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Applied Nutrition
Team goal
The Applied Nutrition Research Team at Utah State University studies bacteria in the gut and how it impacts overall nutrition. The teams studies how people respond differently to food in order to learn ways to tailor individuals' diets to reduce risk of obesity, heart disease and other health problems. Isolate health-producing properties of certain foods.
Click here to visit the official site for the Center for Advanced Nutrition at USU.
Faculty
Team description
Learn more on USTAR Radio. Listen to Dr. Michael Lefevre's six-minute podcast, or watch Dr. David York's 10-minute interview on Park City TV.
Two different people who eat the same diet might have different reactions to the food. One person might gain weight or develop diabetes, while someone else may not. USTAR professors at Utah State University's Center for Advanced Nutrition are using state-of-the-art molecular and genetic approaches to learn why different people react to foods differently. And the answers will be crucial to fighting America's obesity epidemic.
How do you study what causes our brains to tell us to eat more fat or eat more carbohydrates? One approach is for researchers to stimulate or inhibit specific regions of the brain that affect appetite for fat or carbohydrate. Then, scientists can study the neurochemicals and neural pathways that cause an individual to have an increased or decreased appetite for certain kinds of foods, like sweets or fat. Another approach is to use research on animals to study why some individuals' taste buds have greater sensitivity to certain nutrients. If this research is successful, it may explain why an individual who can better sense the fat content in their food has a lesser appetite for more fat.
Diet can be an effective way to reduce the risk for heart disease and other illnesses. But not everyone responds well to conventional "heart healthy" diets. Using their research, USU innovators hope to develop genetic "markers" or tests that could be used to help a person know what the best diet for them would be. In recent years, scientists have discovered that many foods and plants contain chemicals that may have specific health-promoting properties (such as flavonoids in grapes and red berries). USTAR professors are developing a state-of-the-art research program to identify new bioactive components and to screen them for efficacy in both animal and human trials.
In May 2009 the Center launched a study with human subjects to determine if prevention of cholesterol absorption is more effective when ezetimibe and a diet rich in phytosterols are combined (details here). An effective way to lower cholesterol is to block its absorption in the intestine during the digestive process. An FDA-approved drug, ezetimibe, does such blocking. So do naturally occurring compounds – called phytosterols or plant sterols – that are found in vegetable oils, nuts and legumes.
USTAR recruited Dr. David York to Utah from Louisiana State University where he served as the Chief of Basic Science Research for the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. During his tenure at Pennington, York played a pivotal role in increasing the annual budget to more than $50 million and growing the staff from about 35 in 1989 to a current workforce of 600 people. Dr. York has received more than $20 million in research grants and filed 3 patent applications relating to his work.
USTAR also recruited Dr. Michael Lefevre from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at LSU. In 1994, Lefevre helped establish the Dairy Institute at Pennington to examine the interactions between diet and genetics. Dr. Lefevre has received over $16.5 million in research funding.
USTAR recruited Dr. David Ward to work at Utah State University on a part-time basis. He has received national and international awards, including election to the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Ward is co-founder of five biotechnology companies, three of which are publicly traded on national stock exchanges. At USU, Dr. Ward will devote his expertise to identifying biomarkers related to Alzheimer's and other nutritionally related disorders.