AT ANY GIVEN time in the United States 15 to 35 percent of Americans are trying to lose weight. Their goal is to achieve the American ideal—to be slim and fit. A $33-billion-dollar-a-year weight-loss industry promotes and markets thousands of treatments, devices, and programs that promise to help consumers lose weight and keep it off. Despite this enormous expenditure, the battle against obesity is difficult, continuous, and often futile.

Diets

An estimated 50 million Americans go on a diet of some kind every year. Unfortunately, the effort is often in vain. One victim of obesity writes,

I've gained and lost over a thousand pounds in my life. I've been anorexic, sixty pounds overweight, and every point in between. I've been on the Atkins diet; the Prunes and Meatball Diet; the Thousand-Calorie-a-Day Sugar Diet; the Coffee, Diet Creme...