By Stephanie Schupska
University of
Georgia
Obesity and its effects on Americans continue to be hot topics
in health and science. Judith S. Stern, an expert in nutrition,
will further the discussion at the 2005 D.W. Brooks Lecture
Oct. 3 in Athens.
Stern, a University of California Davis professor of nutrition
and internal medicine, has published extensively on nutrition,
obesity and the effect of exercise on appetite and metabolism.
Her speech will cover the topic, “Can We Fight Obesity without
Fighting the Obese?”
“We’re getting fatter as a nation,” Stern said in a phone
interview about the obesity problem. “It’s predicted that if
this is not turned around, we will all be obese by the year
2020. The epidemic of obesity is global.”
In studying the global epidemic, Stern is focusing on how
obesity impacts lipids, longevity and renal disease. She’s
researching a nondiet approach to health in obese women,
dietary supplements for weight control and other issues.
The annual lecture will be at 11 a.m. at the University of
Georgia in Master’s Hall in the Georgia Center for Continuing
Education.
Her lecture will follow the presentation of this year’s D.W.
Brooks Faculty Awards for Excellence winners at UGA. The awards
are given annually to UGA College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences faculty who excel in teaching, research,
extension and public service.
The awards were established in 1981 to recognize excellence in
the CAES teaching program. In 1983, they expanded to include
research, extension and county extension programs. An award for
international agriculture was added in 1988 and is given in
alternate years.
The lecture and awards are named for the late D.W. Brooks,
founder and chairman emeritus of Gold Kist, Inc. Brooks was an
advisor to seven U.S. presidents on agriculture and trade
issues. He also started Cotton States Mutual Insurance
Companies in 1941 to provide farmers with insurance. The CAES
sponsors the annual lecture series in his memory.
Stern has a bachelor’s degree in food and nutrition from
Cornell University. She earned her master’s and doctorate of
science in nutrition at the Harvard University School of Public
Health in Boston. She became a research associate and later an
assistant professor at Rockefeller University in the department
of human behavior and metabolism in 1969. Stern joined UC Davis
in 1975.
Popular magazines such as Redbook have published more than 150
of her articles. She’s had more than 250 research papers in
professional journals and serves as an editorial advisor to
Prevention Magazine.
Stern is vice president of the American Obesity Association, a
lay advocacy group she founded with Dr. Richard L. Atkinson.
The group’s goal is to advance understanding of obesity as a
disease.
She is director of the UC Food Intake Laboratory Group, co-
director of Alternative Medicine Center for Research in Asthma,
Allergy and Immunology, program co-director of a nutrition
training grant and director of a clinical nutrition unit animal
models subcore lab.
Stern is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Institute
of Medicine, a fellow of the American Heart Association, past
president of the American Society for Clinical Nutrition and
the North American Association for the Study of Obesity and a
member of the American Society for Nutrition Sciences and
American Dietetic Association.
(Stephanie Schupska is a news editor with the University of
Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.)
