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But the frequency of family meals doesn't appear to make much of a difference, according to research from The Ohio State University. The study found that adults who reported never watching TV or videos during family meals had significantly lower odds of obesity compared with peers who always watched something during mealtimes. Those whose family meals were all home-cooked also had lower odds of obesity than other adults who ate some or no home-cooked meals. The study appeared in the  Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics . "How often you are eating family meals may not be the most important thing. It could be that what you are doing during these meals matters more," said lead author Rachel Tumin, survey and population health analyst manager at the Ohio Colleges of Medicine Government Resource Center. "This highlights the importance of thinking critically about what is going on during those meals, and whether there might be opportunities to turn th...

Brain tumors are the most common cause of cancer-related deaths in children, and are the second most common type of cancers in children. Over the past few years, advances in cancer therapy have resulted in an increasing number of children who survive their diagnosis of brain tumors. However, this improved survival is offset by their high risk of several comorbid conditions and early death. More recently, there is evidence that these survivors areA new study, published in  Scientific Reports , shows that increased body fat in children who have survived childhood brain tumours, compared to healthy children who have not had brain cancer, may contribute to such poor outcomes. The risk factors for these outcomes have not been thoroughly investigated. A new study, published in  Scientific Reports , shows that increased body fat in children who have survived childhood brain tumours , compared to healthy children who have not had brain cancer, may contribute to such poor outcome...

During this study researchers from the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Surrey in collaboration with the University of Sao Paulo examined the impact of a low protein diet on the liver. Monitoring groups of mice, one group receiving normal levels of protein in the diet and the other group nourished with low levels of protein for five weeks, researchers were able to uncover the damaging effect a reduction of protein can cause to the structure of this vital organ. Using a novel method -- design-based stereology -- which enabled researchers to estimate the volume of the liver and the total numbers and sizes of its cells in 3D, it was found that the liver of mice on a low protein diet had decreased by 65%. It also found a 46% reduction in the volume of hepatocytes (liver cells) and a 90% increase in the total number of binucleate hepatocytes (liver cells with two nuclei), causing a decrease of the functionality of the organ. The research also discovered that a low prot...

Previous reviews on obesity have reported 20 to 30 syndromes, but in the first systematic review on obesity syndromes, investigators from McMaster and the University of British Columbia have catalogued 79 syndromes with obesity that have been described in the literature. The research was published in  Obesity Reviews  and led by David Meyre, an associate professor of the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact with the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. "Rare genetic forms of obesity with many additional clinical features, such as intellectual disability, facial and organ-specific abnormalities, do exist," said Meyre, the senior author of the paper who holds the Canada Research Chair in Genetics of Obesity. "These syndromes, although individually rare, are much more numerous and diverse than anticipated," added Yuvreet Kaur, the study's first author and a recent graduate of the McMaster Bachelor of Sciences Honours Biology Program....

A new study, carried out at Leeds Beckett University, highlights the differences in pain response between different groups of people. The results could reinforce the argument for weight loss programmes being part of pain management plans for obese people suffering from chronic pain. The team investigated 74 volunteers, categorised as obese, overweight or normal according to their body mass index (BMI) -- a standard way of measuring if a person is at a healthy weight for their height. Volunteers in each group had pressure, cold and heat applied to two different areas of the body. The first experiment tested the hand, at the base of the thumb, an area that has little body fat. The second measured responses near the waist, in an area where extra fat is stored. Volunteers were asked to report at what point the pressure, cold or heat first felt painful. Each volunteer was also asked to report their experience of cold pain by putting their hands into icy water. Again, they were ask...

Monash College researchers, Dr. Eliana Mariño and Professor Charles Mackay. Credit score: Monash College Monash College's Biomedicine Discovery Institute researchers have led a global examine that discovered -- for the primary time -- food regimen yielding excessive quantities of the short-chain fatty acids acetate and butyrate supplied a useful impact on the immune system and guarded in opposition to kind 1 or juvenile diabetes . Autoimmune kind 1 diabetes happens when immune cells referred to as autoreactive T cells assault and destroy the cells that produce insulin -- the hormone that regulates our blood sugar ranges. The specialised food regimen developed by CSIRO and Monash College researchers makes use of starches -- discovered in lots of meals together with fruit and greens -- that resist digestion and move by means of to the colon or massive bowel the place they're damaged down by microbiota (intestine micro organ...

Fat is the primary long-term energy storage molecule in animals, and the control of fat levels is critical for survival. In mammals, the hormone leptin induces eating in response to fat loss, but so far, no corresponding signal has been identified, either in mammals or any other animal, that inhibits eating in response to fat gain. Because fruit flies replicate many of the feeding-related regulatory mechanisms and genes known to operate in humans, they make a good model for the search for such an inhibitory signal. To conduct their search, the authors focused on short non-coding RNAs or microRNAs , which are well-known inhibitors of gene expression. They first searched for microRNAs that, when overexpressed in fat tissue, affected feeding behavior, and second for the gene targets of those microRNAs. They identified a microRNA called miR-iab-4, which increased feeding by more than 27%, and a target gene called purple, which was expressed in fat bodies. Reducing purple expression ...

Researchers studied four groups of mice pups: Two groups were born to mothers who were fed a high-fat diet ("high-fat maternal") and then either continued a high-fat diet or switched to a normal-fat diet at weaning. The other two groups were born to mothers that followed a normal-fat diet ("normal maternal") during pregnancy and lactation. After weaning, those pups were fed either a high-fat diet or a normal diet. The research team examined lung structure from both groups, as well as several markers of inflammation and allergy response, including: airway resistance (how easily air flows through the respiratory tract), a hallmark feature of asthma; the amount and composition of the cells in the airways; and the concentration of inflammatory chemicals in the lungs. All of the pups whose moms consumed a high-fat diet had increased airway resistance, even those who weaned to a normal-fat diet. Higher airway resistance is commonly seen in asthma attacks ...

The first-ever Cleveland-based study will explore whether an exercise and nutrition program designed for mothers before they conceive will result in less childhood obesity. "Until now, similar intervention programs, which have only had limited success, were introduced after women became pregnant," said co-principal investigator Patrick M. Catalano, MD, professor of reproductive biology at Case Western Reserve and director of Reproductive Health and Clinical Research at MetroHealth . "To our knowledge, this is the first study that seeks to prevent childhood obesity before a planned pregnancy. Our hypothesis is that interventions after women become pregnant are too late to see the kinds of meaningful improvements in child and maternal health everyone is looking for." Through nutrition, exercise, and education, the Lifestyle Intervention in Preparation for Pregnancy program (LIPP) will seek to reduce body fat and improve glucose and lipid metabolism in overweigh...

The investigators have shown that a lipid (a fat-like substance) called 12,13-diHOME that circulates in the blood signals brown fat cells in mice to fuel up with other lipids, says Matthew Lynes, a Joslin postdoctoral researcher and lead author on a paper describing the work in the journal  Nature Medicine . In one experiment, obese mice given low levels of the molecule produced reduced levels of blood triglycerides -- other forms of lipids that can increase risks for heart disease and diabetes in humans. Although the Joslin team hasn't shown that 12,13-diHOME also triggers brown fat activation in humans, the lipid could aid research by acting as a biomarker for the process, notes Yu-Hua Tseng, Ph.D., a Joslin principal investigator and senior author on the paper. Today, researchers in the field must detect brown fat activation by injecting volunteers with tiny amounts of radioactive glucose and scanning them via positron emission tomography (PET), which is a difficult and expe...