Fat, Dietary
Mood hormone may affect fat, U.S. study finds
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A brain chemical strongly linked to mood and appetite may also directly affect fat gain, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
They said levels of serotonin, the nerve-signaling chemical targeted by many antidepressants, may also direct the body to put down fat regardless of how much food is eaten.
“It may be one reason diets fail,” metabolism expert Kaveh Ashrafi of the University of California, San Francisco, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.
McDonald’s cooking oil trans fat-free in U.S., Canada
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McDonald’s Corp has switched to cooking oils free of trans fats in all of its restaurants in the United States and Canada, Chief Executive Jim Skinner said on Thursday.
The restaurants made the switch over the past few months, he said.
By the end of the year, McDonald’s pies and other baked goods will also be free of trans fats, Skinner told the company’s annual meeting.
Novel mechanisms controlling insulin release and fat deposition discovered
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Scientists at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have in two recent studies shown that a receptor called ALK7 plays important roles in the regulation of body fat deposition as well as the release of insulin from beta-cells in the pancreas. These findings have implications for the development of treatments against diabetes and obesity.
“We have shown in animal studies that removing the ALK7 receptor improves insulin release by beta-cells in the pancreas, and at the same time decreases fat deposition in situations of high caloric intake”, says Professor Carlos Ibáñez, who lead the two studies that are now published as back-to-back papers in the PNAS. “The well-known connections between diabetes and obesity make our combined findings quite exciting.”
Up to 6 per cent of the world population is estimated to suffer from some form of diabetes, either due to a reduced ability to produce insulin, or to insulin resistance. Insulin is a hormone required by cells in the body to absorb glucose from the blood, thereby providing them with energy. Obesity has been shown to increase the risk of developing diabetes, and as overweight becomes more prevalent in the human population, so do the cases of diabetes.
Fish oil has heart-rhythm stabilizing effects: study
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In a prospective clinical study, the consumption of fish oil supplements had the effect of reducing the electrical irritability of the heart in people with heart rhythm disturbances.
“This stabilizing effect may be one way in which fish oil reduces mortality in patients with coronary artery disease,” Dr. Glenn D. Young from Royal Adelaide Hospital, Australia told Reuters Health.
“This study supports the more wide spread use of fish oil and/or fish consumption in coronary artery disease patients,” Young said.
Too fat? Common virus may be to blame: study
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A common virus causes human adult stem cells to turn into fat cells and could explain why some people become obese, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
The research builds on prior studies of adenovirus-36, a common cause of respiratory and eye infections, and it may lead to an obesity vaccine, they said.
Obese people tend to pick overweight mates
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A new UK study provides additional evidence that heavy people are more likely to choose other overweight individuals as mates.
This phenomenon is known as “assortative mating” - when men and women tend to select partners according to nonrandom attributes such as height, religion, age and smoking habits.
Abnormal fat metabolism underlies heart problems in diabetic patients
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Heart disease hits people with diabetes twice as often as people without diabetes. In those with diabetes, cardiovascular complications occur at an earlier age and often result in premature death, making heart disease the major killer of diabetic people. But why is heart disease so prevalent among diabetics?
To help answer that question, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have been analyzing the fat (lipid) composition of heart tissue from laboratory mice with diabetes. They have found that heart cells of diabetic mice lose an important lipid from cellular components that generate energy for the heart, and their latest research shows this happens at the very earliest stages of diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes and heart disease—Heavier may mean healthier
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Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences studying links between an early sign of heart disease called coronary artery calcification and body fat have found that, paradoxically, more fat may have some advantages, at least for people – particularly women – who have type 1 diabetes. Cardiovascular complications, including heart disease, are a leading cause of death for people with diabetes, who tend to suffer cardiovascular disease decades earlier than non-diabetics.
“Gaining weight may reflect good or better treatment with insulin therapy, which may partly explain why participants who gained weight over time had lower mortality rates,” said Trevor Orchard, M.D., professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), who is presenting the findings during the 67th annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association. Scientific sessions take place June 22-26 at the McCormick Place Convention Center, Chicago.
Exercise, diet reduce fatty liver in obese teens
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Efforts to help obese children become more active and eat better can help reduce the amount of fatty tissue in their livers.
Known medically as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, this condition is becoming increasingly common as the prevalence of obesity increases, Dr. Ana R. Damaso and colleagues from the Federal University of Sao Paulo in Brazil note in their report. There are currently no drugs available to reverse fatty liver disease, which can progress to cirrhosis, even among young patients, the doctors add.
They set out to determine whether a 12-week program including nutrition education and two one-hour exercise sessions per week would have any effect on fatty liver in a group of 73 obese teens.
Wendy’s cuts most trans fats from fries, chicken
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Wendy’s International Inc. on Thursday said it would significantly cut trans fats from its menu, beating market leader McDonald’s Corp., which still has not made good on its promise to remove the artery-clogging fats from french fries in the United States.
Wendy’s, the No. 3 U.S. burger chain, said its restaurants in the United States and Canada will switch to a new blend of corn and soy oil for french fries and breaded chicken items starting in August.
The move will reduce trans fats in french fries to just zero to 0.5 grams, depending on serving sizes, while all of the breaded chicken products will have zero grams of trans fats.
Cloned pigs could produce healthier bacon
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In what sounds like a bacon lover’s dream, scientists have genetically engineered piglets to carry a heart-healthy form of fat normally found in fish.
However, it will likely be some time before the results appear on supermarket shelves, if ever.
But the research, reported in the journal Nature Biotechnology, marks the first time that livestock have been genetically altered to produce omega-3 fatty acids—a type of fat, found largely in fish, that has been linked to lower heart disease risk.
McDonald’s to put fat content on wrappers
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McDonald’s Corp. customers will soon know that the Big Mac they bought contains almost half their recommended daily fat intake just by looking at the wrapper.
In its latest measure to fend off critics that blame the world’s largest restaurant company for contributing to rising incidents of obesity and other health problems, McDonald’s on Tuesday said it will start printing nutritional information on the packaging of its food.
Parathyroid hormone is associated with decreased fat mass in young healthy women
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Objective:
To investigate the relationship of parathyroid hormone (PTH) with dietary calcium and changes in body composition.
Design:
Cross-sectional and 1-year longitudinal trial.
New gym strategy boosts overweight kids’ health
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A fitness-oriented gym class helps overweight kids lose body fat and build cardiovascular fitness, a new study shows.
Children participating in the 45-minute class also improved their levels of the key blood-sugar-regulating hormone insulin, which translates to a reduced diabetes risk, according to the report in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
Most schools offer junk food
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Nine out of 10 U.S schools offer snack food or soda to students in direct competition with school lunches, the U.S. General Accountability Office reported on Wednesday.
Some, but not all, of the snacks are “junk” food. Consumer groups and some politicians have called for immediate legislation to regulate the nutritional content of what foods schools can offer—even those in vending machines.
