Obesity 173Jeffrey, and Wing (1978) suggested that the obese might be overeating at
home and went into the homes of 60 middle-class families to examine what
was stored in their cupboards. They weighed all members of the families
and found no relationship between body size and the mass and type of
food they consumed at home. In an attempt to clarify the problem of whether
the obese eat more than the nonobese, Spitzer and Rodin (1981) examined
the research into eating behavior and suggested that “of twenty-nine studies
examining the effects of body weight on amount eaten in laboratory studies
...only nine reported that overweight subjects ate significantly more than
their lean counterparts.” Over recent years, however, researchers have
questioned this conclusion for the following reasons. First, much of the
early research was based on self-report data, which are notoriously unre-
liable, with most people consistently underreporting how much they eat
(Prentice et al., 1986; Heitmann and Lissner, 1995). Second, when the obese
and nonobese are either over- or underfed in a controlled environment,
these two groups gain or lose weight at the same rate, suggesting that the
obese must eat more in order to maintain their higher weight (Jebb et al.,
1996). Finally, it has been argued that assessing food intake in terms of gross
amount without analyzing the types of food being eaten misses the complex
nature of both eating behavior and food metabolism (Prentice, 1995b).
One recent study has also asked, “Do the obese eat at different times of
the day than the nonobese?” Berg et al. (2009) used a sample of 3,610 women
and men from Sweden and explored their BMI and meal patterns. The results
showed that those who were obese were more likely to skip breakfast, skip
lunch, and eat at night and reported larger portion sizes at meal times.
Similarly, Laessle et al. (2007) explored whether the obese ate differently in
a laboratory study in Germany. The results showed that compared to normal-
weight participants, the obese showed a faster initial rate of eating, took larger
spoonfuls, and had an overall greater intake of food. Therefore, the answer to
the question “Do the obese eat more than the nonobese?” appears to be
“Sometimes, but not consistently so.” If, however, overeating is defined as
“compared to what the body needs,” then the obese do overeat, because they
have excess body fat. Further, they may well eat at different times and in
a different way.
Some research has focused on the eating behavior of the obese not in terms
of calories consumed, or in terms of amount eaten, but more specifically
in terms of the type of food eaten, with a particular emphasis on the ratio
between carbohydrate and fat. Population data indicate that calorie con-
sumption has decreased since the 1970s and that this decrease is unrelated