Overweight, appetite control, and the role of glutamate and excess nutritional protein during child development

Preventing and treating obesity has become a major public health concern and develops from an only medical into an interdisciplinary and already political problem. Yet, current ideas about lifestyle and strategies to maintain health and weight are still dominated by very popular beliefs that clearly contrast scientifi c evidence. Meta-analyses showed that most of the variance in body fatness is not explained physical activity, and energy, fat and carbohydrate intake. Instead, it has been noted that protein intake also correlates with body mass index (BMI), and reaches maximum infl uence in the group of 10–12 year old boys (r=0.31) and girls (r=0.36) explaining up to 13% of the BMI variance in young adolescents.