Wired to Eat

Wired to Eat: "Madison 'Mad' Nena nibbles on a tangerine picked from his garden on Kosrae, a tiny volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean some 4,670 kilometers southwest of Hawaii. The 53-year-old Nena is a rarity here. He's thin in a place where fatty, sugary foods imported from the United States have caused an alarming number of people to inflate like dirigibles; obesity-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease have struck the island's 7,600 residents hard. Why Nena has stayed thin, and others have not, has drawn American researchers from Rockefeller University in New York City to this 109-square-kilometer patch of jungles, white beaches, mangrove swamps, and quiet villages for more than a decade, in a quest to tease out the genetic and molecular mechanisms of why humans are compelled to eat. And sometimes to eat and eat, far beyond what is healthy."