“Leptin and the Biologic Basis of Obesity”

Jeffrey M. Friedman, M.D., Ph.D., Marilyn M. Simpson Professor and HHMI investigator, Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, and director, Starr Center for Human Genetics, The Rockefeller University, New York, N.Y.

Jeffrey Friedman provided the third lecture, which was essentially and introduction to why our cultural thinking on obesity is generally okay as far as it goes but doesn’t go nearly far enough. It also addressed the idea that our emotional reaction to fat, as a culture, is completely out of line with the facts behind fat. As before, below is my summary of the lecture in tweets. The full lecture, including the Q&A afterward with all the invited speakers, is available on YouTube.

Yes, obese people eat more and exercise less, but why?
Everyone has a set of convictions about obesity. Very little interest in hearing science-based answers.
Willpower as an explanation of differences in weight is most often favored by the lean.
Maintenance of weight under a variety of conditions suggests an inherent mechanism for balancing food intake and usage.
Mechanism will impose a basic drive in opposition to higher cognitive functions, no matter our desires.
Natural selection can act very powerfully over the short term. Recent increases in obesity not necessarily environmental.
BMI distributions don’t have to change much to see large *categorical* (overweight, obese) differences.
Obesity estimated to be as heritable as height.
Leptin a hormone that provides negative feedback between fat tissue and hypothalamus (my simplification).
Fat tissue is an endocrine organ. Lack of leptin causes a starvation response: extreme energy conservation.
Obesity appears to be a hormone-resistance syndrome, like Type II diabetes.
Adding much more leptin to the system can affect some patients, dosage required too high to be practical.
About 1/3 of obese sensitive to lower doses of added leptin.
May be use for leptin on conjunction with leptin sensitizers (short-term plus long-term agents). Still in trials. [Friedman noted potential conflict of interest in that he consults for the company developing the regimen.]
Studying signaling pathways in presence and absence of leptin to determine where weight is controlled.
10% of morbid obesity due to single-gene defects. More from multi-gene and gene-environment interactions.
We have a good grasp of the physiological cycle. Still working on neurological processing.
Metabolic, sensory, and cognitive factors affect likelihood of feeding behavior, but do not control directly.
Work on obesity has provided a framework for studying physiological/psychological systems.
Time to provide better advice to obese than “Eat less; exercise more,” which is millennia old.
Still things to do to protect health in the presence of obesity: exercise, eat well, stay at the leaner end of you weight range.
Vilification of the obese seems to be largely due to the human need to feel in control–or more than animals.
Good food choices? You don’t care what you eat when you think you’re starving.
Scientific debate ongoing over whether all calories are created equal with respect to long-term hunger signaling.

“Food Security in a Frightening and Finite World.”

Cary Fowler, Ph.D., executive director, Global Crop Diversity Trust, Rome, Italy

Cary Fowler offered the second lecture of the conference, speaking to us about sustaining genetic diversity in crop plants as a means of providing some security against the challenges of a growing population and changing climate on a local and global scale. He also gave us a nice introduction to the seed bank in Svalbard, Norway. As before, below is my summary of the lecture in tweets. The full lecture, including the Q&A afterward with all the invited speakers, is available on YouTube.

• But first, a shout-out to the ASL interpreter. 🙂
• Due to green revolution, we are the first generation to take abundance of food for granted.
• Africa is an exception to production growth, just reaching 1960s levels.
• Production increases have come due to much greater expenditure of resources: land, water, fertilizer, pesticides, etc.
• Land use increases stopped being as important to agriculture growth in 80s. Water usage is unsustainable. Drawing on aquifers.
• Water rights may lead to increased international conflict as food needs increase.
• When Kuwait recognizes Peak Oil (as they do now), the impact on food production must be considered.
• Natural gas is a requirement for current nitrogenous fertilizers.
• Climate change will change growing seasons and patterns.
• Hot summers have traditionally decreased production ~25%. Those will be the good years with projected climate change.
• “We are living through less than 1/2 of 1% of the history of agriculture, but I can promise you it will be the most interesting.”
• Most people think of biodiversity as a Rousseau painting: exotics. More important is diversity within species.
• Maintaining diversity determines whether we survive climate change, or just the next pest or disease.
• Flooding in Philippines hit their seed bank, causing the extinction of several species. We will lose more seed banks.
• Loss of more seed banks, with the additional diversity, is a completely predictable event.
• Svalbard seed bank is far from human and weather dangers. Naturally frozen as well.
• “Doctor, are you telling me the genetic diversity in this seed bank is the world’s most important natural resource?” “I think so.” “And that Svalbard is the best place for it?” “I believe it is.” “Then how can we refuse?” [Norwegian government’s response]
• The most drought-resistant crop in Addis Ababa contains a neurotoxin. Starve or become paralyzed?
• [From Ben’s Twitter stream] “If you can’t go down to the supermarket because you have no money and there is no supermarket…”
• Collecting seeds allows the crop to be bred to reduce toxins without losing drought resistance.
• “If you want to be bored and depressed [by the situation], you don’t have to do anything. It will come naturally.”
• “But these problems can be solved. You can help solve them, and it’s fun.”
• We also need to find and preserve the wild relatives of our crop plants.
• Subsistence farmers maintain much of the world’s crop diversity, but they are also the most vulnerable, and they’re not curators.
• Fruit diversity threatened by Russian law that may force development of land growing plants that don’t grow well from seed.
• Most national seed banks are of poor quality. “You wouldn’t want to store your kid’s lunch in them.”

