Adiposity

Choosing a diet soft drink over a regular, sugar-packed beverage may not be the best way to fight obesity, according to new research from Purdue University. But the researchers said this doesn't mean you should grab a regularly sweetened soft drink instead.

Professor Terry Davidson and associate professor Susan Swithers, both in the Department of Psychological Sciences, found that artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body's natural ability to "count" calories based on foods' sweetness. This finding may explain why increasing numbers of people in the United States lack the natural ability to regulate food intake and body weight. The researchers also found that thick liquids aren't as satisfying – calorie for calorie – as are more solid foods.

he moment the little boy was born, the hospital staff knew there was something unusual about him. His muscles looked nothing like the soft baby muscles of the other infants in the nursery. They were bulging and well defined, especially in his thighs and upper arms.

"Everybody noticed," said Dr. Markus Schuelke, a pediatric neurologist at Charité University Medical Center in Berlin.

The baby, it turned out in the first such documented case in a human, had a double dose of a genetic mutation that causes immense strength in mice and cattle. Drugs are under development that, investigators hope, will use the same principle to help people whose muscles are wasting from muscular dystrophy or other illnesses. Experts say the little boy, now 4½ and still very strong, offers human evidence for the theory behind such drugs.

Filling our mouths with fat lights up pleasure centres in the brain, scientists have found, which may help us understand why we cannot get enough of certain foods.

Plenty of researchers have studied how tastes and smells trigger different spots in the brain. But few have examined how our brains respond to texture, such as the oiliness of cream, the thickness of gravy or the grittiness of nuts.

For those who struggle to lose weight, the problem might lie in their brains, not their stomachs. Researchers have found that our natural appetite could be built into our brains just after birth, and may then be set for the rest of our lives.

Richard Simerly and colleagues from the Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, Oregon, examined the role of a hormone called leptin in brain development andobesity, by using mice genetically engineered not to produce that hormone.

When life is not going so smoothly and people reach for goodies full of fat and sugar, they are doing more than surrendering to cravings. Comfort foods like chocolate cake and ice cream literally blunt the body's response to chronic stress, scientists reported last week.

Clever genetic detective work may have pinpointed the reason why a near-starvation diet prolongs the life of many animals.

Ronald Kahn at Harvard Medical School in Boston, US, and his colleagues have been able to extend the lifespan of mice by 18 per cent by blocking the rodent's accumulation of fat in specific cells. This suggests that leanness - and not necessarily diet - promotes longevity in "calorie restricted" animals.

The dietary guide introduced a decade ago has led people astray. Some fats are healthy for the heart, and many carbohydrates clearly are not

In 1992 the U.S. Department of Agriculture officially released the Food Guide Pyramid, which was intended to help the American public make dietary choices that would maintain good health and reduce the risk of chronic disease. The recommendations embodied in the pyramid soon became well known: people should minimize their consumption of fats and oils but should eat six to 11 servings a day of foods rich in complex carbohydrates--bread, cereal, rice, pasta and so on. The food pyramid also recommended generous amounts of vegetables (including potatoes, another plentiful source of complex carbohydrates), fruit and dairy products, and at least two servings a day from the meat and beans group, which lumped together red meat with poultry, fish, nuts, legumes and eggs.

Multitudes swear by the high-fat, low-carbohydrate Atkins diet, and now a carefully controlled study backs them up: Low-carb may actually take off more weight than low-fat and may be surprisingly better for cholesterol, too.

For years, the Atkins formula of sparing carbohydrates and loading up on taboo fatty foods has been blasphemy to many in the health establishment, who view it as a formula for cardiovascular ruin.

But now, some of the same researchers who long scoffed at the diet are putting it to the test, and they say the results astonish them. Rather than making cholesterol soar, as they feared, the diet actually appears to improve it, and volunteers take off more weight.

The cup that helps millions of people get started in the morning, and
several more cups throughout the day, may reduce the risk of diabetes,
Dutch researchers said Friday.

Scientists at Vrije University in Amsterdam said components in coffee seem
to help the body metabolize sugar, thereby reducing the risk of diabetes,
which affects 130 million people worldwide.

Research teams in the U.S. and Europe have so far identified at least half a dozen other compounds that have surprising power to regulate appetite. Researchers at London's Imperial College of Medicine showed just last month that one of those hormones, dubbed PYY3-36, actually promotes a sense of fullness after a meal.

The first big breakthrough occurred in 1995, when the Rockefeller's Friedman stunned the scientific world by announcing that he and his colleagues had discovered a hormone produced by fat cells that actually caused fat to melt away, at least in laboratory mice. Genetically engineered mice that lacked the gene for making this hormone developed ravenous appetites and became grossly obese. When these same mice were injected with the missing hormone, they shrugged off a third of the weight they had gained. The researchers dubbed the new hormone leptin, after leptos, which is Greek for thin.

Preliminary study in mice suggests drug, known as C75, suppresses appetite and burns fat. C75 appears to prevent the body from going into "survival mode" where it normally reduces metabolism to protect against starvation.