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To understand where fat comes from, you have to start with a skinny mouse. By using such a creature, and observing the growth of fat after injections of different kinds of immature cells, scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Rockefeller University have discovered an important fat precursor cell that may in time explain how changes in the numbers of fat cells might increase and lead to obesity. The finding could also have implications for understanding how fat cells affect conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. "The identification of white adipocyte progenitor cells provides a means for identifying...

MEXICO CITY - Abraham Leon was getting a checkup when he found out he had high blood pressure and was at risk of developing diabetes. On the spot, the 5-foot-6-inch, 240-pound lab researcher joined "Vamos Por Un Million de Kilos" (Let's Lose a Million Kilos), a national campaign to get Mexicans to collectively trim about 2 million pounds.

Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MDAre there really certain foods that can help you lose weight and keep it off? We're not talking about any so-called miracle food that "melts the fat" (does the cabbage soup diet ring any bells?). These are foods that really can help you lose or maintain weight, either by helping you to eat less or to burn more calories -- or, in some cases, maybe even helping to decrease your body fat.Experts say there are two basic categories of foods that can be considered "keeping it off superfoods" because they fill your tummy without piling on...

Thinking too much can make you eat more. Researchers at Universite Laval say intellectual work raises peoples' calorie intake and could be a reason for obesity. A group of 14 students were invited to eat as much as they wanted at a buffet, after taking part in three different tasks: * Sitting down and relaxing * Reading and summarizing a text * Finishing memory and attention tests on a computer All the tasks turned out to be low energy -- students only needed three more calories to do the mental work than to rest. However, they spontaneously ate 203 more...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Alabama, pushed to second in national obesity rankings by deep-fried Southern favorites, is cracking down on state workers who are too fat. The state has given its 37,527 employees a year to start getting fit — or they'll pay $25 a month for insurance that otherwise is free.

Next year, the state will add a $25 insurance fee for being overweight Alabama, pushed to third in national obesity rankings by deep-fried Southern favorites, is cracking down on state workers who are too fat. The state has given its 37,527 employees a year to start getting fit — or they’ll pay $25 a month for insurance that otherwise is free. Alabama will be the first state to charge overweight state workers who don’t work on slimming down, while a handful of other states reward employees who adopt healthy behaviors. Alabama already charges workers who smoke — and has seen...

More than 25 percent of adults are obese in 28 states, an increase from 19 states last year, Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reported in their fifth annual obesity survey. More than 20 percent of adults are obese — 30 pounds or more overweight — in every state except Colorado. Nine of the Top 10 fattest states are in the south. Mississippi leads the pack with an adult obesity rate of 31.7 percent, according to the report, which is a follow-up analysis of the annual Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey by the federal Centers for...

The threat to Britain and the NHS from rising obesity is as grave as that posed by terrorism, a top expert says. Durham University public health expert Professor David Hunter, who also acts as a government adviser, said ministers should be taking "bold action" now. He said this could include compelling manufacturers to improve the salt, fat and sugar content of their products. The Department of Health said it was making progress in disease prevention in a number of areas. Professor Hunter said that governments since the 1970s, including the present Labour government, had "tinkered around the edges" of the...

The announcement this week from the Local Government Association that Social workers will consider taking 'dangerously overweight' children from their parents and placing them into care is guaranteed to tie all decent people in a veritable Gordian knot of conflicting liberal impulses. On the one hand we all abhor the idea that children might be so packed full of high-calorie low-nutrition takeaways and convenience food by uncaring or ignorant parents that they are effectively crippled by their own bulk. On the other hand we Britons have long rather fancied ourselves to be a more than averagely tolerant bunch, and the...

Attention will be riveted on the Olympic torch Friday during the opening ceremony of the 29th Olympiad, but in cyberspace, another torch relay is under way to promote visibility of a “sport” not yet ready for prime time in Beijing. It is the digital torch of the World Cyber Games, being passed from country to country, ultimately to land in Cologne, Germany, on Aug. 11. World Cyber Games? That’s right: pro video-game play. Before anyone snickers, remember that sports channel ESPN routinely showcases poker tournaments, which arguably involve even less athleticism than video-gaming. Indeed, competitive video-game leagues have contracts with...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health)-If the trends of the past three decades continue, it's possible that every American adult could be overweight 40 years from now, a government-funded study projects. The figure might sound alarming, or impossible, but researchers say that even if the actual rate never reaches the 100-percent mark, any upward movement is worrying; two-thirds of the population is already overweight....

