Seaweed to Tackle Rising Tide of Obesity

From: http://www.sciencedaily.com/

ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2010) — Seaweed could hold the key to tackling obesity after it was found it reduces fat uptake by more than 75 per cent, new research has shown.

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Kelp forest off coast of California. (Credit: iStockphoto/Tammy Peluso)

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Now the team at Newcastle University are adding seaweed fibre to bread to see if they can develop foods that help you lose weight while you eat them.

A team of scientists led by Dr Iain Brownlee and Prof Jeff Pearson have found that dietary fibre in one of the world's largest commercially-used seaweed could reduce the amount of fat absorbed by the body by around 75 per cent.

The Newcastle University team found that Alginate -- a natural fibre found in sea kelp -- stops the body from absorbing fat better than most anti-obesity treatments currently available over the counter.

Using an artificial gut, they tested the effectiveness of more than 60 different natural fibres by measuring the amount of fat that was digested and absorbed with each treatment.

Presenting their findings at the American Chemical Society Spring meeting in San Francisco, Dr Brownlee said the next step was to recruit volunteers and study whether the effects they have modelled in the lab can be reproduced in real people, and whether such foods are truly acceptable in a normal diet.

"The aim of this study was to put these products to the test and our initial findings are that alginates significantly reduce fat digestion," explains Dr Brownlee.

"This suggests that if we can add the natural fibre to products commonly eaten daily -- such as bread, biscuits and yoghurts -- up to three quarters of the fat contained in that meal could simply pass through the body.

"We have already added the alginate to bread and initial taste tests have been extremely encouraging. Now the next step to to carry out clinical trials to find out how effective they are when eaten as part of a normal diet."

The research is part of a three year project being funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. It addresses the new regulations set out by the European Food Safety Authority that any health claims made on a food label should be substantiated by scientific evidence.

"There are countless claims about miracle cures for weight loss but only a few cases offer any sound scientific evidence to back up these claims," explains Dr Brownlee.

Alginates are already commonly used at a very low level in many foods as thickeners and stabilisers and when added to bread as part of a blind taste test, Dr Brownlee said the alginate bread actually scored higher for texture and richness than a standard white loaf.

"Obesity is an ever-growing problem and many people find it difficult to stick to diet and exercise plans in order to lose weight," explained Dr Brownlee.

"Alginates not only have great potential for weight management -- adding them to food also has the added advantage of boosting overall fibre content."

What is a dietary fibre?

Dietary fibre would be scientifically classified as a group of carbohydrates of plant origin that escape digestion by the human gut.

"Actually, there's still quite a lot of confusion about fibre," says Dr Brownlee. "I think most people would describe it as roughage -- the bit of your food that keeps you regular and is vital for a healthy gut.

"Both of these facts are true but the notion that all fibre is the same and that it simply goes through your system without having an effect is wrong."

Fibre is made up of a wide range of different molecules called polysaccharides and although it is not digested by the human gut, it both directly and indirectly affects a number of bodily processes.

Dr Brownlee adds: "These initial findings suggest alginates could offer a very real solution in the battle against obesity."

McDonald’s Partners With Weight Watchers

Weight Watcher’s Gives The Filet-O-Fish Point Approval

By ADRIANA CORREA

From http://www.nbcchicago.com/

The Oak Brook-based company has received Weight Watchers’ seal of approval on some of their menu items, including the popular Filet-O-Fish, Chicken McNuggets and the Sweet Chili Seared Chicken Wrap.

“The partnership was initiated for the growing number of customers interested in health and well being,” said Mark Hawthorne, McDonald’s New Zealand managing director. The Weight Watchers items will be marketed to the Kiwis first.

The fast food giant joined forces with the world’s leading weight management organization to offer customers new meal combinations, each offering a Weight Watchers POINTS value of 6.5 per item.

The Decade in Eating

Over the past few years, McDonald’s has aimed at offering healthier food items for those weight-conscious costumers. As part of the deal, McDonald’s restaurants will soon use the Weight Watchers logo on its menu boards to promote healthy eating to its customers.

“The switch to a healthier canola blend cooking oil means menu items such as the Filet-O-Fish and Chicken McNuggets contain 60 percent less saturated fat than they did six years ago,” Hawthorne said.

Emma Stirling, a Weight Watchers Nutrition Advisor, believes this new partnership is a positive step for customers of both companies.

“Our philosophy is that all food can be part of a healthy, balanced diet taking into account portion control and frequency. We have worked hard to help guide people when they are eating out," Stirling said.

The Biggest Taco: This is Why America is Fat!!!

