  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.
