In America Being Fat Is Like Being Poor: It's Your Fricken Fault

At some point in time, probably not in the immediate future, the Anglo-American world is going to wake up to the fact that no man, nor no woman, is an island. The environment, beginning in the womb, has profound effects on the people we turn out to be.

Seems pretty straight forward, but if Anglo-Americans actually accepted this into their worldview they would have a fuck of a time trying to justify their rapacious greed.

On the economic front we all know the neo-conservative cant dating back to the English Calvinists landing on American shores that the poor are poor because they are lazy bastards and the rich are rich because God has decided that they should be.

And if you are fat, it's because you spend too much time watching TV scarfing down Twinkies and swilling back litres of Coke.

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But wait a minute, what if it isn't that simple?

Consider the following from a recent NY Times article:

The popular emphasis on calorie balance reinforces the belief that we have conscious control over our weight, and that obesity represents a personal failure because of ignorance or inadequate willpower.

In addition, the food industry — which makes enormous profits from highly processed products derived from corn, wheat and rice — invokes calorie balance as its first line of defense. If all calories are the same, then there are no bad foods, and sugary beverages, junk foods and the like are fine in moderation. It’s simply a question of portion control. The fact that this rarely works is taken as evidence that obese people lack willpower, not that the idea itself might be wrong.

Hey, there's a reason why, "I bet you can't eat just one".  The food industry works diligently to find out what are the bliss points for the unnaturally delicious and unnaturally fattening foods that they market.

In short, the food industry uses science to get us to eat their shit, but when we take them to task for the unhealthy consequences that widespread consumption of their products wreak upon the population, they fall back on a seventeenth century conception of human psychology so to dodge any social responsibility.

Sounds a bit dodgy I must say.

But ain't that America, the land of the free, the home of the brave, and the greatest number of fat asses on the planet.