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It is time to stop fixating on calories. Weight loss is not achieved solely by reducing your calorie intake, but by eating nutritious whole foods, so it’s the quality of the food you eat, not just the quantity.

This is according to the advice from Christopher Gardner and researchers from Stanford University who published the results of their randomised clinical trial, involving more than 600 people, in JAMA, suggesting you should cut back on added sugar, refined grains and highly processed foods, and instead eat plenty of vegetables and whole foods. The results of the research were also reported by The New York Times.

The study participants followed either a healthy low-fat or a healthy low-carbohydrate diet, meeting with dietitians to advise them on preparing nutrient rich minimally processed whole food meals and provide support during the dietary change.

Both groups lost weight, regardless of their genetics or ability to metabolise carbs or fat. Showing that it is not just about restricting calories, but following a high quality diet. We share the recommended research on dietary changes and weight management, as well as sharing the current top three articles for the month and our Hidden Jewels. Click on the images for full access to the recommendations.

F1000Prime is a literature recommendation service. The service has a peer-nominated global Faculty of more than 8,000 of the world’s leading biomedical scientists and clinicians who select those articles they think are particularly interesting and important, and write recommendations explaining their selection. From the numerical ratings awarded, we have created a unique system for quantifying the importance of individual articles.

Top 3 article recommendations about diet

“In this study, the authors found that among persons aged 55 to 80 (mean age 67) at increased cardiovascular risk, a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or mixed nuts reduced the incidence of major cardiovascular events by 30%.” – Nanette Wenger, Emory University, US.

“The debate on the merits of caloric restriction and longevity continues. This new study, from an NIH macaque monkey colony, did not find extension of life expectancy as a result of caloric restriction. This contradicts a similar study from a Wisconsin colony.” – Doug Galasko, University of California, US

“This large-scale, randomized, controlled trial demonstrates that hypocaloric diets with different rates of macronutrients are equally successful in promoting clinically meaningful weight loss and its maintenance over the time of 2 years.“-Fabrizio Pasanisi and Lidia Santarpia, Federica II University Hospital, Italy

Current Top 3 recommendations

“This paper describes the re-purposing of TRIM21 to selectively degrade particular proteins and so create an elegant approach to study the effects of a loss of protein expression in single cells or cell populations. TRIM21 is a cytosolic antibody receptor and E3 ubiquin ligase that binds with high affinity to an antibody Fc domain.“- Jane Endicott, Newcastle University, UK

“Using tomato inflorescence and fruit development as model systems, this paper shows that ‘transgene-free’, targeted mutagenesis of cis-regulatory elements by CRISPR/Cas9 can generate novel quantitative variation in important yield traits.” – Kerstin Kaufmann, Humboldt University, Germany

“This manuscript provides insight into the role of Notch in the regulation of biological processes through a novel cortical pathway, which paves the way to outline the different molecular hierarchies coordinated by Notch to sustain proper developmental programs, tissue homeostasis, and how when dysfunctional may lead to disease.” – Mirna Perez-Moreno, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Hidden Jewels

“This exciting paper shows that the Arabidopsis ABA PYL receptors are inactivated by phosphorylation to dampen stress responses and that the conserved TOR kinase is involved in this regulatory process. This provides a new and important link between the activation of growth by the TOR kinase and the repression of stress responses.” – Christian Meyer, INRA, France

“This article provides an exceptionally useful guide to the difficulties associated with cancer target validation, highlighting that one should be striving for a large change rather than small changes in tumor viability, even with targeted therapies, if there is any hope for a meaningful survival advantage. It is well written by a leader in the field.­” – John Lazo, University of Virginia School of Medicine, US.

“This paper argues that the abundance of inter-node connections in the core allows it to generate a quick and robust response to the outside signals, whereas the responses of the peripheral network members are usually not that fast and more diverse.” – Michael Galperin, National Institutes of Health, US