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - If the trends of the past three decades continue, it's possible that every American adult could be overweight 40 years from now, a government-funded study projects. The figure might sound alarming, or impossible, but researchers say that even if the actual rate never reaches the 100-percent mark, any upward movement is worrying; two-thirds of the population is already overweight. "Genetically and physiologically, it should be impossible" for all U.S. adults to become overweight, said Dr. Lan Liang of the federal government's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, one of the researchers on the study. However,...

<p>A death row inmate scheduled for execution in October says he's so fat that Ohio executioners would have trouble finding his veins and that his weight could diminish the effectiveness of one of the lethal injection drugs.</p> <p>Lawyers for Richard Cooey argue in a federal lawsuit that Cooey had poor veins when he faced execution five years ago and that the problem has been worsened by weight gain.</p>

In the Aug. 1 Wall Street Journal, Amy Chozick asked, "[C]ould Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability?" Most Americans, Chozick points out, aren't skinny. Fully 66 percent of all citizens who've reached voting age are overweight, and 32 percent are obese. To be thin is to be different physically. Not that there's anything wrong, mind you, with being a skinny person. But would you want your sister to marry one? Would you want a whole family of skinny people to move in next door? "I won't vote for any beanpole guy," an "unnamed Clinton supporter" wrote on a Yahoo politics...

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A death row inmate scheduled for execution in October says he's so fat that Ohio executioners would have trouble finding his veins and that his weight could diminish the effectiveness of one of the lethal injection drugs. Lawyers for Richard Cooey argue in a federal lawsuit that Cooey had poor veins when he faced execution five years ago and that the problem has been worsened by weight gain.

<p>COLUMBUS -- A death row inmate scheduled for execution in October says he's so fat that Ohio executioners would have trouble finding his veins and that his weight could diminish the effectiveness of one of the lethal injection drugs.</p> <p>Lawyers for Richard Cooey argue in a federal lawsuit that Cooey had poor veins when he faced execution five years ago and that the problem has been worsened by weight gain.</p>

Government bans the word 'obese' to describe overweight children Obesity is a growing problem in the UK Parents of primary school children will start getting letters in September telling them how fat their children are. But however much they weigh, no child will ever be described as obese. The Department of Health has found in surveys that the term obese is a turn-off, so instead will use the term “very overweight” for those children whose body mass index exceeds 30, in an attempt to enlist parents’ support. Primary care trusts have been given a detailed set of instructions, and a...

Study Predicts Obesity Apocalypse by 2030 Experts Weigh in on Fate of Rapidly Fattening Populace By DAN CHILDS ABC News Medical Unit Aug. 2, 2008— Rising sea levels. Flying cars. Speculation about what the world will look like a quarter century from now are in no short supply. But if new research released this week is correct, we can at least be sure of one thing: The forecast calls for fatness. The study, released this week in the journal Obesity, suggests that by the year 2030, nearly every American will be overweight or obese. Currently, figures from the U.S. Centers...

A Richmond man who killed his wife by sitting on her during an argument has been sentenced to 11 years in prison. Originally charged with murder, Pierre Ramon Mays Sr., 47, accepted a plea bargain Monday and pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter in the Oct. 23, 2006, death of Marilyn Mays, his partner off and on for 20 years. Marilyn Mays, 47, died of asphyxiated chest compression from her husband, who weighed 270 pounds, sitting on her chest during a struggle, prosecutor Jerry Chang said. When he saw she had stopped breathing, Pierre Mays immediately summoned an ambulance and...

Melbourne: Tried everything but can’t seem to get rid of your post-marriage love handles? Well, don’t question your determination for the failed plan, for the real culprit behind all weight worries is your hubby. Yes, you heard it right. According to health experts, a husband is more of a hindrance than help in a wife's battle with the bulge. "For some women, marriage definitely can be fattening," the Courier Mail quoted Dr Brian Steadman, a leading British authority on nutrition, as saying. "It's hard enough for them to stick to good eating habits when they're single, but they can find...

In a bid to “kill two birds with one stone,” Democrats in congress have introduced the Transportation and Housing Options for Gas Price Relief Act of 2008. This bill calls for the federal government to issue every American a “good pair of walking shoes” and mandates that “large appliance boxes be set aside as temporary housing for those who lose their homes due to mortgage defaults.” “The beauty of this plan is that the housing will be portable,” said an enthusiastic Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore). “People will be able to live closer to jobs they can walk to. We will...

