We see that

Americans would be really insulted if they stopped eating long enough to read any literate publications. Recently, “The Last Bite” by Bee Wilson in The New Yorker and “Indians Find U.S. at Fault in Food Costs,” in The New York Times insinuated that our gluttony contributes to the suffering of one billion starving people. Although Wilson’s article about food politics, provocatively subtitled “Is the world’s food system collapsing?” is too theoretical to cause us any personal embarrassment, it does hit hard with observations such as:

“… our insatiable demand for food must be worn on our bodies, often in the form of diabetes as well as obesity. Overeating makes us miserable, and ill, but medical advances means that it takes a long time to kill us, so we keep on eating.”

Translation: At least smoking killed us fast and we didn’t use so much gas to get us where we’re going.

The Times article, however, gets right to the point. It quotes Pradeep S. Mehta, Secretary General of CUTS, an independent research institute in New Delhi, who suggested that if Americans slimmed down to the weight of middle -class Indians “many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates.”

Whew!! Talk about bad timing. Just when fat Americans — 70 percent of us — managed to convince the media and medical experts that obesity is a disease, this guy comes along and upsets our apple cart. How rude! But can’t we find it in our big hearts to forgive him? After all, living in New Delhi, he hasn’t had the opportunity to avail himself of American political correctness training. He just doesn’t know what our Presidential candidates have learned: you have to be nice to fat folks. On the campaign trail when addressing an audience of huge beings, they would never be as boorish as to point out that Americans are “driven by our bottomless stomachs,” as Paul Roberts argues in “The Last Bite.” Or even hint at the consequences: forget affordable health care as the obesity numbers climb from 70 to 89% by 2030.

Now the question is how did these rude accusations surface in the land of the free and the fat?
Well, George W. Bush sparked the debate when, during a May 2^nd Missouri news conference, he explained that Indians were at fault for higher food prices because some of them now have jobs that pay more than a dollar a day, which means they can buy more food! Immediately after this Bush-league pronouncement, the Asian Age, a New Delhi newspaper, argued in an editorial that Mr. Bush’s “ignorance on most matters is widely known and openly acknowledged by his countrymen.”

What a mess! George Bush — our lame duck President — has gone and spilled the beans. Our fatness is now everybody’s – meaning the world’s — business. Will we ever learn to shut our mouths?