Almost every day, it seems, there is another alarming study
about the dangers of being fat or a new theory about its causes
and cures. Just this week, VH1 announced a new reality show
called ''Flab to Fab,'' in which overweight women get a personal
staff to whip them into shape. But a growing group of historians
and cultural critics who study fat say this obsession is based
less on science than on morality. Insidious attitudes about
politics, sex, race or class are at the heart of the frenzy over
obesity, these scholars say, a frenzy they see as comparable to
the Salem witch trials, McCarthyism and even the eugenics
movement. ''We are in a moral panic about obesity,'' said Sander
L. Gilman, distinguished professor of liberal arts, sciences and
medicine at the University of Illinois in Chicago and the author
of ''Fat Boys: A Slim Book,'' published last month by the
University of Nebraska Press. ''People are saying, 'Fat is the
doom of Western civilization.' '' Now, says Peter Stearns, a
leading historian in th