Professor of Nutrition Says Obesity Found Too Seldom Here

"As a tentative and somewhat tongue-in-cheek hypothesis I would maintain that the Harvard Office of Admissions practices unconscious discrimination against obese applicants," Jean Mayer, associate professor of Nutrition, remarked yesterday.

Mayer, a leading authority on the problem of obesity, based his theory on a 1957-58 study which found an obesity rate of lower than one per cent among Harvard Freshmen, as compared with the national average of 10-20 per cent for 18-year-old males. Since other studies have shown that there is no difference between the academic proficiency of obese and non-obese high school students, the low Harvard percentage seems to reflect unconscious discrimination, Mayer said.

He suggested that Harvard policies are symptomatic of a nation-wide prejudice against fat people. "There is a mistaken belief that obesity is due to a lack of will power or to personal negligence," Mayer said. "I strongly oppose such moralistic attitudes. Obesity is a medical, not a moral problem.'

"The notion that obesity is due to weak will power is particularly ironic in view of recent political history," Mayer added. "This is the age of the Obese Dictator--Khrushchev, Peron, Tito, Stalin, and Castro are cases in point." He cited Winston Churchill as another example of a willful fat man. "It is amusing," he concluded, "that The Vallant Years, a current TV series on Churchill, is being sponsored by Metrecal."