“Food Politics: Personal Responsibility vs. Social Responsibility.”

Marion Nestle, Ph.D., M.P.H., Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, and professor of sociology, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University (blog: Food Politics, Twitter)

Marion Nestle (not Nestlé) provided the first lecture of the conference, focusing on the forces that shape our food choices, including the forces that shape the business of agriculture and food marketing. Below is my summary of the lecture in tweets. The full lecture, including the Q&A afterward with all the invited speakers, is available on YouTube.

• “When I started in nutrition, it never occurred to me that agriculture had anything to do with what we eat.”
• The challenge is not how to feed 8-9 billion people, but to empower 8-9B people to feed themselves.
• The solutions are social, not technological (empowering women, social and political stability.
• You don’t have to be a Nobel winner to figure out how to avoid obesity.
• Food industry can no longer just blame consumer personal responsibility for obesity. People eating less is big problem for industry.
• Junk food should be a special order. Healthful food should be easy to get–the default.
• Data slim, but rates of physical activity have changed very little since early 80s. People eating more.
• More calories available in the food system (not consumed) for every person.
• Everyone lies about food intake, but data still show 200 calorie daily increase.
• Farm subsidy program shifted from paying for not growing to paying for growing. Result: corn and food industry competition.
• Food companies also affected by new Wall Street demands for continual growth of profits. Industry changed in response.
• Eating out (higher calorie meals) got cheaper due to subsidies. Portion sizes in prepackaged food got bigger.
• “If there were one thing I could teach everyone in this room, it’s that larger portions have more calories.”
• It’s been shown experimentally that larger portions = more calories is not intuitively obvious.
• Larger portions cause people to underestimate calories consumed by a greater amount.
• Ubiquity: “When did it become okay to eat and drink in bookstores?”
• Fast food burger on a sweetened bun is highly subsidized ($1). Salad is not ($5).
• “If you hear people talk about how expensive fruits and vegetables are, it’s because they are.”
• Indexed price of fruit & vegetables up 40% since 80s. Grain products down 10-15%.
• Food companies under tremendous pressure, but have generally not responded productively.
• Ah, health claims. Chocolate cheerios may reduce the chance of heart disease?
• FDA rolled on First Amendment arguments. Courts friendly to corporate speech claims.
• American Heart Association only cares about fats, not sugars, in endorsements.
• POM suing FDA over blocked antioxidant health claims. (First Amendment claim)
• “Functional foods” the only big marketing category that’s selling these days, despite lack of regulation of claims.
• Companies will tell you they don’t make health claims in their categories, only claims of “healthier” choices.
• Health labeling “standards” set by companies. Vast majority of foods don’t meet independent standards set by nutritionists.
• Smart Choices = less than 25% calories from sugar.
• A better-for-you product may still not be a *good* choice. Fruit Loops = Smart Choice product.
• Marketing to children can instill brand loyalty for life.
• Kids’ marketing identifies “kid” foods, generally highly processed and not things a parent can produce on own.
• Michelle Obama’s good food campaign has a tiny fraction of the budget for marketing *one* breakfast cereal.
• Recent Salmonella eggs came out of dirty facility producing 2.3M dozen eggs per week.
• Food safety laws the legacy of Upton Sinclair in 1906. Still not substantially updated since then.
• Recent recalls show systemic failure. We know how to produce safe food, but we don’t enforce it.
• We’ve had a good monitoring process (HACCP) that were developed for the first manned space mission. We don’t use it.
• Need a single food-safety agency. Not happening. Senate has held food safety bill for 16 months.
• Schools are slowly experiencing the food revolution. Grassroots activism is making a difference.
• Buried on page 1206 of the health care reform act is national calorie labeling. Should be entertaining. Food lobby spending has shot up.
• Sustainability movement is producing return to the victory garden. Everyone votes with their fork for the food industry they want.
• You could not always walk into a supermarket and find fresh vegetables. This is progress.
• “The sugar previously known as high fructose corn syrup.”
• We don’t need to lose 100% of our industrial farming, but industry can get much better & we need diversity.
• There are no superfoods. Only food. The key is a diverse diet.
• Credibility of Am. Diatetic Assoc. destroyed by endorsements/partnerships.
• We still live in a democracy. If there is enough noise, legislators have to listen.

