On average, you could say that populations that are exposed to processed, or canteen-type, food are approximately one third normal weight, one third overweight and one third obese.

The level of energy (fat) storage that our brain calculates is necessary for our survival is called our weight set-point.

The massive selection bias of people with good fat reserves, or efficient metabolisms, surviving to colonize this distant part of the world is almost as extreme as the selective breeding of the cows in Pen 3 by farmers (see pages 35–6). In addition, once settled, these people were at the mercy of severe famines affecting their small isolated

Emiratis do not particularly harbour more obese genes than other groups, but their genes have been primed to survive in a harsh environment, without plentiful foods. The theory is based on a new area of scientific research called epigenetics.

The first step will focus on decreasing your average daily insulin levels – but at the same time you can eat really well.

Darwin’s theory is now accepted as the ultimate explanation of our origins. However, recently something has been troubling researchers in this field. They have worked out how long it would take animals and humans to evolve using Darwin’s theory and the numbers don’t add up. There is not enough time for us to have evolved by simple natural selection

If you consciously try and lose weight by traditional means (i.e. eating less and moving more with no change to the quality of the food you eat), your powerful negative feedback mechanism will force your weight back up. It becomes a struggle of wills between your conscious desire to be a particular weight and your brain’s subconscious power to

Now that we know that the set-point is the master controller of our weight, we need to find out how our brains calculate where it is set. Various factors in our environment, our history and our family background determine our individual set-point – whether it will be set as slim, obese or somewhere in between.

The next question to ask when trying to understand obesity is which factors contribute to someone’s sensitivity (or resistance) to developing obesity? Or, to put it another way, what leads someone to develop a higher weight set-point?