Children Prone to Overeating are More Likely to be Overweight as Adults

When we want to track whether our body has accumulated (unwanted) body fat, we usually assess this by weighing ourselves. This is adequate because, after we stop growing, changes in our body mass will most likely be due to changes in our body composition (e.g., accumulating or losing body fat). However, when we need to compare different persons, their differences in height come into play. People with very different weights can have similar body compositions if they are of different height. To solve this issue, scientists use the body mass index.

Are Hunger Cues Learned in Childhood?

A study on a group of Australian students and their caregivers examined whether hunger cues our body uses to create the subjective feeling of hunger, might be something that is learned in childhood. Results showed a substantial association between how...

How Your Gut Microbiota is Linked to Both Positive and Negative Aspects of Mental Health

Microbiota composition is linked to both positive and negative aspects of mental health A large-scale study in Belgium and the Netherlands found links between the abundance of certain groups of gut bacteria species and mental health outcomes. Faecalibacterium and...

Restrained Eating Leads to Hunger and Food Craving

Study Overview A study in Israel followed changes in food craving, restrained eating, hunger, and negative emotions within a representative sample of the population over a span of 10 days. The findings revealed that restrained eating is the central link...

Gut Microbiota Play Crucial Role in Mediating Effects of Western Diet

Introduction The past several decades have seen the rise of an obesity pandemic that is ongoing worldwide. While obese individuals were quite rare just a century ago, 2015-2018 estimates for the U.S. state that more than two-thirds of the adult...