Arundhati Parmar

The gold standard of dealing with morbid obesity has been bariatric surgery, where the stomach anatomy is altered to limit the amount of food a person can eat at a time.

But these procedures often cause nausea and vomiting by patients.

Now startups that have FDA-approved products as well as technologies that are yet to win the regulatory nod in the U.S. are trying to provide surgical and nonsurgical alternatives to bariatric surgery. 

The opportunity for these startups is clear. Worldwide, obesity has doubled since 1980, according to the World Health Organization. Last year 1.9 billion adults who are 18 and older were considered overweight, and 600 million of them were obese.

Below is a slideshow, in alphabetical order, of five obesity startups aiming to tackle the epidemic of obesity. 

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