I'm Dr. Michael Greger and this is Nutrition Facts.

There's one thing we've been thinking a lot about lately,

and that's how to stay healthy in the middle of a global pandemic,

especially since we've learned that those with underlying health problems like obesity,

hypertension, diabetes, heart disease,

are more likely to have serious complications if they can track COVID-19.

So what do we do?

We try to stay healthy with evidence-based nutrition.

When I sat down to write my book How Not to Diet,

I knew I had to answer this question.

What triggered the obesity epidemic?

Was it inactivity, just kid sitting around playing video games?

Was it genetic?

Was it epi-genetic?

Something turning our fat genes on?

Or was it just the food?

In our first story, we examined common explanations for the cause of the obesity

epidemic put forward by the food industry and policy makers.

Obesity is a new but the obesity epidemic is.

We went from a few corpulant kings and queens like Henry VIII or Louis VI known as Louis Legrand,

or Louis Vat.

To a pandemic of obesity now considered to perhaps be the most dire and poorly-contained

...