number on the scale, rather than paying attention to how they feel, Silverman says. People of all sizes do that, and it doesn’t help.

    Instead of focusing on one number — your weight — pay attention to how you feel when you wake up or after you hurry to catch the bus. Also check on all your other numbers, such as blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure. Those may paint a better picture of your health than just your weight alone.

    If you’re trying to lose weight, Silverman suggests swapping weight-loss oriented goals with fitness goals like keeping your cholesterol level down or training for your first 5K.

    “Instead of running away from your old body on the treadmill or the StairMaster, work toward a goal that makes you feel accomplished,” she says.

    Choose an exercise you love, and you’ll be more likely to stick with it, Osachy says. When you exercise for stress relief and fun, your weight and health may naturally start to fall into place, she says.

    As an added bonus, doing something you love will make you see your body in a different light, Silverman says. For instance, instead of loathing your thighs, you’ll appreciate them because they enable you to do the things that you love, whether that is yoga or cycling.

    Cut Yourself Some Slack

    Forget perfection or rigid rules. It’s OK to splurge once in a while even if you’re trying to lose weight, Goldman says. Not letting yourself have a little cake at a party may make you more likely to overindulge later.

    Focus on the bigger picture and praise yourself for the healthy choices you make, rather than the times you think you’ve “failed,” Silverman says.

    Don’t label any food as “bad” or “good.” You’ll only feel worse about yourself and your body if you eat something that isn’t your definition of perfect, Goldman says.

    Don’t Compare Yourself to Others

    “Healthy comes in all shapes and sizes,” Goldman says.

    Never resort to unhealthy measures, such as not eating or taking potentially dangerous supplements, to fit society’s idea of what looks healthy, Silverman says.

    If you’re physically fit, and everything checks out with your doctor, you may want to redefine your weight-loss goals altogether. If negative thoughts about your body become overwhelming, or if you are finding it hard to give up perfectionistic habits about food, weight, or exercise, talk to your doctor or a counselor or therapist.

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  • Endocrine Society experts recommend individualized approach to use of telehealth

    Endocrine Society experts recommend individualized approach to use of telehealth

    Newswise — WASHINGTON—Following rapid growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth visits are expected to remain an important part of endocrine care, according to a new Endocrine Society policy perspective published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

    Health care providers need to consider a variety of factors when determining which type of visit best serves an individual patient’s needs at a given moment. For many patients, scheduling a mixture of in-person and telehealth visits can make medical care more convenient and effective.

    “Clinicians will need to draw upon their own knowledge of each patient and their clinical goals to decide when to incorporate telehealth into their care,” said Varsha G. Vimalananda, M.D., M.P.H., of VA Bedford Healthcare System in Bedford, Mass., and Boston University School of Medicine in Boston, Mass. She is the policy perspective’s first author. “Telehealth visits can be considered as an option each time we schedule an appointment. Patient preference should be elicited, and decisions guided by weighing the factors we describe in the perspective piece.”

    The policy perspective explores five aspects of care that determine when telehealth is appropriate, including:

    • Clinical factors, including whether an in-person physical exam or assessment is needed;
    • Patient factors, such as geographic distance to the clinic, access to transportation, work and family obligations, and comfort level with technology;
    • The patient-clinician relationship;
    • The clinician’s physical surroundings and personal circumstances; and
    • Availability of infrastructure needed to provide quality telehealth services.

    Telehealth can be a valuable component of an individualized care plan. Health care providers and patients should discuss how telehealth fits into care as they develop a care plan together, the policy perspective recommended.

    Telehealth can play an important role in reducing disparities in health care access. Telehealth appointments can make it easier for patients facing barriers such as travel, cost, mobility, mental health, and work or caregiver responsibilities to access the medical care they need.

