The obesity epidemic and our gut microbiome – could it all be down to our ‘bugs’?

According to the World Health Organization, obesity is officially a global epidemic they have aptly termed – ‘Globesity’. Obesity worldwide has more than doubled since 1980, reaching 600 million in 2014, occurring in parallel with increased high-energy, low-nutrition food consumption and sedentary lifestyles – both of which result in a positive energy imbalance. These environmental factors influence our metabolism, by modifying the way our genes are expressed, and similarly those of any organisms within us, such as the 38 trillion bacterial microbes inhabiting our gastrointestinal tract (gut microbiome), compared with 30 trillion human cells in the entire body.