Obesity and climate adaptation

Abstract

Obesity is a pandemic that has increased exponentially during the past decades due in large part to recent changes in lifestyle and food delivery systems. Yet, there is still a great variability in the burden of obesity across ancestral populations. For example, in the USA prevalence estimates of adult obesity vary from 13 to 48% in Asian Americans and African Americans.1 Such variable observations within the same obesogenic environment have motivated a wide array of inquiry into the genetic, epigenetic and social determinants of obesity, and their complex interactions with modern lifestyles and food systems.