"Eek! Eek! You are gonna starve to death!"

When an overweight person is eating chocolate, ice cream or cake in some social situation, nobody in their right mind would consider expressing concern (rude people and close relatives don't count). Telling them "you are overweight already, maybe you shouldn't eat chocolate, it's bad for you" is a social gaffe of enormous proportion. Telling them that chocolate is bad for everybody is almost as big a social gaffe, and besides it's not true.

There are many perfectly good reasons for this: first of all, somebody else's weight is not a polite topic to bring up, second, most fat people know that they are fat (and if they don't, they have their mothers to remind them) and where the fat comes from, and third, people are not likely to change their eating habits no matter what you tell them.

Why is that, then, when someone is skipping a meal, it is considered quite appropriate to admonish them on the unhealthiness of that, or at least express concern? Why is it, in fact, that people even are concerned, assuming that the person skipping the meal is not underweight and has no known eating disorders? I've never heard that any long-term harm came to any person of normal-or-higher weight from skipping a meal.

I get this often, because I do this often. Usually at least a couple of times a week my first meal of the day is when I come home from work. I am no worse for the wear, but people tend to express concern when and if I mention it. I don't find that concern in any way offensive but it does give me a vague feeling that I am doing something that is generally considered shameful and that I shouldn't mention in polite society if I were a properly polite person. I am very curious about the reasons for it, though.

Is it some kind of atavistic thing from the times where there was geniunely not enough food to go around? Or is the awareness of eating disorders so high that people start imagining that if I skip a meal I will immediately stop eating altogether and eventually starve to death? Or is it just that most people are more physically bothered by skipping meals than I am, and think of it as some great physical discomfort?