away.” While it may not show on an individual’s physique, “it stays in your liver and in your muscle,” she says. She adds that “even when rats lose weight on the v ery low-carbohydrate diet, they don’t show the improvement in diabetes risk factors that r ats losing weight on a high-carbohydrate one do.” She adds that her research has not been conducted without some protests from the industry that has sprung up around Atkins-like diets. “There are some researchers who have conducted studies on humans, prescribing the Atkins-type diet and have reported promising effects,” says Axen. “Often the studies overstate their findings since they can’t document what and how much people ate, that is, whether subjects consistently followed the regimen and whether the effects simply came from eating less in contrast to whether the diet had ‘special properties’ that let you eat a lot of calories but still lose weight.” Critics of Atkins-type diets have said that since there is less variety of food, people eat less and lose weight. Proponents said that the diet sparks a chemical reaction in individuals that enables them to burn fat more efficiently. Axen has a $471,000, four-year grant from the National Institutes of Health for her work. In another laboratory, at Baruch College, where the only equipment is a professional digital scale, Pinto is also looking at diet but
in a different way. In a study that appears to be the first of its kind, she is evaluating the clinical and cost effectiveness of an approach that combines University-based behavioral weight-loss treatment with a commercial weight-loss program. A total of 144 overweight and obese adults, ages 3065, are enrolled in this study and were r andomly assigned to one of three different programs for one year. There will be a follow-up six months later. In one model, subjects attend a traditional Weight Watchers program, in another they are part of a University-based program led by a behavioral psychologist — Pinto herself in this case. In a third, innovative model, a group begins with Pinto and then moves into Weight Watchers to determine if transitioning from one program to another will work. This research is in keeping with a trend to evaluate commercial diet programs using scientific methodology. While the programs deliver similar messages for losing weight through balanced nutritional and lifestyle changes and physical activity, there are differences in how they are structured that may impact outcome. “The training of the leader, or leaders, is different in each model, which may have implications for effectiveness and cost,” says Pinto, who studied eating disorders earlier in her career. Another difference is that in the University-based program participants attend group meetings with the same people
Hold Frie s
each week while Weight Watchers meetings are open THE so members may change from week to week. Pinto’s research is funded by a $640,000 four-year grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health and she expects to ha ve some data available in the spring. Diane Gibson, Pinto’s colleague at Baruch is examining obesity through a public-affairs lens, focusing on the most affected communities — the economically disadvantaged. This is also an issue which one of Ming-Chin Yeh’s students studied under his guidance; that student’s work has been cited in Michelle Obama’s report on childhood obesity. Gibson has been trying to find out why women often gain weight when they use “food stamps,” subsidies now provided by the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The program now allocates these subsidies to about 40 million individuals a month, although generally people use much of their own money for food as well since the average monthly benefit is about $125 per person. Gibson has also found that young daughters — but not sons — of women on food stamps often gain weight. She thinks this might be explained by the fact that mothers seem to be more controlling about the foods
CUNY GOES to WASHINGTON
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OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY CHUCK KENNEDY
ET’S MOVE!,” is Michelle Obama’s campaign to eradicate childadopting schools throughout the hood obesity within a generation. Since its goals and philosophies country. She then accompanied the are the same as CUNY’s, the University has had a presence in chefs to the White House where they toured the First Lady’s organic garden and Washington on this crucial initiative. heard her speak. Psychologist Nancy Romer, a professor at Brooklyn College and an experiAdditionally, a paper authored by three University public health scholars was enced community activist, was invited to the White mentioned in the First Lady’s report to the conference: “Solving House last May when the campaign began. At home, the Problem of Childhood Obesity Within a Generation.” The auRomer has worked to organize the Brooklyn Food Coalithors are Hunter associate professor Ming-Chin Yeh and Hunter tion, “a grassroots organization working to change the Master’s of Public Health graduates Lauren Dinour and Dara food system in Brooklyn, neighborhood by neighborBergen. On page 61 the report states: “Still, a number of studhood.” Romer was standing in for her friend, Hunter’s ies have suggested a possible correlation between food insecuJanet Poppendieck, author of Free for All: Fixing School rity and obesity, especially in women.” A citation then refers Food in America. At the Washington conference, Romer readers to footnote 240 and an article published in 2007 in the was part of a “School Food Breakout Group,” which Journal of the American Dietetic Association entitled: “The Food identified priorities for school food. Insecurity – Obesity Paradox: A Review of the Literature and the Included among them were improving nutritional Role Food Stamps May Play.” This is also an issue related to reand other standards for school food, training educasearch by public policy expert Diane Gibson of Baruch College. tors and school employees on food studies and impleAlthough all three received credit on the report, Yeh emphamenting a nutrition curriculum. These are also sizes, “Lauren did all the work as it was her thesis. Dara also changes called for in professor Poppendieck’s book. helped on some literature review and synthesis.” As thesis adRomer has written a detailed account of her experiviser, the professor supervised the project. ence at the White House conference on her blog, which Dinour, a registered dietitian, graduated from the Hunter procan be found at http://brooklynfoodcoalition.ning.com/ gram in 2006 and is currently pursuing a CUNY doctorate in pubprofiles/blogs/dr-romer-goes-to-washington First Lady Michelle Obama addresses lic health with a concentration in nutrition. She is also an adviser The following month Poppendieck herself would be U.S. chefs during “Let’s Move!” event to Food Fight, a New York City-based organization that works with in Washington, speaking to 700 chefs who were high school students and teachers on a nutrition curriculum. on the White House South Lawn.
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