Daniel J. Hoffman, Ph.D.

Dr. Daniel Hoffman is an assistant professor in the department of nutritional sciences at Rutgers University. His research expertise is human energy metabolism, body composition and international nutrition and his research program explores the biological and environmental factors promoting obesity in developing countries.

Dr. Hoffman’s undergraduate studies at St. Johns University in Minnesota were in biology and human nutrition. This work was complemented by graduate studies and research in molecular biology and epidemiology. In 1999, Dr. Hoffman received his doctorate in human nutrition from the Tufts University School of Nutrition Science and Policy where his dissertation was on “risk factors for obesity in stunted children living in the shantytowns of São Paulo, Brazil”. He spent almost two years in Brazil where he managed a large clinical and field study on the relationship between stunting and obesity. From 1999-2001 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the New York Obesity Research Center, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he conducted research on fat distribution in adults and children.

Presently, Dr. Hoffman is the Principal Investigator of two research projects designed to better understand those factors promoting the double burden of disease in developing countries. The first project, in collaboration with the University of São Paulo, is a study of children who were characterized at birth as either low or normal birth weight. Current data collection includes diet and body composition in an attempt to determine if growth restriction is associated with abnormal food intake and central fat distribution. The second project, in collaboration with the National Center for Public Health Protection in Sofia, Bulgaria, is a federally funded project on dietary changes following the fall of Communism in Bulgaria. Specifically, dietary surveys are being conducted among citizens of Sofia to determine specific socio-economic factors associated with food consumption and the nutritional impact of multinational supermarkets. Additional studies that are domestic in nature include dietary intake of school children in New Jersey, methods to measure physical activity in free-living persons, and environmental exposure and obesity.

An author of numerous papers and book chapters on energy metabolism and eating behavior of stunted children, obesity, body composition, and pediatric nutrition, Dr. Hoffman is also a reviewer for the International Journal of Epidemiology, Obesity, Journal of Nutrition, the International Journal of Obesity, and the Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research. Dr. Hoffman is also an expert consultant to the International Atomic Energy Agency of the UN and consults on projects aimed at evaluating nutrition programs using stable isotopes. Dr. Hoffman is an active member of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences, the Society for International Nutrition Research, and the International Society for the Developmental Origins of Health and Adult Disease.