Boston Convention and Exhibition Center
Obesity Week 2014 was held November 2-7 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition center. This meeting is the annual meeting of The Obesity Society and the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Several COPT students, leadership, and affiliate faculty attended this large scientific meeting that focuses on research on the predictors and treatments of obesity throughout the lifespan.
On Monday night, the meeting began with a reception at the Museum of Science, which was featuring an exhibit on the Photography of Modern Cuisine.
MOS exhibit on how variety influences meal selection
In the exhibit pictured to the left, visitors (in this case, COPT fellow Julia Bleser) got to experience how an increase in the variety of foods available influenced food choice within a meal. This exhibit is a great application of COPT director, Dr. Barbara Rolls’ early work on this topic.
On Tuesday Dr. Anzman-Frasca, a Penn State alumna, presented a talk entitled, “Making the healthy choice the acceptable choice: Shifting norms to improve children’s edits.” She highlighted data on the availability of healthy children’s menu options, as well as survey data with children asking about their attitudes towards healthy side dishes at restaurants.
Dr. Anzman-Frasca speaking on restaurants and children’s food choices
On Tuesday night, the mHealth/eHealth section met and enjoyed a talk by Dr. Sherry Pagoto on using social media to promote the dissemination and uptake of evidence-based weight loss and management information. Dr. Pagoto challenged the audience to consider how researchers and clinicians can leverage the immense reach that social media provides to increase the number of people who are exposed to and participate in effective weight-loss interventions.
Ali Doub presenting her poster on feeding beliefs and practices on food blogs
On Thursday COPT fellow Ali Doub presented two posters: “A qualitative analysis of maternal feeding beliefs and behaviors on food blogs focused on feeding young children” (which was selected for an eHealth/mHealth section poster award) and “Tweeting differently: A case study comparing @MyPlate and @FoodNetwork.” Doub’s blog poster coded blog posts from 03/01/2013 – 02/28/2014 for maternal attitudes and practices related to child feeding. Bloggers narratives about child feeding might be important if readers view bloggers as feeding “role models.”
The twitter study explored differences in how a science-based group invested in public health (@MyPlate) compared to a non-science based group (@FoodNetwork) in their audience engagement, tweet content, and overall use of Twitter. @MyPlate promoted more healthful content while @FoodNetwork was more successful in reaching and engaging their audience on Twitter.
Julia Bleser beginning her talk on candy in homes with young children
On Friday morning COPT fellow Julia Bleser gave a talk entitled, “Availability and access to candy within the home is associated with children’s candy intake in a free access setting and frequency of candy intake in the home.” Bleser reported that children whose parents reported that their child had greater access to candy at home ate candy more frequently day-to-day, but ate less candy when they had free access to candy in a laboratory setting. In contrast, children whose parents reported less access to candy in the home had lower day-to-day candy intake but greater intake during the laboratory free access task.
The week was full of other interesting talks ranging from Dr. Sara Bleich‘s report on how food labels influence soda purchases among Baltimore teens, to Dr. Donna Spruijt-Metz‘s overview of “What’s next” in mobile technology for tracking intake, physical activity, and many other weight-related behaviors. One of the biggest take aways from this conference is that there are many diverse approaches to studying obesity at every stage. The challenge lies within bringing research from disparate areas together to help everyone achieve and maintain healthy lifestyles and healthy weights.
