0:00
Hello, everybody, and welcome
to this course entitled Obesity,
Science, Medicine, and Society.
I'm Alexandra Blakemore,
I'm Professor of
Molecular Genetics
at Imperial College, London
and I've put together
this course
with my colleague
Dr. Andrew Walley
from St. George's
Medical School, London.
We've worked together
for quite a long time,
mostly on the genetics
of obesity,
but also a little bit
on physiology.
And we hope that
we've been able to put together
a series of lectures that
you'll find interesting
and stimulating
on this complex subject.
0:35
This lecture is intended
as a general overview
of the topic of obesity
just to ground you
in the subjects.
When you come
to the different lectures
that you're going
to have during the course,
you can integrate them together
and see how they fit
into the whole
academic subject of obesity.
So we'll be talking about
the rising prevalence of obesity
all around the world
and where it's most of a problem
and what kind of people
are most affected.
Why is it a problem?
What are the consequences
of obesity?
How do we go about defining
who is obese and who isn't?
Who's at greatest risk?
Why are they at risk?
What causes the obesity?
And what can we do
to combat the problem?
1:17
The prevalence of obesity
is rising throughout the world
and it's been described
as a global epidemic.
The World Health Organization
estimates that in 2014,
nearly 40 percent of adults
in the world were overweight
and 13 percent were obese.
That means that more than
2 billion adults worldwide
are overweight
and half a billion are obese.