I am pleased to announce that Hanny & the Mystery of the Voorwerp is now available for free download or purchase in hard copy.

Who and the what? Well, actually, this is a collaboration between a bunch of friends of mine and NASA. It’s science outreach telling the story of a highly successful bit of citizen science. I’ll let Pamela Gay explain the background:

Sometimes, as an astronomer, I get to do some really weird stuff. This summer is one of those times. I actually, thanks to project PI (i.e. lead) Bill Keel, got an opportunity to help produce a comic book telling the story of how a Dutch school teacher found the light echo of a once bright Quasar. Light echos, like sound echos, for when waves (in this case light waves) bounce of a surface and reflect back to an observer, arriving after waves that took a more direct path. A man on a cliff may holler, with his initial outcry reaching you in factions of a second, while the reflection of his voice off a distant outcrop of rock may reach you a few moments later.

Trying to figure out that a random green blob of gas is a light echo was anything but easy. In this comic book, we try and tell the story of what it was like for the people involved and how exactly astronomy – in its not exactly Indiana Jones fashion – can be an amazing adventure.

Kelly McCullough also played a critical role at this July’s CONvergence:

Workshop: Hanny finds the Voorwerp and goes to wise astronomers to seek knowledge, but is told she has found something new and magical, and is sent to discover the true nature of the object. Join our band of writers and illustrators as we chronicle Hanny’s journey.

Jason Thibeault took part in the workshops and provided a chunk of the writing:

At CONvergence, we took part in several panels (there’s even photographic proof of the back of my and Kelly’s heads!) with Kelly McCullough, author of the WebMage series and all-around stand-up guy, the enthusiastic and incredibly sweet Dr. Pamela L. Gay, and the immensely knowledgeable Bill Keel, discussing how to go about turning the discovery and investigation of Hanny’s Voorwerp into a web comic in order to provide a manner of outreach, bringing the obvious human interest aspects of the story to the public. As it turns out, by doing so, we volunteered to help co-author the web comic. Not that I wasn’t absolutely honoured by the fact!

So we wrote several of the pages’ dialogue to help shoulder some of the burden, then Kelly gave them all a going-over to ensure we were all “on the same page”, so to speak. And for what minimal amount of effort we put in, we got a co-writing credit on the front page of the comic.

Me? Well, I had nothing at all to do with it. I just think my friends got together and produced something both truly awesome and beautifully inspiring, inspiring in a way more things should be. So go, check out the comic, and consider passing it around to others, both as inspiration for more involvement in science and as inspiration for ways to get yet more people involved.

It’s a lovely headline, that. It’s also some fun new research.

A new study that looked at math scores for boys and girls in 69 countries corroborates her experience.

“There are no differences in girls’ abilities in math,” says Nicole Else-Quest, who led the study that analyzed the tests of nearly a half million students aged 14 to 16. “When they have the same resources boys have, nothing holds them back.”

Her research linked individual achievement in test scores to the local status of women. In countries where men and women are perceived as equal, girls perform better in math. In Iceland, girls outperform boys; in Korea, boys outperform girls. In Canada, the difference in girls’ and boys’ scores is too small to be meaningful, Else-Quest said Wednesday.

Of course this means that people will step up to say, “Well, guys just have a greater range of math ability and the top mathematicians are just going to be guys.” I strongly recommend they read this first.