Metabolic syndrome has become a serious global epidemic that has increased in prevalence over the past several decades. By 2016, over 2.2 billion people were overweight, with over 774 million of those being obese. Type 2 diabetes, which is often exacerbated by obesity, was estimated to afflict 463 million people worldwide in 2019. Comorbidities in the cardiovascular system, the liver, the kidney, the bone and the joints, the GI tract and the immune system have shown clearly that metabolic dysfunction is a multi-system and multi-organ disease. Many studies have shown that both genetic and non-genetic factors (such as lifestyle, nutrition choice and social influence) contribute to the onset of metabolic dysfunction. Developing therapies to combat these metabolic diseases is in urgent need, as is the need for animal models to test the efficacy of such therapies.