    Other authors of this study include: Juan P. Brito, M.D., M.S., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.; Leslie A. Eiland, M.D., of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Neb.; Rayhan A. Lal, M.D., of Stanford University in Stanford, Calif.; Spyridoula Maraka, M.D., M.S., of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, Ark., VA Central Arkansas Healthcare System, Little Rock, Ark., and the Mayo Clinic; Marie E. McDonnell, M.D., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass., and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass.; Radhika Narla, M.D., of the University of Washington in Seattle, Wash., and VA Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle, Wash.; Mara Y. Roth, M.D., of the University of Washington; and Stephanie S. Crossen, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of California Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento, Calif.

    The manuscript, “Appropriate Use of Telehealth Visits in Endocrinology: Perspective Statement of the Endocrine Society,” was published online, ahead of print.

    # # #

    Endocrinologists are at the core of solving the most pressing health problems of our time, from diabetes and obesity to infertility, bone health, and hormone-related cancers. The Endocrine Society is the world’s oldest and largest organization of scientists devoted to hormone research and physicians who care for people with hormone-related conditions.

    The Society has more than 18,000 members, including scientists, physicians, educators, nurses and students in 122 countries. To learn more about the Society and the field of endocrinology, visit our site at www.endocrine.org. Follow us on Twitter at @TheEndoSociety and @EndoMedia.

     

    Endocrine Society

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  • Whoopi Goldberg says she didn’t wear a fat suit for ‘Till,’ correcting a reviewer | CNN

    Whoopi Goldberg says she didn’t wear a fat suit for ‘Till,’ correcting a reviewer | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Whoopi Goldberg is correcting the record after a review of her new film, “Till,” purported that Goldberg was wearing a fat suit during filming.

    In a mixed review, a Daily Beast reporter mentions Goldberg only once, writing that Goldberg was “in a distracting fat suit” for her role as Emmett Till’s grandmother. The review has since been edited to omit that line and features an editor’s note.

    “I don’t really care how you felt about the movie, but you should know that was not a fat suit,” Goldberg said on Monday’s episode of “The View.” “That was me. That was steroids.”

    Goldberg was referring to the health challenges she experienced last year with sciatica, a type of nerve pain, for which she was hospitalized and started using a walker. She said on “The View” that at the time, she was taking steroids, which can be used to treat sciatica symptoms.

    “It’s OK to not be a fan of the movie, but you want to leave people’s looks out,” Goldberg said.

    It’s not uncommon for a popular and awarded actress in a prestigious film to wear a fat suit, though. Plenty of stars have donned fat suits, sometimes in demeaning ways. From Gwyneth Paltrow as an obese woman in 2001’s “Shallow Hal” to Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp in last year’s “American Crime Story: Impeachment,” the actors inside the fat suits are often not fat. Men, too, have worn fat suits, largely in comedic roles, including John Travolta in “Hairspray,” Ryan Reynolds in “Just Friends” and Eddie Murphy in “Norbit.”

    This year alone has seen a surge of famous actors wearing fat suits: Renée Zellweger in “The Thing About Pam” and Tom Hanks in “Elvis” are two examples of Oscar winners who have worn fat suits for roles. Emma Thompson wears one in the musical adaptation of “Matilda” due out later this year, and in the awards season vehicle “The Whale,” Brendan Fraser plays an obese man at the end of his life under several pounds of prostheses.

    Viewers often criticize the practice, particularly when a filmmaker chooses not to cast an actor whose body type already matches that of the character. In a recent interview with the New York Times, retired professor and media researcher J. Kevin Thompson said that uses of fat suits in media – particularly when the characters portrayed by actors in fat suits are made fun of or portrayed in an unflattering light – can be psychologically damaging to viewers and that women disproportionately incur most of that damage.

    “These roles were most often associated with ‘humor,’ which, of course, might not be so funny if one were the butt of the joke,” Thompson told the Times.

    For its part, “Till” ostensibly does not feature actors in fat suits. The film, which focuses on Mamie Till’s activism and her contributions to the civil rights movement after the murder of her son, Emmett, will be released on October 14.

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  • New US Army regulation could result in more soldiers failing body fat assessments | CNN Politics

    New US Army regulation could result in more soldiers failing body fat assessments | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    As the US Army moves to a new way to measure soldiers’ body fat, officials acknowledged Wednesday that some soldiers who had previously passed under the old regulations may now fail under the new.

