Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2009
Introduction
Animals have been used extensively as surrogates for the study of factors that contribute to the development and persistence of obesity in human beings. Each model has its own set of advantages and disadvantages in relation to its similarities and differences from humans. In fact, obesity rarely occurs in feral animals outside of the pre-hibernating period. For the majority of individuals obesity is a relatively recent event in human history because food availability was generally limited and a relatively high degree of physical activity was required to procure sufficient food to maintain survival. The switch from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies has allowed increasing numbers of individuals to obtain food with reduced expenditure of energy. In the developed world, the prevalence of obesity has increased precipitously in the last 20–30 years as the availability of cheap, highly palatable, energy-dense food has become more widely available and physical activity has declined (Popkin & Doak, 1999). Clearly, the gene pool has not changed substantially over such a short period of time to explain the rapid increase in obesity prevalence. Thus, environmental factors must be the critical variable which has promoted the current epidemic of human obesity. Animal models of obesity have become a useful tool in our quest to understand the factors contributing to the recent obesity epidemic in humans. Although other animals differ from humans in many ways, they share many common physiological properties that assure their survival during periods of famine.
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