ABSTRACT
Obesity in the Pacific has become legendary, with chiefs in Hawaii and Tahiti the most commonly cited examples. Captain Cook began the record, as he was impressed by the size of both the men and women amongst the nobility he met on his visits to various Pacific islands (Beaglehole, 1962). Subsequent writers have maintained the legend so that these people’s extraordinary body size is cited in many texts on health issues and diet (for example, Beller’s Fat and Thin, 1977).