    The Army is changing its tape test – a method to measure soldiers’ body fat by taking the circumference of various parts of a soldier’s body with a measuring tape. The tape test, an often-dreaded practice among soldiers, is used when soldiers’ weights do not fall within the mandated body mass index screening table.

    Previously, men were taped around their neck and abdomen, while women were taped around their neck, waist, and hips. Now, all soldiers regardless of gender will be taped in one area – around the navel – to calculate their body fat.

    Many soldiers had cheered the Army’s efforts to update its Body Composition Program when the study started in 2021.

    But Holly McClung, a lead researcher on the Army’s Body Composition Study that resulted in the change, told reporters Wednesday that more soldiers will fail the new test.

    Army data provided to CNN showed that 34% of people were passing the previous version of the tape test when they should have failed. The new test is expected to align with the regulations and lead to more failures, the data said.

    The change is a potential concern considering that soldiers who fail to meet the weight standards can be separated from the service, after several months of attempting to get within their weight standard.

    Asked about concerns over more soldiers potentially failing because of the updated body composition study, Sgt. Maj. Christopher Stevens, the senior enlisted leader of the Army’s personnel office, told reporters on Wednesday that the Army is “putting everything on the table to really look at how we can ensure that we continue to assess and retain quality.”

    The tape test practice has long been criticized as outdated and inaccurate, particularly as the Army shifted to a new fitness test that introduced more weightlifting than the old test, sparking concerns that the body assessment wouldn’t account for gaining muscle mass.

    The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that the measurement of waist circumference can help predict who may be at higher risk of developing obesity-related health problems like diabetes and heart disease, but it is not a diagnostic tool to determine body fatness or health.

    Indeed, the Army said in March that soldiers “with a high volume of lean muscle mass were still at risk of failing the body fat assessment.” So the Army made an exemption for soldiers who scored a 540 out of 600 total points on the Army Combat Fitness Test, saying that those soldiers would not need to be taped. The exemption requires a minimum of 80 out of 100 points earned in each of the six fitness tests.

    “As soldiers leverage all domains of Holistic Health and Fitness and strive to reach their maximum potential, our policies should encourage their progress, not constrain It,” Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston said at the time.

    McClung said Wednesday that efforts by the Army to link data of body composition to soldiers’ performance is “kind of groundbreaking.”

    “And what we hope is that over years to come, maybe the bar will get heightened and that it won’t be a 540 it’ll be a 550, it’ll be a continuous moving benchmark because the soldiers will become more fit,” she said.

    For the next year, soldiers will have the option of using the previous measuring methods if they fail the tape test under the new regulations. If a soldier fails both, they have the option of requesting another assessment using specific machines that use X-ray or other methods to measure body fat.

    Soldiers who still weigh outside the required standard for their gender and height are enrolled in the Army Body Composition Program, which is meant to help them lose weight and get back within standards. Army regulations say they will be provided “exercise guidance” by a fitness trainer in the unit and meet with a registered dietitian.

    Soldiers who fail to get within standards after six months can be separated from the service.

    McClung said Wednesday that those who had been inaccurately passing would not be “necessarily separated from the Army.”

    “We want to help them,” she said, “we want to put them on a health promotion track, work with some dietitians and some trainers, and bring them up to standards.”

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  • Wantagh Resident Scott Lannan is Working to Launch the Santa Cause, a New Campaign to Help Those Who Are Sick

    Wantagh Resident Scott Lannan is Working to Launch the Santa Cause, a New Campaign to Help Those Who Are Sick

    By donating a portion of all the sales of Santa merchandise, Lannan believes it could generate funding to help those who are sick.

    Press Release
    –


    updated: Dec 21, 2018


    WANTAGH, N.Y., December 21, 2018 (Newswire.com)
    –
     Scott Lannan, a Wantagh resident, who has been known to ride his bicycle in town dressed as Santa, has been working to launch a new campaign. What he calls The Santa Cause is an initiative to raise funding through the sale of current Santa merchandise including pictures, lawn decorations and other Santa gear. He believes taking a portion of these sales could fund initiatives to help the sick and those in need.

