Preliminary Draft ‘Fat people and bombs’: HPA axis cognition, structured stress, and the US obesity epidemic

We examine the accelerating ‘obesity epidemic’ in the US from the perspective of recently developed theory relating a cognitive hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal axis to an embedding ‘language’ of structured psychosocial stress. Using a Rate Distortion argument, the obesity epidemic is found to represent the literal writing of an image of a ratcheting pathological social hierarchy onto the bodies of American adults and children. This process, while stratified by the usual divisions of class and ethnicity, is nonetheless relentlessly engulfing even affluent majority populations. Our perspective places the common explanation that ‘obesity occurs when people eat too much and get too little exercise’ in the same category as the remark by US President Calvin ∗Address correspondence to R. Wallace, PISCS Inc., 549 W. 123 St., Suite 16F, New York, NY, 10027. Telephone (212) 865-4766, [email protected]. Affiliations are for identification only. This material has been submitted for publication and is protected by copyright.