Obesity management--new perspectives.

Obesity represents a growing threat for the health of population worldwide. The decline of physical activity and the passive overconsumption of energy-dense, high-fat diets are important factors that explain the increased prevalence of obesity. Despite many efforts, the prevention and the treatment of obesity are often a failure. Since obesity development is due to a chronic imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure, the most important advice for the prevention and the treatment of this nutritional disorder remains the reduction of high-fat foods and the stimulation of fat oxidation by promoting physical activity. The recent advances in our understanding of the control of food intake and of energy expenditure offer the hope that new therapeutic agents will become available over the next decade. This article briefly presents our present understanding of the main mechanisms which are responsible for the increased prevalence of obesity and some new areas of research which may be promising for the prevention and treatment of this disease.