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ARS Home » Plains Area » Grand Forks, North Dakota » Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center » Healthy Body Weight Research » Research » Research Project #427689

Research Project: Human Obesity Prevention Research

Location: Healthy Body Weight Research

Project Number: 3062-51000-051-009-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Sep 25, 2014
End Date: Sep 24, 2019

Objective:
This cooperative research effort will benefit the people of the United States by producing new knowledge that will significantly improve the evidence base for national food, nutrition and health policies. It will bring together two entities, the USDA, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the University of North Dakota (UND), each with strong scientific and technical capabilities to produce a combined effort that is unparalleled in its ability to design and conduct human clinical intervention trials addressing the knowledge gaps related to the prevention of obesity and related conditions. This research will be seminal in supporting the further development of guidelines for diet and physical activity for Americans.

Approach:
This research will address the prevention of childhood/adult obesity, which involves food choices/patterns, physical activity and energy balance, metabolism/physiology, genotype/phenotypic expression, food access/composition, attitudes/traditions, and processes that can lead to diabetes, cancer, heart disease and osteoarthritis. This demands innovative, translational research to generate new knowledge and improve the evidence base for national nutrition/health/food policy. This will be accomplished in this project by addressing the following areas: 1. U.S. Dietary Guidelines Adherence and Healthy Body Weight. Research to identify barriers/ facilitators to adhering to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. 2. Biology of Obesity Prevention. Research to elucidate the roles of diet and physical activity of the early programming of infant propensity to develop obesity; use of epigenetic tools to understand the metabolic basis of generational transfer of the obese phenotype. 3. Food Factors in Maintaining Health & Healthy Body Weight. Research examining the roles of food fatty acids in affecting adiposity and insulin sensitivity. 4. Diet and Physical Activity in Mitigating Obesity-Promoted Carcinogenesis. Research on the effects of adiposity on the metabolism and anticarcinogenic mechanisms of selenium.