Disciplinarian parents who ignore the viewpoint of their children may be contributing to the obesity epidemic. The tentative explanation is that children overeat to cope with stress. Parents who set out rules, but listened to their children and provided them with a sense of security, had children with the fewest weight problems.

There’s a lesson for society as a whole here. Subjecting the most vulnerable members of society to constant insecurity isn’t an incentive to try harder, it’s an incentive to find ways to alleviate the stress. No matter what obesity-pundits say, food is an effective and cheap way of reducing stress. Business and government are currently being obliged to adjust to the reality of inceasing rates of obesity. The efforts seem to be focused on setting more controls: deprive people of food, berate the character of people who have “let themselves go”, and bemoan “addiction” on all the afternoon talk shows. Perhaps instead of spending all this time and money on damage control, which seems to be rife with humiliations that will only make the problem worse, people should consider providing more checks on rankism. Allowing open season to abuse the most vulnerable members of society has resulted in a tremendous cost, and the bills are now coming due.