It might be time to shift the goal for obesity treatment away from just weight loss and body mass index to include fat reduction and a better understanding of nutrition science, say the authors of a Journal of the American Medical Association study (2012; 307 [1], 47–55).
At the crux of their findings? Body fat increased when healthy subjects took in more calories than they burned, and the calories themselves appeared to be more important than the amount of protein ingested. When subjects consumed more calories than they expended each day, they appeared to gain body fat and lose lean muscle if their food choices were low in protein. (Ruth Sova, ATRI e-list, 7/15/12)
