An elementary proof of the 3-body Efimov effect is provided in the case of a
separable 2-body potential which binds at zero energy a light particle to a
heavy one. The proof proceeds by two steps, namely {\it i)} a projection of the
Hamiltonian in a subspace and the observation that the projected Hamiltonian
generates an arbitrarily large number of bound states, and {\it ii)} a use of
the Hylleraas-Undheim theorem to recover the unprojected Hamiltonian. The
definition of the projectors we use can include mean field distortions.Comment: 17 pages, TeX Email contact= [email protected]