Structured psychosocial stress and the US obesity epidemic

Abstract

We examine the accelerating 'obesity epidemic' in the US from the perspective of generalized language-of-thought arguments relating a cognitive hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis to an embedding context of structured psychosocial stress. From a Rate Distortion perspective, the obesity epidemic is an image of ratcheting social pathology -- indexed by massive, policy-driven, deurbanization and deindustrialization -- impressed upon the bodies of American adults and children. The resulting pattern of developmental disorder, while stratified by expected divisions of class and ethnicity, is nonetheless relentlessly engulfing even affluent majority populations.