Excellent summation, William.

Now, there's only one thing left to discuss - the psychological manifestations of eating disorders. It's not all heredity and environment in every case of obesity; there's a psychological disorder present in many of them.

The study you cited, and the article you wrote, talk only about physical environmental factors (which are legion). You covered it very well, but you (and the study) didn't go far enough.

People are damaged in many ways, not all of them physical. Child abuse. Social exclusion. A stressful environment. Poverty. Cruelty. We've managed to lose the old stable communities and extended families that previous generations relied upon as support structures. There's even the negative impact of advertising, whose purpose is to induce a feeling of inadequacy. Impossible standards of contrived beauty work to motivate purchases, but there's damage done to self-esteem in the process.

Food is a drug. That is to say, food has an impact on the brain: satiation reduces anxiety and contributes to a feeling of well-being. A person can use food to combat mental anguish and discomfort. If a person does it too much, it's an eating disorder. The term "food addiction" is legitimate. It's a form of self-medication. The terms which apply to other addictions apply here, too: dependency, increasing tolerance (reducing effect), withdrawal (suffering).

Unlike with drug addictions, though, the food addict must continue to eat to live. Imagine a drug addict attempting to moderate his drug consumption and lead a normal life, and you will understand the challenge.

Is stigma helpful? You've said so in previous writings, gone so far as to encourage it. I'm curious if your appreciation of obesity has evolved past that point.

Stigma can worsen self-esteem, you see. It can exacerbate mental anguish, and if that isn't at the root of all obesity, it's certainly at the root of all eating disorders. Heaping scorn on a person with an eating disorder is like pouring fuel on the fire.

Treat the self-esteem disorder. Frankly, almost everyone has something as part of their persona that could be considered abnormal or unhealthy. and i'm talking strictly in the psychological sense here. people have issues with their moms, dads, authority, people in general, the opposite sex, clowns, etc... for any number of reasons. and most of us let these issues disrupt and direct our lives. So let's look at fixing self esteem. because if we truly shore tha up the rest of the problems will tend to fall by the wayside.

i just don't think treating self esteem issue by issue is necessarily the way to go. encourage individuality of mind, of body, of spirit. if we start early enough and continue reinforcing it throughout a lifetime, people would have enough strength of character that we wouldn't be worried about the bombardment of images the media may feed...