The University of Michigan received a $5.7 million grant to open a state center to study obesity, the university announced today.

The Michigan Nutrition Obesity Research Center will be one of 13 such federally-funded centers around the country focusing on studies related to diet and metabolism.

The goals of the center include trying to better understand the relationship of the diet to health and why it is so difficult for some people to lose weight.

“We hope that this will allow us to identify new ways to modify dietary intake to encourage weight loss in overweight individuals or improve metabolic health to prevent chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes,” Charles Burant, professor of internal medicine at the U-M and the Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Professor of Metabolism, said in a statement.

Burant will serve as director of the center.

Researchers from the U-M's Medical School, School of Public Health and School of Kinesiology will collaborate on the center. It is being funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

The center is developing out of the Michigan Metabolomics and Obesity Center, created for researchers to study obesity. The center is meant to make tools and personnel available to study metabolism in humans.

The center will provide researchers with access to core laboratories with the tools and personnel to examine metabolism in people and at the cellular level through basic, clinical and population-based studies.

Tina Reed covers health and the environment for AnnArbor.com. You can reach her at tinareed@annarbor.com, call her at 734-623-2535 or find her on Twitter @TreedinAA.