Fat Guy Lake Cannonball Fail

Fat Guy Lake Cannonball Fail - Watch more Funny Videos

Imagine the ending of Free Willy, only if the whale jumped into a frozen lake instead of the ocean. Pretty much the same thing.

Fat People Riding Scooters: A Gallery

By Brotha Jonze

If there was ever a sign that you are giving up on life, it’s not that you’re so morbidly obese that you are 38 and you scoot around on the same type of scooter my 84 year-old grandfather turned to after his cane gave way to a walker – his walker ultimately not enough support for his degenerating body.

At 82 he turned to a scooter, and only because a doctor recommended it after his arthritis became so bad that after a day on his feet, his knees would swell up the size of a cantaloupe – or in morbidly obese terms – the size of a small order of fries.

But still, the fact that your fat ass sits on one of these vehicles instead of walking through Wal-Mart is not the sign that you gave up on life, no. The real sign you gave up on life is that you’re sitting on a scooter in the drive-thru line at the local KFC – the same fast food joint that put you in your scooter in the first place.

Ricky Gervais would agree with me, and as always, is more articulate than I am which he makes apparent in this excellent video.

Click here for the whole article and Gallery

10 More signs you need to go on a diet

by Brotha Jonze

http://www.bannedinhollywood.com/

For those of you who are new to Banned In Hollywood, we’ve been posting articles — top 10 lists rather — like this for quite some time. If you’re able to laugh at least one of these photos you’ll probably like the rest of the site. If you become annoyed, irritated, or down-right pissed off because this list’s humor is founded on, at the very best, basic fat guy humor, we advise you to leave now (though you’re probably only pissed because you look like one of the people in the following photos).

For the first installment of the diet series, please head here.

For the second installment, head here (we advise checking both).

10. You are the Blueberry from Willy Wonka

9. You just busted my wall down… you bastard

8. It looks like you’re wearing an inflatable sumo Halloween costume but you’re not

7. You turned a shirt into a sports-bra

6. You don’t pop your collar, your collar pops you…

…(what does that even mean?)

5. Wat?

4. Your right foot looks like a big inflated pink condom

3. You can’t say ‘diet’, but you need to go on one

2. You make Princess Leia look li… Wait a sec…

1.5. Oh, there we go…

1. For the first time ever, the ‘Official XXL’ on your shirt is smaller than your shirt’s actual size

Discovery of Cold-Activated Brown Fat May Lead to New Obesity Treatments

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Getty Images

By Anne Harding

WEDNESDAY, April 8, 2009 (Health.com) — What if you had a special kind of fat in your body that burned calories instead of storing them—and it could be activated simply by spending time in the cold? According to three preliminary studies published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, you probably do.

Brown adipose tissue (called brown fat) helps babies, young children, and other small mammals stay warm by burning calories when activated by low temperatures. Scientists have been skeptical that adults retain significant amounts of brown fat on their bodies. But the new research shows that many of us—perhaps even most—do.

“The incredible excitement about this is that we have an entirely new way to try to go after obesity,” says Aaron Cypess, MD, of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, lead author of one of the new studies. Every obesity drug now on the market aims at getting people to take in fewer calories, Dr. Cypess points out. The current findings, while very preliminary, suggest that drugs could be developed that fire up brown fat activity and help people burn calories faster.

The new research is important because it confirms that adults have brown fat involved in temperature regulation, while also probably playing a role in whether a person is lean or overweight, says Jan Nedergaard, PhD, a professor at the Wenner-Gren Institute at the University of Stockholm in Sweden who has been studying brown fat for 30 years but was not involved in the current research.

“Brown fat can be a very significant player in the game of how we react to the food we eat and whether we store it or burn it away,” Dr. Nedergaard says.

While scientists have known about brown fat and what it does for decades, it’s been nearly impossible to study it in live humans until very recently. Finding it in people’s bodies meant taking tissue samples, so scientists mostly stuck to studying it in lab animals.

This changed when nuclear medicine specialists observed that some people had deposits of tissue that looked like fat but didn’t act like it; this fat-like tissue was located above the collarbones and in the upper chest and consumed lots of energy. Conversely, white adipose tissue—the regular fat that stores extra calories and makes us gain weight—shows very little metabolic activity.

Scientists began investigating whether this mystery tissue might be the elusive brown fat. In the new NEJM reports, three independent research teams have confirmed that this is the case, indeed, and that integrated positron-emission tomography and computed tomography (PET-CT) scans can be used not only to identify it but to measure its metabolic activity.

