About the Authors

Olivia Affuso

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Oaffuso@uab.edu (OA); Allison@iu.edu (DBA)

Affiliations Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, United States, Nutrition Obesity Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, United States

Ligaj Pradhan

Roles Data curation, Methodology, Writing – original draft

Affiliation Department of Computer and Information Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, United States

Chengcui Zhang

Roles Data curation, Methodology, Supervision

Affiliation Department of Computer and Information Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, United States

Song Gao

Roles Data curation, Methodology

Affiliation Department of Computer and Information Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, United States

Howard W. Wiener

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, United States

Barbara Gower

Roles Methodology, Resources, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Nutrition Obesity Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, United States, Department of Nutrition Science, School of Health Professions, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, United States

Steven B. Heymsfield

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Louisiana State University System, Baton Rouge, LA, United States

David B. Allison

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Oaffuso@uab.edu (OA); Allison@iu.edu (DBA)

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Indiana University-Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, United States

Competing Interests

No honoraria, grants, or other forms of payment were given to anyone to produce this manuscript. However, Dr. Allison has received grants, honoraria, donations, and consulting fees from numerous food, beverage, pharmaceutical companies, and other commercial, government, and nonprofit entities with interests in obesity. None of Dr. Allison’s sponsors were involved in the design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or decision to publish the results presented in this manuscript. The remaining authors of this manuscript have no competing interests to disclose. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.