Current Research / Area of Interest

I am interested in various biological and cultural aspects of food and nutrition. From a biological standpoint, these include: how the human body processes calories, the extent to which it adjusts energy utilization to match consumption, how muscle mass affects resting metabolic rate, what metabolic and body compositional changes accompany weight loss, why some people are overweight despite their best efforts, how the microbiota of the human gut influences nutrition and metabolism, and how our evolutionary history has shaped us to deal (or not deal) with our current nutritional landscape. From a cultural perspective, my interests include: nutrition and food security in East Africa, nutrition and AIDS in East Africa, the interaction between socio-economic state and nutrition, the way in which different cuisines meet the nutritional needs of the human body, and the history of food migration between civilizations. I have several groups of students studying these issues and I will be discussing them in some depth on a blog that will be developed during my sabbatical in the Winter Term of 2011.

Advising Expertise
Pre-medicine

Publications

A Reexamination of the Mechanisms Underlying the Arteriovenous Chloride Shift. Edward Westen and Henry Prange. Physiological and Biochemical Zoology. 2003.

Physiological Consequences of Oxygen-dependent Chloride Binding to Hemoglobin. Prange HD, Shoemaker JL Jr., Westen EA, Horskotte DG, Pinshow B. Journal of Applied Physiology, July 2001.