ReviewEuropean journal of clinical nutrition2011
Obesity and energy balance: is the tail wagging the dog?
Review in European journal of clinical nutrition, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed, 81 citations in OpenAlex.
- Energy expenditure and body composition changes after an isocaloric ketogenic diet in overweight and obese men.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2016Trial
- Reverse-engineering the Venus figurines: An eco-life-course hypothesis for the aetiology of obesity in the Palaeolithic.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2024Review
- Associations Among Physical Activity, Adiposity, and Insulin Resistance in Children Exposed In Utero to Maternal Obesity With and Without Gestational Diabetes.Pediatric exercise science · 2023Article
- The energy balance hypothesis of obesity: do the laws of thermodynamics explain excessive adiposity?European journal of clinical nutrition · 2022Review
- Competing paradigms of obesity pathogenesis: energy balance versus carbohydrate-insulin models.European journal of clinical nutrition · 2022Review
- Time-limited diets and the gut microbiota in cardiometabolic disease.Journal of diabetes · 2022Review
- Review
- Article
- The "drive to eat" hypothesis: energy expenditure and fat-free mass but not adiposity are associated with milk intake and energy intake in 12 week infants.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2021Article
- The Role of Exercise, Diet, and Cytokines in Preventing Obesity and Improving Adipose Tissue.Nutrients · 2021Review
- Dietary carbohydrates modulate metabolic and β-cell adaptation to high-fat diet-induced obesity.American journal of physiology. Endocrinology and metabolism · 2020Article
- The carbohydrate-insulin model does not explain the impact of varying dietary macronutrients on the body weight and adiposity of mice.Molecular metabolism · 2020Article
- Socioeconomic correlates of overweight and obesity among ever-married urban women in Bangladesh.BMC public health · 2019Article
- Diet quality, dietary patterns and short sleep duration: a cross-sectional population-based study.European journal of nutrition · 2019Article
- Trends and Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity among Children Aged 2-7 Years from 2011 to 2017 in Xiamen, China.Obesity facts · 2019Article
- Convenience Behavior and Being Overweight in Adults: Development and Validation of the Convenience Behavior Questionnaire.Frontiers in public health · 2019Article
- A review of the carbohydrate-insulin model of obesity.European journal of clinical nutrition · 2017Review
- Starvation-Induced Stress Response Is Critically Impacted by Ceramide Levels in Caenorhabditis elegans.Genetics · 2017Article
- Food, health, and complexity: towards a conceptual understanding to guide collaborative public health action.BMC public health · 2016Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The scientific study of obesity has been dominated throughout the twentieth century by the concept of energy balance. This conceptual approach, based on fundamental thermodynamic principles, states that energy cannot be destroyed, and can only be gained, lost or stored by an organism. Its application in obesity research has emphasised excessive appetite (gluttony), or insufficient physical activity (sloth), as the primary determinants of excess weight gain, reflected in current guidelines for obesity prevention and treatment. This model cannot explain why weight accumulates persistently rather than reaching a plateau, and underplays the effect of variability in dietary constituents on energy and intermediary metabolism. An alternative model emphasises the capacity of fructose and fructose-derived sweeteners (sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup) to perturb cellular metabolism via modification of the adenosine monophosphate (AMP)/adenosine triphosphate (ATP) ratio, activation of AMP kinase and compensatory mechanisms, which favour adipose tissue accretion and increased appetite while depressing physical activity. This conceptual model implicates chronic hyperinsulinaemia in the presence of a paradoxical state of 'cellular starvation' as a key driver of the metabolic modifications inducing chronic weight gain. We combine evidence from in vitro and in vivo experiments to formulate a perspective on obesity aetiology that emphasises metabolic flexibility and dietary composition rather than energy balance. Using this model, we question the direction of causation of reported associations between obesity and sleep duration or childhood growth. Our perspective generates new hypotheses, which can be tested to improve our understanding of the current obesity epidemic, and to identify novel strategies for prevention or treatment.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.