Nutritional Assessment in Preventing and Managing Obesity

A special issue of Nutrients (ISSN 2072-6643). This special issue belongs to the section "Nutrition Methodology & Assessment".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 April 2024 | Viewed by 1732

Special Issue Editors

Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, School of Health Science and Education, Harokopio University, 17671 Athens, Greece
Interests: nutrition; lifestyle; public health; screening; obesity; type 2 diabetes
Department of Sport, Health Sciences and Social Work, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
Interests: obesity prevention; eating behaviour; taste hedonics; dietary assessment; malnutrition

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Termed a global epidemic, obesity and its associated health conditions are a major concern worldwide, and the problem currently shows no remarkable signs of abating. As such, the obesity prevention and treatment strategies used to date need to be challenged.

Nutritional assessment, defined as ‘the interpretation of information from dietary, laboratory, anthropometric and clinical studies’ (Gibson, 2005), is a core component of any lifestyle intervention including approaches that aim at reducing the level of obesity in the population. Further, as advances in personalised nutrition continue to emerge, more individualised approaches in nutritional assessment may disentangle obesity aetiology, and could in turn inform what needs to be done to reverse that trend.

For example, meta-analyses in children/adolescents and adults have confirmed that, on an absolute basis and when mostly traditional dietary assessment methods are utilised, greater underreporting is identified in those with obesity; this edges unfavourably for individuals that diet must be measured more accurately. From a public health perspective, the emerging picture of the ageing population is difficult to reconcile with the long-evidenced limitations of body mass index as a measure of adiposity. Likewise, reliable nutritional risk screening tools sensitive to identify sarcopenic obesity remain elusive. In non-clinical settings, although prior genome-wide association studies propose that genetics alone can only partly explain individual variability in diet and lifestyle behaviours, epigenetics including interactions among nutritional status indices and eating behaviour traits and/or food preferences may provide an impetus for a new scope in obtaining and interpreting personal and familial medical and dieting/weight history. Regarding laboratory data, the key role of both established nutritional biomarkers and the emerging metabolomics may allow additional opportunities in obesity assessment. Finally, in a more holistic view, the field warrants systematic efforts towards the development of tools and frameworks that could address the evidence that has recently put nutritional epidemiology in the spotlight.

We therefore welcome studies that use, evaluate, or critically discuss traditional and/or novel nutritional assessment methodologies in relation to obesity prevention and treatment. We hope that this Special Issue will share valuable knowledge and encourage discussions on nutritional assessment, including but not limited to papers on methodologies that facilitate a timely and scientifically substantiated assessment of nutritional status, as well as papers on anthropometric, laboratory, clinical, and/or dietary nutritional assessment methods that are tailored to the obese child and adult population.

Dr. Christina Mavrogianni
Dr. Vasiliki Iatridi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Nutrients is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • obesity
  • overweight
  • nutrition assessment
  • nutritional epidemiology
  • new technologies in dietary assessment
  • personalised nutrition
  • nutrigenetics
  • nutritional risk screening tool
  • eating behaviour
  • anthropometry
  • nutritional biomarkers

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

18 pages, 1179 KiB  
Article
The Impact of Weight Bias and Stigma on the 24 h Dietary Recall Process in Adults with Overweight and Obesity: A Pilot Study
by Erica M. Howes, Molly K. Parker, Sarah A. Misyak, Alexandra G. DiFeliceantonio, Brenda M. Davy, Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown and Valisa E. Hedrick
Nutrients 2024, 16(2), 191; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16020191 - 06 Jan 2024
Viewed by 1050
Abstract
People with overweight and obesity tend to both underreport dietary energy intake and experience weight stigma. This exploratory pilot study aimed to determine the relationship between weight bias and weight stigma and energy intake reporting accuracy. Thirty-nine weight-stable adults with BMI ≥ 25 [...] Read more.
People with overweight and obesity tend to both underreport dietary energy intake and experience weight stigma. This exploratory pilot study aimed to determine the relationship between weight bias and weight stigma and energy intake reporting accuracy. Thirty-nine weight-stable adults with BMI ≥ 25 completed three 24 h dietary recalls; indirect calorimetry to measure resting metabolic rate; a survey measuring weight stigma, psychosocial constructs, and physical activity; and a semi-structured qualitative interview. Multiple linear regression was used to determine if weight bias internalization, weight bias toward others, and experiences of weight stigma were predictive of the accuracy of energy reporting. A thematic analysis was conducted for the qualitative interviews. Weight stigma was reported by 64.1% of the sample. Weight stigma constructs did not predict the accuracy of energy intake reporting. People with obesity underreported by a mean of 477 kcals (p = 0.02). People classified as overweight overreported by a mean of 144 kcals, but this was not significant (p = 0.18). Participants reported a desire to report accurate data despite concerns about reporting socially undesirable foods. Future research should quantify the impact of weight stigma on energy reporting in 24 h recalls using a larger, more diverse sample size and objective measures like doubly labeled water for validation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nutritional Assessment in Preventing and Managing Obesity)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop