25 Jun 2016

A fat gene?

From This Way Up, 12:15 pm on 25 June 2016
Giles Yeo

Giles Yeo Photo: Supplied

Could knowing that you are more likely to be obese, genetically speaking, make you eat less?

Giles Yeo is a neuroscientist and geneticist based at Cambridge University, he studies the brain and how it controls weight. In the UK 62% of adults are either overweight or obese and here in New Zealand 68%  of us are too heavy.

Giles also works as a TV presenter, and in his latest BBC Horizon documentary, called 'Why Are We Getting So Fat?', he travels around the UK meeting obese people and looking at the latest obesity-related science, from faecal transplants to hormone injections.

The main focus of his work for the past 8 years has been on a gene called FTO, dubbed the 'fat gene'.