Courtesy of Ray Clark & Mervyn Goff/Photo Researchers, Inc.
"I'm a potential obese person," says Steve Bloom of Imperial College London. "I feel hungry all the time and have to keep [jogging] and restraining myself when they put chocolate biscuits on the table.... I keep my weight down, but I've still got a potbelly. And that's in spite of being an [obesity] expert and knowing what I'm supposed to do."
Which, presumably, is to burn off and eliminate as many calories as one eats. It's an equation that is getting increasingly out of kilter, and a problem that science has been trying to tackle.
A recent review describes the past 10 years as the "golden age" of obesity research.1 In that time, researchers have worked on a smorgasbord of molecules involved in body weight regulation via many overlapping systems and pathways. They have identified genes, including melanocortin 4 receptor and ...
