fine health 29

Erythritol occurs naturally in a variety of foods, such as pears and watermelons, but in recent years has increasingly become a common ingredient in low-calorie foods as a sugar replacement sweetener. The study, led by Cornell University researchers in the Division of Nutritional Sciences and researchers at Braunschweig University of Technology, Germany, and the University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, published this month in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . It was conducted as a discovery-based analysis to identity metabolomic markers associated with weight gain and increase in fat mass in young adults during the transition to college life. Researchers found that students who gained weight and abdominal fat over the course of the year had fifteenfold higher blood erythritol at the start of the year compared with their counterparts who were stable or lost weight and fat mass over the academic year. As part of Cornell's EnHANCE project, an initiative of ...

The question of whether obesity should be called a 'disease' has sparked controversy for most of the last century. In their Obesity Reviews position statement, Dr. George Bray and his colleagues examine how an abundance of food, low physical activity, and several other environmental factors interact with genetic susceptibility. They draw parallels to chronic diseases, noting that the magnitude of obesity and its adverse effects in individuals may relate to the virulence or toxicity of the environment and its interaction with the host. "Accepting the concept that obesity is a chronic disease process is important for several reasons," said Dr. Bray. "First, it removes the feeling that patients alone are responsible for their excess weight. It also focuses attention on the ways in which this disease process can be tackled. And finally, it shows that if we can successfully treat obesity, many of its associated diseases will be eliminated." In an accomp...