Why there's no easy hunger-satisfying drug

Via Megan, Derek Lowe:

I've long been wary of [weight loss drugs], since we've found (over and over) that human feeding behavior is protected by multiple, overlapping redundant pathways. We are the descendants of a long line of creatures that have made eating and reproducing their absolute priorities in life, and neither of those behaviors are going to be altered lightly. The animals that can be convinced to voluntarily eat so little that they actually lose weight, just through modifying a single biochemical pathway, are all dead. Our ancestors were the other guys.

Here's a video with some interesting background on why certain appetites evolved:



Meanwhile Reason has a piece on solving the problem of childhood obesity.