Exiling the Happy Meal Los Angeles Lawmakers Want to Escalate The War on Obesity (And Fast Food) By SARAH MCBRIDE July 22, 2008 Despite its health-crazy reputation, parts of Los Angeles are plagued by obesity rates that rival any city in America. Now, the city may join a growing roster of local governments aiming to put their residents on diets by cracking down on the fast-food industry. Jan Perry, a Los Angeles city-council member, is spearheading legislation that would ban new fast-food restaurants like McDonald's and KFC from opening in a 32-square-mile chunk of the city, including her district. The...

For Some Ohioans, Even Meat Is Out Of Reach by Yuki Noguchi All Things Considered, July 17, 2008 · A generation ago, the livelihood of Gloria Nunez's family was built on cars. Her father worked at General Motors for 45 years before retiring. Her mother taught driver's education. Nunez and her six siblings grew up middle class. Things have changed considerably for this Ohio family. Nunez's van broke down last fall. Now, her 19-year-old daughter has no reliable transportation out of their subsidized housing complex in Fostoria, 40 miles south of Toledo, to look for a job. Nunez and most...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than a quarter of all Americans are now obese, the latest U.S. government figures show. The percentage of U.S. adults who are obese grew by nearly 2 percent between 2005 and 2007, from just under 24 percent to 25.6 percent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday. Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee had the worst rates, with 30 percent of adults reporting weights that made them medically obese. Colorado had the slimmest population, with 18.7 percent of people reporting weights that put them in the obese category. Obesity is defined as having a body...

Minister calls for children to be locked in school to stop them buying junk food Last updated at 16:47pm on 06.07.08   Children's Minister Kevin Brennan has called for secondary school children to be locked inside school grounds during breaks to stop them buying unhealthy food Children should be locked inside school grounds to stop them buying unhealthy food from shops and takeaways, a minister said yesterday.The drastic proposal comes amid new evidence that the Jamie Oliver-inspired drive to ensure school canteens offer more nutritious meals is being shunned by pupils.Children's Minister Kevin Brennan said secondary school children should...

Common Cooking Spice Found In Curry Shows Promise In Combating Diabetes And ObesityResearchers believe that curcumin, the anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant ingredient in turmeric, may lessen insulin resistance and prevents Type 2 diabetes in these mouse models by dampening the inflammatory response provoked by obesity. (Credit: iStockphoto/Nilesh Bhange) ScienceDaily (June 23, 2008) — Turmeric, an Asian spice found in many curries, has a long history of use in reducing inflammation, healing wounds and relieving pain, but can it prevent diabetes? Since inflammation plays a big role in many diseases and is believed to be involved in onset of both obesity and Type...

ScienceDaily (June 19, 2008) — Exercise does not suppress appetite in obese women, as it does in lean women, according to a new study. "This [lack of appetite suppression] may promote greater food intake after exercise in obese women," said Katarina Borer, PhD, a University of Michigan researcher and lead author of the study. "This information will help therapists and physicians understand the limitations of exercise in appetite control for weight loss in obese people." Borer and her co-workers sought to better understand how changes in body fat level influence appetite and a hormone called leptin,

It’s not likely dieticians will be endorsing his regimen, but a Virginia man demonstrated it is possible to regularly dine at a fast-food restaurant without being criticized for signing your own death certificate. Despite media attacks on fast-food for being unhealthy, ABC’s “Good Morning America” showed that healthier options are available without heavy-handed involvement from government in its June 19 broadcast. “Meet Chris Coleson – for years the Virginia man said he was eating too much and, of course, no diet seemed to work,” co-host Diane Sawyer said. “Then last December, he tipped the scales at 278 pounds and made...

Australia has a higher proportion of obese people than the United States, with the health system facing a "fat bomb" unless action is taken, a study warned Thursday. The report from the Baker Heart Institute found that 70 percent of men and 60 percent of women aged 45-65 had a body mass index of 25 or more, meaning they were overweight or obese. Titled "Australia's Future Fat Bomb," the study compiled the results of height and weight checks carried out on 14,000 adult Australians in 2005. The institute's head of preventative cardiology professor Simon Stewart said the results meant Australia...

The shocking death of Tim Russert last Friday has left an entire nation wondering what happened.  He was a model patient, doing everything his doctors asked.  All major media have run articles trying to explain the nuances and difficulties in treating coronary artery disease.  These articles find little fault in Russert’s care, trying to create the idea that his heart attack was just too hard to predict and that all that could have been done for him was done.  I beg to differ.  His death represents the failure of standard medical care to produce a positive result – an occurrence...

