Orland W. Wooley

Obesity and women—II. A neglected feminist topic

Synopsis This second paper places these findings on obesity in a feminist context and examines the political dimension of obesity for women. It examines the possibility that in Western society females are never too thin to feel fat and looks at the ‘mass starvation of women’ in America as a possible cultural ‘equivalent to foot-binding, lip-stretching, and other forms of woman mutilation’.

Calories and sweet taste: Effects on sucrose preference in the obese and nonobese ☆

Abstract The effects of two very sweet solutions, one noncaloric (cyclamate) and one caloric (glucose, 25%), ingested orally, on preference for 2.5%–40% sucrose taste samples were studied using obese and nonobese subjects. Glucose and cyclamate were equally effective in reducing preference for sucrose samples of 10% or above, one hr after ingestion. Glucose was slightly more effective than cyclamate in reducing preference for 20% sucrose around 30 min after ingestion. The findings challenge the validity of the alliesthesia phenomenon and, therefore disconfirm the ponderostat theory of Cabanac, Duclaux, and associates.

Obesity and women—I. A closer look at the facts

Synopsis These two papers provide a new perspective on obesity. This first paper is concerne with challenging the prevailing orthodoxy that fatness is self-induced, that fat people overeat and need only to stick to a diet in order to eliminate obesity. It reviews research which indicates that ‘obese people do not, on the average, eat more than anyone else’, and that contrary to frequent medical insistence on the desirability of dieting, there are many undesirable facets, for there is an almost inevitable weight gain after dieting so that ‘the major treatment for obesity may also be the major cause of obesity’.

The Experimental Psychology of Obesity

Among the current theories purporting to explain the psychological basis of obesity in humans one of the earliest was that proposed by Hilde Bruch and summarised in her recent book1and among the first to generate experimental studies of the eating behaviour of the obese was Schachter’s2,3. The central aetiological concepts of the two theories are similar. Bruch has proposed that eating disorders (obesity and anorexia nervosa) are caused by an inability to differentiate between bodily sensations and emotional states. Obese persons are viewed as having a faulty awareness of physiological hunger, so that emotional states are mislabelled as hunger; this leads to an excessive intake of food. Schachter’s theory2–4 consists of two hypotheses. The ‘external hypothesis’ states: ...there is growing reason to suspect that the eating behavior of the obese is relatively unrelated to any internal gut state, but is, in large part, under external control; that is, eating behavior is initiated and terminated by stimuli external to the organism2.