April 15/San Diego/PRNewswire -- Just six months after its official launch, the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI) has received a $40 million commitment from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF) to fund three experiments investigating the link between diet, obesity, and obesity-related diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer. This commitment follows LJAF's $5 million seed funding grant, which NuSI received in April 2012.

"Laura and John Arnold are dedicated to promoting efforts which seek to discover reliable and valid scientific evidence to solve critical problems in our society," said Denis Calabrese, LJAF president. "We believe that NuSI's innovative and transparent model for research will yield necessary answers to drive lasting and positive social impact."

NuSI, a San Diego based 501(c)(3), is dedicated to significantly reducing the economic and social burden of obesity and its related chronic diseases by funding and facilitating innovative nutrition experiments in human subjects.

"NuSI's approach to funding the best scientists in the field without the usual economic and risk constraints is critical for addressing some of the major unresolved questions in human nutrition," said Dr. Ronald Krauss, senior scientist for the Children's Hospital of Oakland Research Institute. "The meticulous control and monitoring of diet and energy balance that must be achieved in order to test various hypotheses requires extraordinary resources, and whatever the outcome, this approach is very likely to yield important metabolic information."

By facilitating reliable science to inform dietary guidelines, NuSI seeks by 2025, to see a significant reduction in both the prevalence of obesity and diabetes in the United States. If successful, the resulting impact on healthcare spending in the U.S. could be reduced by as much as $500 billion annually.

"We are grateful to the Laura and John Arnold Foundation for their continued commitment to NuSI and to lessening the burden of obesity and its related diseases," said Peter Attia, M.D., NuSI president and co-founder. "Our goals are highly ambitious, and the next three years are just the beginning. We will need all the elements – capital, time, and talent – working in concert to finally be able to provide the answers we all so desperately need to lead healthier lives."

The LJAF $40 million commitment will support three experimental collaborations at six leading academic research institutions over the next three years. The details of these studies and principal investigators will be announced in the coming months. In addition, NuSI will announce the six consortium scientists who – having divergent views regarding obesity and its causes – have designed a pioneering signature study in overweight individuals.

For additional information, visit www.nusi.org.