Obesity may be unsightly to some, but it has a real impact on the environment and our use of gasoline according to one economist. Dr. Richard McKenzie, a professor of economics at the University of California-Irvine and author of “Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies: And Other Pricing Puzzles,” attributed the increased carbon footprint to overweight Americans. He explained there are environmental implications, specifically the effects of obesity on global warming and pointed the finger directly at former Vice President Al Gore. “I am concerned about environmentalists who are advising other people to cut out the lights, drive...

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) -- Manuel Uribe, who once weighed a half-ton but has slimmed down to about 700 pounds, celebrates his 43rd birthday Wednesday with a simple wish for the coming year: to be able to stand on his own two feet to get married. At his home in northern Mexico, where he can still do little more than sit up on a bed, Uribe said that more than two years of steady dieting have helped him drop about 550 pounds from his Guinness record weight of 1,235 pounds. He hopes Guinness representatives will confirm in July that he holds...

THE fleshier air hostesses of India's state airline are too fat to fly, according to a ruling by the country's High Court. Judges yesterday dismissed a case brought by five Air India employees against the airline over its decision to suspend staff more than 3kg over their maximum weight allowance. The airline introduced the limit two years ago when it estimated that more than 10 per cent of its 1,600 cabin crew were overweight. Staff guidelines recommended different weights according to height and age. For an 18-year-old with a height of 152cm (5ft) the maximum weight is 50kg (almost 8st);...

Childhood obesity, rising for more than two decades, appears to have hit a plateau, a potentially significant milestone in the battle against excessive weight gain among children. But the finding, based on survey data gathered from 1999 to 2006 by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published in Wednesday’s issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, was greeted with guarded optimism. It is not clear if the lull in childhood weight gain is permanent or even if it is the result of public anti-obesity efforts to limit junk food and increase physical activity in schools....

CHICAGO - The percentage of American children who are overweight or obese appears to have leveled off after a 25-year increase, according to new figures that offer a glimmer of hope in an otherwise dismal battle. "That is a first encouraging finding in what has been unremittingly bad news,'' said Dr. David Ludwig, director of an obesity clinic at Children's Hospital Boston. "But it's too soon to know if this really means we're beginning to make meaningful inroads into this epidemic. It may simply be a statistical fluke.'' In 2003-04 and 2005-06, roughly 32 percent of children were overweight or...

Stigma can be a powerful force in changing behavior. Just ask smokers, whose once accepted habit is now so marginalized that the prevalence of smoking has dropped to about 19 percent of U.S. adults from nearly 24 percent just a decade ago. A lot of factors figured into the decline since smoking's mid-20th-century peak, but the sense that smoking is disgusting as well as unhealthful and socially costly has certainly contributed to many people's decision to quit. Now that smokers have been taken care of, the obese are the new scapegoats for a lot of our ills. Last week, a...

Belated, Patchy Response Further Hamstrung By Inadequate Federal Attention, Experts Say The problem at first was that the problem was ignored: For almost two decades, young people in the United States got fatter and fatter -- ate more, sat more -- and nobody seemed to notice. Not parents or schools, not medical groups or the government. But since the alarm was finally sounded in the late 1990s, the problem has been the country's reaction: a fragmented, inchoate response that critics say has suffered particularly from inadequate direction and dollars at the federal level. "The sense of this as a national...

I Read a story in the Washington Post about the death of a young woman. This ultra-huge died in her sleep. Her mom blamed it on obesity. Possibly so ... her mom is obese herself. In the story the mom bemoans the lack of "affordable" weight loss clinics and exercise facilities. Oh boy ... here we go. As we know, in the modern USA every single item or service that a person could possibly need or even want must be affordable. The new mantra is that there is something wrong with our country, our economy and our government if someone...

An epidemic of obesity is compromising the lives of millions of American children, with burgeoning problems that reveal how much more vulnerable young bodies are to the toxic effects of fat. In ways only beginning to be understood, being overweight at a young age appears to be far more destructive to well-being than adding excess pounds later in life. Virtually every major organ is at risk. The greater damage is probably irreversible. Doctors are seeing confirmation of this daily: boys and girls in elementary school suffering from high blood pressure, high cholesterol and painful joint conditions; a soaring incidence of...

As someone who commutes by bicycle into Manhattan, I would normally applaud any scientific rationale for more bike lanes. But some calculations in the new issue of the Lancet make me uncomfortable. The authors argue that policies promoting cycling and walking are good for the planet because they could reduce obesity — and obesity, the authors calculate, contributes to global warming. Do we really need to give fat people one more reason to feel guilty? The Lancet authors, Dr. Phil Edwards and Dr. Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, crunch the numbers and conclude: Compared...

