PEDIATRICS Vol. 34 No. 3 September 1964, pp. 303-307
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WHY AND HOW ARE CHILDREN FAT?

WILLIAM M. WALLACE M.D.1

1 Western Reserve University, School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio

IN SONG AND STORY, obesity has always had an association with the positive and happy values of life. The fat person was the image of the one to be trusted. He was kind, happy, jolly, and successful. If he were lazy, it was a good sort of laziness. If he were the butt of a joke, the jokester was the eventual loser. In the female, two standard deviations above mean weight was a sign of beauty. Today all this, for not easily discernible reasons, is changed. The pediatrician who would begin the study of obesity today could well start with a study of Piggy in the "Lord of the Flies." Either by intent or intuition, Golding has made him physically inept, myopic, frightened, and carried to an early and violent death, his wisdom and foresight unheeded.