    “I want us to get back to the real meaning of Santa as a giver, more than the commercialized industry that Santa now represents,” explains Lannan. “The legend of Santa originated with St. Nicholas in what is now Turkey. His story was about giving selflessly. I think if we can use that image of Santa today, we can get back to a place of helping those who are less fortunate, particularly those who are sick.”

    Allowing Santa to be active and in better health rather than obese encourages not just youth, but all those older father and grandfathers who play Santa to do so in a healthy way.

    Scott Lannan, The Santa Cause

    Health is important to Lannan. He believes it’s also important while helping the sick to show Santa in a new way. With the rates of childhood obesity rising, Lannan believes it’s time to show this most beloved childhood icon in a way that promotes activity and good health, which is why he’s Santa on a bike.

    “Allowing Santa to be active and in better health rather than obese encourages not just youth, but all those older father and grandfathers who play Santa to do so in a healthy way,” says Lannan. “Many balk at the idea because of tradition, but there’s no reason why Santa has to carry so much weight. Santa being active and eating healthy could be a great role model to children and adults of all ages.”

    To learn more about the campaign and how to help, contact Scott Lannan at 516-408-0219 or email thesantacause@outlook.com.

    About The Santa Cause

    The Santa Cause is an initiative launched by Scott Lannan a Wantagh, New York resident, who wants to use Santa merchandising as a way to raise funding to help those who are sick and in need.

    Media Contact:

    Scott Lannan

    Phone: 516-408-0219

    Email thesantacause@outlook.com

    Source: Scott Lannan

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  • TABLE FOR TWO Launches the Wa-Shokuiku Pilot Program: Learn. Cook. Eat Japanese!

    TABLE FOR TWO Launches the Wa-Shokuiku Pilot Program: Learn. Cook. Eat Japanese!

    Press Release
    –


    updated: Jun 14, 2017


    New York, NY, June 14, 2017 (Newswire.com)
    –
     TABLE FOR TWO USA, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, devoted to promoting healthy eating for children both in the United States and around the world, has launched the inaugural pilot program of its new initiative, Wa-Shokuiku: Learn. Cook. Eat Japanese! This project aims to teach elementary and middle school students in the U.S. about Japanese food and foodways through hands-on cooking and learning activities. Introducing pilot programs in Boston, New York, and Washington D.C. throughout spring, Wa-Shokuiku is expected to begin officially in autumn 2017.

    Wa-Shokuiku combines the Japanese words “Washoku(和食)” which refers to Japanese food and, “Shokuiku(食育),” food education. Washoku, literally harmony in food, is recognized as one of the world’s healthiest diets. Shokuiku, a government-mandated school curriculum in Japan, promotes a wide range of knowledge about food as well as the ability to make appropriate food choices. The Wa-Shokuiku program is inspired and informed by the educational philosophy, flavors and food of Japan.

    “The Wa-Shokuiku Project allows our students to experience not only a new cuisine but a new culture. The lessons are organized, interesting, and balance new learning with hands-on cooking.”

    Kirsten Svenson, Teacher at Community Health Academy of the Heights

    The Wa-Shokuiku project is aimed at after-school programs as an enrichment activity and centers on three main focuses: (1) preparing delicious and healthy Japanese food, (2) understanding the “washoku” world, and (3) making a difference in the world through understanding food-related concerns regarding issues such as food waste, food insecurity, and unwholesome eating. Students will learn how to make iconic Japanese foods such as onigiri (rice ball), sushi rolls, miso soup, and okonomiyaki and be introduced to less well-known foods in the Japanese diet such as wakame seaweed and lotus root. Dietary concepts such as choosing foods with “5 colors” (red, black, yellow, white and green) help students identify foods with a variety of nutrients and flavors that aid in creating a balanced meal. In addition, students will learn how to put together a bento box lunch, chopstick etiquette, the importance of eating together as a group, appreciation for those who both prepare and grow our food with the words “Itadakimasu” and “Gochisosama“, the importance of presentation and the concept of “Mottainai” (avoiding waste) as part of this 7-week program.

