Pretty much all of America’s increased calorie consumption between the late-1970s and the mid-1990s came from increased snacking. Women actually started eating smaller meals during this period, they just more than made up for it with snacks.

That data is a little out of date, but according to Professor Richard Mattes the snack explosion only continued. In 1996, the average American ate about 423 calories worth of snacks per day but by 2006 that was up to 580.

The centrality of snacking to obesity is a significant challenge for public policy. There’s a lot of focus on chain restaurant portion size, both in the media and in terms of the Obama administration’s push for menus to state calorie contents. But the issue really doesn’t seem to be that people started ordering gigantic meals. It’s more that they started supplementing regular meals with more sweetened beverages and bigger bags of chips. It’s noteworthy to me that I see a lot of emphasis lately on fancy places trying to push “healthy” snacks — nuts and dried kale and what not. But it’s clear from the data that the actual pattern of the healthier eating habits of yore was simply less snacking rather than a universe of tasty nutritious treats.

Fat Thanks to Ketul P. for the tip!

via Obesity in America is more about snacks than giant meals – Vox.

The majority of potential Army reservists are either hooked on prescription drugs, have too many tattoos, are overweight or have mental conditions that prohibit them from joining the military, recruiters say.

Seven out of 10 applicants fail to meet Army Reserve standards on “mental, moral and physical reasons,” said Capt. Eric Connor, U.S. Army Reserve Command spokesman.

The problem affects the broader service as well. According to Army Recruiting Command statistics compiled last year, 71 percent of young people wanting to join the military would fail to pass service tests because of their physical, moral or cognitive shortcomings.

via Army Reserve candidates’ tattoos, obesity, prescription drugs hinder recruitment effort – Washington Times.

Plenty of people who are obese and medically need to lose weight say they get sick and tired of being told to eat less and exercise more. And for good reason: A growing body of research finds lifestyle and behavioral modifications often are not enough to help someone drop a significant amount of weight and keep it off.

A new paper published in the journal Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology argues that it’s high time for obesity to be recognized as a serious chronic disease with biological causes — not just a result of poor eating habits and sedentary behavior.

The authors, a group of obesity treatment experts, say that while patients may be successful in the first few months of a weight loss program, some 80 to 95 percent will eventually put the weight back on. They say this is because obesity has a lot to do with underlying biological issues in the body that dieting simply can’t change.

“Although lifestyle modifications may result in lasting weight loss in individuals who are overweight, in those with chronic obesity, body weight seems to become biologically ‘stamped in’ and defended,” Dr. Christopher Ochner, lead author and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, said in a press statement.

Source: Diet and exercise not enough, obesity experts say – CBS News

Michelle Obama announced her “Let’s Move” campaign, an effort to fight childhood obesity by promoting healthier eating and physical activity among kids, five years ago Monday. But the most recent data show that driving down childhood obesity rates is proving to be an elusive goal.

Obama’s challenge was steep: Overall childhood obesity rates tripled in the past three decades, climbing from about 5% in 1974 to nearly 17% by 2008, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All told, 12.7 million children were considered obese when “Let’s Move” got underway in 2010.

How are efforts to fight childhood obesity doing?

As the chart below shows, the results are mixed: While childhood obesity among children between two and five years old dropped 3.7% from 2010 to 2012, the rate increased 2.1% for children 12-19 during the same period. The overall childhood obesity rate, meanwhile, remained at a constant 16.9% from 2008 through 2012.

If there’s a silver lining in the numbers, it’s the reduction in obesity among very young children. If kids are being taught healthy habits at a younger age, they’re probably more likely to carry those behaviors into grade school and beyond, public health experts say. If that trend holds true, we should start to see a similar drop in obesity among older children over the next few years.

via This Chart Shows How Hard It Is to End Childhood Obesity | TIME.

In a breakthrough discovery, researchers at the University of Adelaide have revealed how damage from obesity in mice is passed from a mother to her children, and also how that damage can be reversed.

The findings, by a team led by the University’s Robinson Research Institute, have major implications for the future of fertility research and are published today in the journal Development.

“It’s now well established that obesity in females leads to very serious fertility problems, including the inability to conceive. Obesity can also result in altered growth of babies during pregnancy, and it permanently programs the metabolism of offspring, passing the damage caused by obesity from one generation to the next,” says lead author Associate Professor Rebecca Robker from the Robinson Research Institute.

“In our laboratory studies, we’ve been able to unravel a key mechanism that leads to this multi-generational damage, and we’ve found a way to stop it happening,” Associate Professor Robker says.The research team found that obesity leads to a particular stress response that causes damage to the mitochondria, which are critical energy-producing ‘organs’ within living cells.

“All of the mitochondria in our bodies come from our mother. If the mother is obese, this produces stresses that lead to reduced transmission of mitochondria to the offspring. We found that the eggs of such mothers lead to heavier-than-normal fetuses with greatly reduced amounts of mitochondrial DNA and other obvious signs of damage,” she says.

Having pinpointed the problem, Associate Professor Robker and her colleagues attempted to stop it from occurring.

“Once we had identified the type of stress involved, we used compounds known to alleviate that stress in the cells. In particular, we were interested in compounds that are also being tested in diabetes clinical trials,” Associate Professor Robker says.

“These compounds were highly successful in preventing the stress response, thereby stopping the damage from obesity being passed onto the offspring. It restored egg quality, embryo development and mitochondrial DNA to levels equivalent to those of a healthy mother. Effectively, the problem was fully reversed.”

Associate Professor Robker says the results of this work point towards a potential future therapy to restore “natural” fertility in obese women, and to prevent multi-generational damage passing onto their children.

“Importantly, this work further highlights that a women’s nutritional state prior to getting pregnant matters greatly. Women are urged to eat healthy diets to optimize their chances for a healthy conception and to reduce the potential impact on their child’s future health,” she says.

This research is supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

via Damage from obesity passed to offspring, but impact of obesity on fertility can be reversed, mouse study finds — ScienceDaily.