In their report, Dr. Cypess and his colleagues reviewed 3,640 PET-CT scans performed on 1,972 patients at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston for various diagnostic reasons. Among women, 7.5% had patches of brown fat that were more than 4 millimeters in diameter, while 3.1% of men had similar patches.

“The people who had brown fat were, in fact, different from the people who didn’t,” Dr. Cypess explains: They were younger and leaner. People who were older, those who were obese, and those using heart drugs called beta blockers were less likely to have brown fat.

Dr. Cypess and his team also found that people whose scans were done in the winter had the most brown fat, while those scanned in the summer had the least; people who underwent the tests in the spring or fall fell in the middle.

Researchers from the Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands, in the second study, looked at how temperature affected brown fat activity in 24 healthy men, also using PET-CT. When the volunteers sat in a room kept at 72° F for two hours, none of their scans showed brown fat activity. But when they were exposed to slightly chillier conditions—about 61° F—23 showed brown fat activity. The 10 men who were lean (with body mass indexes of less than 25) had more brown fat than the 14 who were overweight or obese, and their brown fat was also more active.

“That’s really new, that so many people do have brown adipose tissue,” says lead author Wouter D. van Marken Lichtenbelt, PhD.

In the third study, Sven Enerback, MD, of the University of Goteborg in Sweden, used PET to examine how cold temperatures affected brown fat activity, this time in five people. Participants spent two hours in a room kept at 63° F to 66° F. During the scan, they submerged one foot in ice water, alternating five minutes in the water and five minutes out. The cold conditions boosted the amount of glucose the study participants’ brown fat consumed by a factor of 15.

In an accompanying editorial, Francesco Celi, MD, of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Md., notes that “taken together, these studies point to a potential ‘natural’ intervention to stimulate energy expenditure: Turn down the heat and burn calories (and reduce the carbon footprint in the process).”

This is obviously an oversimplification, Dr. Celi says, but the demonstration that adults have brown fat that can be activated is, nevertheless, “powerful proof of concept” that the tissue could be a target for obesity-fighting drugs or even environmental fat-fighting strategies.

While Dr. Cypess is excited about the possibility of drugs that help people burn more calories, he warns that such medicines wouldn’t allow people to slim down without eating healthy and becoming more active.

The maximum amount of extra energy that people with relatively large brown fat deposits can burn probably tops out at about 500 calories. “It doesn’t take much extra food to eliminate any benefit you’ve got,” he says. “I personally don’t think that hanging out in the cold is going to be an effective way of fighting obesity.”

Discovered: The 'fat controller' in the body that is the key to staying slim

By Fiona Macrae

A 'fat controller' in the gut could be the key to preventing obesity, diabetes and heart disease, research suggests.

Scientists have pinpointed an enzyme that determines whether the fat we eat is burnt off as energy or stored in the body.

The breakthrough raises the prospect of a pill being developed which targets the enzyme in people, allowing them to eat without worrying about putting on weight.

Want to stay slim? Call the fat controller

Research at the University of California focused on MGAT2, an enzyme found in the intestines of mice and humans.

Mice without the protein were able to eat a high-fat diet while remaining slim and healthy.

The fat they absorbed was burnt off as energy, rather than stored, the journal Nature Medicine reports.

The mice in the experiment also seemed better at processing sugar, cutting their risk of diabetes, and had lower levels of 'bad' cholesterol in their blood.

A pill that targets the enzyme in people could provide a new weapon in the battle of the bulge.

Obesity has become a staggering problem across much of the developed world over the past few years and this breakthrough could help sufferers

The researchers said: 'Our studies identify MGAT2 as a key determinant of energy metabolism in response to dietary fat and suggest that the inhibition of this enzyme may prove to be a useful strategy for treating obesity and other metabolic diseases associated with excessive fat intake.'

With almost a quarter of men and women obese and children faring little better, such a drug is likely to have mass appeal.

Even more appealing is the prospect of a pill that makes the body fit, as well as keeping it slim.

Last year, US scientists unveiled an experimental drug which fools the muscles into thinking they have worked long and hard, boosting fitness as well as burning off fat.

Mice treated with AICAR for four weeks burned more calories and had less fat than untreated mice and when tested on a treadmill, they could run almost 50 per cent longer.

Researcher Professor Ronald Evans, of the Salk Institute in California, said: 'We have exercise in a pill.

'It is tricking the muscle into "believing" it's been exercised daily.

'It proves you can have a pharmacological equivalent to exercise.'

But obesity experts say such pills are years from the market, and most people would benefit from eating less and exercising more.