    “The key is to make Japanese food approachable,” says curriculum designer and cookbook author Debra Samuels. “We’re teaching our students about the healthy habits and cooking styles that can be used across a wide range of ingredients.” Students aren’t just learning about how to make Japanese dishes; they are learning about so much more. Program Coordinator Alexis Agliano Sanborn adds, “It’s about a mindfulness towards cooking and lifestyle.”

    The project launched its first pilot program at New York City school Community Health Academy of the Heights (CHAH) in Washington Heights under the supervision of Kirsten Svenson. After the first session, Svenson said: “The Wa-Shokuiku Project allows our students to experience not only a new cuisine but a new culture. The lessons are organized, interesting, and balance new learning with hands-on cooking. It is clear that Joshua-sensei (teacher) and the entire team of organizers and volunteers truly care about the culture that they are sharing and the students with whom they are sharing it. The enthusiasm in the room is palpable as our students practice new Japanese words, sample seaweed, rice ball, and arrange their bento boxes. Even as students left the very first session, they kept asking when Wa-Shokuiku would be back.” Students from CHAH had this to say about the program: “I like the new flavors in the Japanese recipes we make. At first, they seem different, but they taste really good!” “I like the program because we get to learn about a new culture that we wouldn’t know about otherwise.”

    Wa-Shokuiku was born from the shared passion for Japanese food and food education of the project members. “We saw a need for this type of work in schools,” says Project Leader and TABLE FOR TWO USA Co-President Mayumi Uejima-Carr. Uejima-Carr has been holding workshops in American schools and noticed the need for a new approach to food and programming. “Rather than one-off cultural events, we really wanted to create a structured curriculum to make as meaningful an impact on students as possible.” Boston University Anthropology Professor Merry White, a Japanese food and education expert, is a consultant on the project and Yamagata University Professor Katsura Omori, an expert in Japanese food education, has provided continued support and guidance. “Pleasure and curiosity are at the core of Japan’s food learning: children are taught to develop their senses and their sensibilities through education in food,” says White.

    The Wa-Shokuiku program has been made possible thanks to a grant from the United States-Japan Foundation as well as several charitable foundations, Japanese food corporations and pro bono support. David Janes, Director of Foundation Grants and Assistant to the President at the United States-Japan Foundation, says: “Wa-shokuiku not only promotes healthy eating, but promotes greater interest in the ties between the U.S. and Japan.” SMBC Global Foundation, CHALK (Choosing Healthy & Active Lifestyles for Kids) Program of New York-Presbyterian, JFC International/Nishiki, Zojirushi America, City Year Boston, Kid Power and Polite Piggy’s also provided necessary support and supplies for the pilot program. The Wa-Shokuiku team is excited to launch the pilot program and has set their sights on providing Wa-Shokuiku to more students in more schools this Fall. “Our initial experiences in the classrooms have been overwhelmingly positive,” says Uejima-Carr. “We continue to seek support and instructors that will help us bring this experience to more students.”

    About TABLE FOR TWO USA:
    TABLE FOR TWO USA (TFT) is a 501(C)(3) organization that addresses issues of hunger and obesity through a unique “meal-sharing” program. TFT partners with corporations, restaurants, schools and other food establishments to serve healthy, low-calorie, TFT-branded meals. For each one of these healthy meals served, a small portion of the cost is donated to provide one school meal for a child in need. TFT started in Japan and now operates in 14 countries. As one of the most well-known NPOs in Japan which is noted for the longevity of its people, TFT promotes Japanese healthy eating culture as well to tackle the critical health issues.

    Photos by Carlos Bido of 10×10 studio.com

    Media Contact:
    Mayumi Uejima-Carr
    Co-President, TABLE FOR TWO USA
    E: m.uejima@tablefor2.org
    P: 318-359-9736

    Source: TABLE FOR TWO USA

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