Fat people blamed for global warming By Patrick Sawer Last Updated: 8:52AM BST 17/05/2008As if they didn’t already have enough problems on their hands fat people are now being blamed for global warming. British scientists say they use up more fuel to transport them around and the amount of food they eat requires more energy to produce than that consumed by those on smaller diets. According to a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine this adds to food shortages and higher energy prices. Researchers Phil Edwards said: “We are all becoming heavier and it is a...

Obese people are contributing to the world food crisis and climate change, experts say. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine calculated the obese consume 18% more calories than average. They are also responsible for using more fuel, which has an environmental impact and drives up food prices as transport and agriculture both use oil. The result is that the poor struggle to afford food and greenhouse gas emissions rise, the Lancet reported. It comes as the World Health Organization predicts the obese population will double by 2015 to 700m. In the UK, nearly a quarter of adults are...

NEW DELHI: Instead of blaming India and other developing nations for the rise in food prices, Americans should rethink their energy policy and go on a diet, say a growing number of politicians, economists and academics here. Criticism of the United States has ballooned in India recently, particularly after the Bush administration seemed to blame India's increasing middle class and prosperity for rising food prices. Critics from India seem to be asking one underlying question: "Why do Americans think they deserve to eat more than Indians?" The food problem has "clearly" been created by Americans, who are eating 50 percent...

A new study released today in the online edition of Physiological Genomics finds that individuals with a specific genetic variation consistently consume more sugary foods. The study offers the first evidence of the role that a variation in the GLUT2 gene – a gene that controls sugar entry into the cells – has on sugar intake, and may help explain individual preferences for foods high in sugar. The study was conducted by Ahmed El-Sohemy, Karen M. Eny, Thomas M.S. Wolever and Benedicte Fontaine-Bisson, all of the Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. Their study, entitled Genetic Variant...

A man awaiting trial on a murder charge is suing Benton County, Arkansas, complaining that the “skimpy rations” he has been fed in the county jail caused him to lose more than 100 pounds during eight months in jail. “I used to be a sturdy 400-plus pounds,” Laswell boasted. “Now, I’m practically skin and bones. It’s cruel and unusual punishment.” Laswell is being assisted in his suit by the ACLU. “This is but another sorry example of the pattern of torture and abuse that has overtaken the U.S. penal system under the Bush Administration,” said ACLU spokesman, Bertram Petty. “Starving...

Food costs likely to boost obesity in poor Healthier choices will be even more out of reach, experts say. By Alfred Lubrano Inquirer Staff Writer Some of the fattest people in America are among the poorest. And with food prices rising, the problem is likely to get worse. Tianna Gaines, who describes herself as impoverished and obese, knows this. At 5-foot-3 and 242 pounds, she lives on public assistance in Frankford and eats junk food because it's cheap and more readily available in her neighborhood than carrots and apples. Besides, said Gaines, 28, and a mother of three, "I don't...

LOS ANGELES — Rana Parker tells pudgy police they have the right to remain chubby, but it can and will be used against them on the streets of Los Angeles. The dietitian lays down the law for recruits, veterans and top brass, letting them know that eating right can help them do a better job and could even save their lives.

We Shall Overeat by: Deborah Lambert, May 06, 2008 THE SKINNY ON FAT STUDIES Academia has latched onto a new and powerful victim group by introducing “Fat Studies” on several American campuses. But . . . does this subject area qualify as a scholarly endeavor—or is it merely a sob-sister counterpart to “Women's Studies?” To author/commentator John Leo, these courses fall into the category of gripe sessions that push “identity politics, the airing of grievances and demands for protection from the oppression of the non-fat world.” Stephen Balch, who heads up the National Association of Scholars, agrees, and was quoted...

Growing evidence shows that surgery may effectively cure Type 2 diabetes — an approach that not only may change the way the disease is treated, but that introduces a new way of thinking about diabetes. A new article — published in a special supplement to the February issue of Diabetes Care by a leading expert in the emerging field of diabetes surgery — points to the small bowel as the possible site of critical mechanisms for the development of diabetes. The study's author, Dr. Francesco Rubino of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, presents scientific evidence on the mechanisms of diabetes...

Every year, whether you are fat or thin, whether you lose weight or gain, 10 percent of your fat cells die. And every year, those cells that die are replaced with new fat cells, researchers in Sweden reported Sunday. The result is that the total number of fat cells in the body remains the same, year after year throughout adulthood. Losing or gaining weight affects only the amount of fat stored in the cells, not the number of cells. The finding was published online Sunday in the journal Nature. Obesity investigators say the study raises tantalizing questions: What determines how...