Posted on January 31, 2001 at 4:06 p.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Dr. Roland L. Weinsier, professor and director of UAB’s (University of Alabama at Birmingham) Clinical Nutrition Research Center in the Department of Nutrition Sciences, has received the highest and most prestigious annual award of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition, the Jonathan E. Rhoads Lectureship. The society, the country’s largest nutrition organization, is comprised of physicians, scientists, dietitians, nurses and pharmacists. Its mission is to advance the science and practice of nutritional support of ill persons.

The lectureship is bestowed in recognition of outstanding scientific research in the field of nutrition. Weinsier delivered the 24th Rhoads Lecture at the society’s annual Clinical Congress, January 23, 2001 in Chicago.

Weinsier was cited for his research over the past two decades at UAB. His studies of obesity-prone women and never-obese women, in tightly controlled circumstances, examined the role of energy expenditure for a predisposition to obesity. The results of these studies provide a compelling argument about the role of a “set-point” in explaining the marked differences in weight-gain tendencies in obesity-prone and obesity-resistant persons.

Parenteral and enteral nutrition refer to methods used to provide nutrition to persons who cannot eat any or enough food because of illness.