Letter: The compulsion to overeat

Sir: If Hugh J Thompson is right (letter, 18 March), then all that obese people have to do is exercise a little control, and everything will be all right. Anyone who has ever suffered the agony of compulsive overeating knows that that is just not true. The simple fact about dieting is that it works in the short term, but that it also ultimately fails.

The medical profession has spent too long treating the symptoms of overeating rather than the root cause, which lies, as with anorexia and bulimia, in the compulsion. I look forward to the day when compulsive overeaters are treated with the same concern as sufferers from other eating disorders.

Geoffrey Durham

London, N6