Obesity is one of the main risk factors for osteoarthritis (OA) and due to the global rise in obesity this will increasingly contribute to OA development. The article of Griffin and co-workers in this issue of Arthritis Research and Therapy shows that a high-fat diet leads to obesity and OA in the studied animals and that this is related to alterations in locomotor function. Furthermore, a high-fat diet leads to pain sensitization and depression/anxiety-like behavior unrelated to structural OA changes in the knee. Their findings demonstrate that the majority of features of the human 'OA syndrome' can be reproduced in a small animal model.