Obesity, Cancer and Nutrition, Gut Microbiota – Special Issues 2016

We are excited to present a Special issue on “Obesity” in the January 2016 issue of Molecular Nutrition & Food Research. This Special issue, facilitated by Guest Editor Andrew J. McAinch, will be combined with Reviews of general topics that we usually publish in the first issue of each year. With this Special issue we want to highlight obesity-related activities of nutritional components from a molecular perspective. Nutritional approaches to curbing obesity prevalence are urgently needed. Currently recognized as a global epidemic by the World Health Organization, obesity and its co-morbidities are increasingly emerging as a world-wide threat to human health. Later this year we will highlight other current topics in the field of nutrition. Hasan Muhktar serves as Guest Editor of a special issue on “Nutrition and Cancer”, another subject of great public interest. In 2015, this topic was already in the public news following the classification of processed meat as carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the cancer agency of the World Health Organization. The negative effects of high meat consumption are well known to experts, however meat has also nutritional value and for this reason a “healthy” balance between risk and benefit has to be found and communicated to the public. A third highlight this year will be a Special Issue on “Gut Microbiota” which will be edited by Juan Carlos Espin as Guest Editor. In this issue the role of the gut microbiota in nutrition and health will be discussed. We want to inform our readers about new features that have been introduced or will be introduced soon. As most authors have already realized, accepted articles are now published online a few days after their final acceptance. Furthermore, we are introducing graphical abstracts in early 2016. This new feature allows our authors to highlight their results and to summarize the outcome of the study. These changes will lead to an increased visibility of the research articles in the printed version as well as on our homepage. Molecular Nutrition & Food Research is developing well. We are proud that we are now for six years in a row the No. 1 primary research journal in the category Food Science & Technology. With the current ISI Impact factor of 4.603 and a 5-year IF of 4.8, Molecular Nutrition & Food Research remains the leading journal in the field. This is largely an accomplishment of our authors because we can only publish a high-ranking journal if we receive high-impact manuscripts. In this context we would like to draw your attention to the three most highly cited articles in 2014 which all deal with plant polyphenols such as resveratrol 1, epigallocatechin-3-gallate 2 and methyl 3-O-methyl gallate 3. We would like to express our sincere thanks to our authors, senior editors, members of the editorial board, and reviewers for their substantial contribution to ensure the high scientific quality and the continuing success of Molecular Nutrition & Food Research. We also thank especially Chris Mayer and all other coworkers from the publisher for their continuous support and the pleasant collaboration. Hans-Ulrich Humpf University of Münster Claus Schneider Vanderbilt University Medical School Jan Frederik Stevens Oregon State University