Maria Puy Portillo

Dr. Maria Puy Portillo obtained a Degree in Pharmacy and a PhD in Pharmacy both at the University of Navarra. Currently she is Professor of Nutrition at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of the Basque Country, where she leads the “Nutrition and Obesity” research group. She has led 39 research projects and she is co-author of 237 scientific papers, 34 book chapters and 20 Nutrition Guides. She has supervised 17 Doctoral Theses.

She is the Director of the Nutrigenomics and Personalized Nutrition Doctoral Program at the University of the Basque Country and the Scientific Director of Ciberobn of the Carlos III Health Institute. She was President of the Spanish Nutrition Society from 2018 till 2022.

Overweight and obesity – how to prevent the global epidemic

Maria P. Portillo

Nutrition and Obesity Group, Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and Lucio Lascaray Research Institute, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.

CIBERobn Physiopathology of Obesity and Nutrition, Institute of Health Carlos III, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.

BIOARABA Health Research Institute, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.

Obesity is a complex and costly chronic disease, sometimes neglected, with serious social and psychological dimensions, that affects both developed and developing countries. Indeed, it is estimated that over 115 million people suffer from obesity-related problems. In most cases obesity is a multifactorial disease due to obesogenic environments, psycho-social factors and genetic variants.

The obesogenic environment exacerbating the likelihood of obesity in individuals, populations and in different settings is related to structural factors limiting the availability of healthy sustainable food at locally affordable prices, lack of safe and easy physical mobility into the daily life of all people, and absence of adequate legal and regulatory environment. At the same time, the lack of an effective health system response to identify excess weight gain and fat deposition in their early stages is aggravating the progression to obesity.

Addressing obesity requires organizations and people to work together to create communities, environments, and systems that support healthy, active lifestyles for all. At an individual level, people should eat healthy foods and drink healthy beverages, get the recommended amount of physical activity and enough sleep, reduce screen time in front of phones, computers and TV to less than one to two hours daily and manage stress. Obesity-prevention strategies from governments can include a) developing and promoting guidelines on dietary patterns and amounts of physical activity needed for good health, b) studying what works in communities to make it easier for people to be more physically active and have a healthier diet and c) helping families with lower incomes get affordable, nutritious foods.