According to a new study published in Nature Genetics, it seems that obesity may partially be a genetic problem with the brain. The publication has two international studies published that examined thousands of sampled people for the tiniest of genetic changes. Many of the seven key variants found were traced to being active in the brain.

The findings suggest the brain plays the dominant role in controlling appetite, and that obesity cannot easily be blamed on metabolic flaws.

Joel Hirschhorn at Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston led a team called Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits or GIANT, and screened 15 different studies of the entire human genetic map and thus pinpointed six new genetic variations.

The other study was conducted by deCODE Genetics, a Iceland based researching company, on seven separate gene problems and show that a contributing factor of obesity may be directly related to how the mind controls appetite, not metabolism.

"One of the most notable aspects of these discoveries is that most of these new risk factors are near genes that regulate processes in the brain," said Dr. Kari Stefansson, Chief Executive Officer of DeCODE Genetics of Iceland. It is estimated that 70 percent of variation in body mass index – the measure of obesity based on height and weight – ultimately comes down to genetics instead of environmental factors. This is a major step forward in our understanding of how the human body regulates weight.

The World Health Association estimates that more than 1 billion adults worldwide are overweight, with at least 300 million of them classified as obese, with a body mass index of at least 30.