Animals must find and consume food to meet intake demands and maintain energy balance. The regulation of food intake is dependent on many factors, including environment, energy stores, peripheral hormone secretion, and their feedback to homeostatic and hedonic brain circuits. Importantly, disruption to the balance of food intake and energy expenditure leads to weight and metabolism-related pathologies, including obesity and type II diabetes. 1 As a result of the worldwide obesity epidemic of recent decades, an improved understanding of the regulation of food intake via integration of peripheral signals and central nervous system (CNS) circuits may lead to novel treatment approaches for obesity.Insulin, a pancreatic hormone released in response to elevated blood glucose, was first discovered by Banting and Best in the pancreatic extracts of dogs 100 years ago. 2 Insulin is primarily known as a peripheral regulator of blood glucose levels and, hence, has been used as a treatment for both type I and type II diabetes mellitus, diseases affecting over 450 million people globally. 3 Following an increase in blood glucose levels (ie, when a meal is consumed), the release of insulin is stimulated, which circulates in the bloodstream and binds to insulin receptors on cell membranes in tissues such as the liver, muscle and adipose tissue. This binding of insulin at its receptor results in phosphorylation of insulin receptor substrate proteins 1 and 2 (IRS1 and IRS2), ultimately activating the phosphoinositide 3-kinase/protein kinase B (PI3K/Akt) pathway. 4 PI3K activation