Introduction
Medical history shows us that adiposity was regarded as a sign of fertility dating back 30000 to 20000 BC. Even though Hippocrates (460-377 BC) noted the rather disillusioning fact that excess weight was caused by nutritional factors and a lack of physical activity, and was also a cause of heightened mortality, this was not a widely accepted view. Only in the modern era have people started to regard obesity as a disease.
Up until not too long ago the basic approach was to try to explain adiposity as a glandular disease. In today’s modern society there is a perception that adiposity is caused by self-inflicted heightened calorie-intake, thus a weakness of the mind in the affected person would be the reason. However, this is by no means supported by scientific research results. The growing consensus here is towards a multifactor process, strongly influenced by genetic disposition. Also the use of the term “adiposity” as a synonym for "fat addiction" should become a thing of the past. There is no evidence implying that adiposity is addiction.
Thus the search for the cause of morbid obesity is currently increasingly becoming a subject of intensive research, especially since promising therapeutic approaches have increased public awareness. Control mechanisms are being examined that either control energy balance, or at least influence it to a certain extent. There are several different levels, which are described below.