Obesity in young people is now realised as a worldwide crisis of epidemic proportion. The aetiology of this disease suggests a disruption in regulation of energy at the population level, leading to a positive energy balance and excess adiposity. The relative contribution of food intake and physical inactivity remains to be elucidated. Treatment interventions have aimed to create a deficit in en...

BACKGROUND The low-income Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu is experiencing a double burden of diet-related disease whereby micronutrient deficiencies and underweight occur at the same time as obesity related non-communicable diseases. Increasing intakes of nutrient dense, energy dilute foods such as fruits and vegetables will be important to address this issue. However, reduced access to agricu...

In a world where food availability is intermittent, survival requires the capacity to store ingested calories in excess of immediate requirements so that energy may be released at a later point upon demand. To orchestrate these processes of energy storage and release, highly integrated systems have evolved, and these operate on several physiological levels. As for many complex physiologic syste...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of risperidone on energy expenditure and weight gain in female C57BL/6J mice. DESIGN AND METHODS Body weight and composition, food intake, energy expenditure, and activity were determined weekly. mRNA expression of uncoupling protein 1 in brown adipose tissue, orexin, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor in the hypothalamus were quantified using real-time ...

With the rapidly changing economic environments and numerous challenges hindering smallholders’ adoption of externally developed technologies, it is often argued that farmers’ innovations may be essential in the livelihoods of rural farm households and need to be promoted. Yet a rigorous assessment of the impacts of farmer innovation is lacking. Consequently, we analyse the effect of farmer inn...

In this paper, I survey the recent literature on the behavior of consumption as households transition to retirement. A large literature has emerged showing a “retirement consumption puzzle”a sharp decline in expenditures as households transition into retirement. However, after aggregating the results of the literature, I show that the “retirement consumption puzzle” is a misnomer. The only cate...

Studies in this report investigate the existence and quantitative contribution of a metabolic component to an apparently elevated efficiency of energy utilization during refeeding following low-calorie consumption. Energy balance during a 25-d refeeding period was assessed in rats that had been food restricted (at 50% of normal intake) for either 30 or 10 d. Relative to weight-matched controls ...