Obesity: Causes, Mechanisms, Prevention, and Treatment

This new book is concerned with overeating and its consequent obesity. It provides, for the first time in a single accessible volume, an integrated approach to both causes and mechanisms underlying obesity and offers principled steps toward prevention and fitness. Expert chapters are written by leaders in their respective fields (see Table of Contents).

Multiple factors have contributed to the obesity epidemic. Social, sensory, cultural, medical, perceptual, conditioning, and developmental influences have combined to disrupt well established feeding controls. All are discussed individually and collectively from the perspectives of causation and potential mitigation, on individual and at group levels.

Another major cause of obesity that has not received its due attention is the unhealthy marriage of addictive overeating of sweet and fatty foods with federal policies of subsidizing agricultural industries through the USDA. These subsidies specifically target agricultural production that makes tasty, high-calorie foods widely available at very modest costs. This comes by eliminating subsidies for fruits and vegetables, resulting in higher, often unaffordable prices. The Food Stamp Program is discussed as one vehicle through which produce can be made more widely available to people who could not otherwise afford their purchase. The complexities, limitations, and potentials of such a program are evaluated.

Vulnerability to overeating, which develops in infancy and in early childhood, has been exploited by producers of children’s foods (such as sweetened cereals) and by advertising campaigns to make them extremely enticing. The contribution to early obesity by extended inactivity through TV and computer engagement is discussed, as is increased dependence on the automobile (especially in unsafe public areas where there is no viable alternative) as the sole means of transportation.

Obesity identifies feeding strategies and unknown entrapments that cause severe overeating and ways that they can be combated. They range from exchanging large dishes and short, stout glasses for small dishes and thin, tall glasses to strategies of better monitoring portion sizes and the caloric content of foods served at home.

Elliott M. Blass received his PhD [Psychology] from the University of Virginia and his postdoctoral training [Zoology] from the University of Pennsylvania. He was on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University and Medical School [Psychology and Psychiatry] for twenty years, during which time he was trained as a Psychiatry Resident. He taught for six years at Cornell [Psychology and Nutrition] and is now a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Behavior at the University of Massachusetts. Blass is a Research Professor in Pediatrics at The Boston University School of Medicine. His research interests have focused on feeding motivation, infant nutrition, mother-infant interactions, and obesity.