Fat, and getting fatter (National Post, May 27, 2009)

Fat, and getting fatter

Barbara Kay, National Post  Published: Wednesday, May 27, 2009

This past weekend, we were in the United States, land of the free --and the fat.

In theory, I'm a food libertarian and don't believe the state should take responsibility for curbing individuals' greed. Adults should have to live with their choices.

But it's sad to watch already-chubby kids at the food courts eating hassock-sized cinnamon rolls, haystacks of french fries and stacked baseballs of ice cream. The kids may as well be wearing T-shirts proclaiming "Diabetic in Training."

I'm unusually sensitive to the obesity crisis lately because, in the past two years, three of the four people in my nuclear family have been converted to beneficial eating by food-related health "scares":

My son's junk food habits helped create a critical digestive issue culminating in an emergency hospital stay, drip morphine for pain and a stern admonition to change his ways. My lean, athletic daughter who didn't enjoy cooking, tending to graze on whatever was at hand, developed gestational diabetes during a difficult pregnancy. And two months ago, blood tests revealed my husband Ronny, whose junk food habits petrified in adolescence, was, without a radical change to his high-fat, high-sugar diet, diabetes-bound.

These three food pagans saw the light, not on the road to Damascus but in the perimeter aisles of the supermarket.

My son now serves his family a small orchard's worth of industrial-strength fruit smoothies every morning. My daughter learned to cook, buys organic produce and strictly monitors her children's sugar intake. Ronny foreswore sugar and refined flour, and acquired an endocrinologist's expertise in "resistant carbs" and glycemic indexes. (It's a bit weird, after 45 years married to Mr. Pizza Hut, to find a note on the counter reminding me to buy broccoli and black beans.)

It isn't my imagination that Americans are getting fatter (Canadians are too, just not as dramatically). Between 1960 and 2000, the average weight of American women aged 20-29 went from 128 lbs to 157 lbs. Since 1975, per capita consumption of fat has skyrocketed, from 53 lbs to over 85 lbs.

In his new book, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, pediatrician David A. Kessler, former commissioner of the U. S. Food and Drug Administration, takes the reader on an appetite-stanching journey through franchise food hell, ground zero for the obesity epidemic.

Today, Americans spend almost 50% of their food dollars at ubiquitous fat and sugar brothels like McDonald's and its ilk, but also at "respectable" chain restaurants like Chili's and IHOP, and they too are diabolically proficient at arousing mouth lust.

At the crux of the obesity crisis is the insidious triad of fat + sugar + salt. Everything "hyper-palatable" is a combination of two or three of these items, not coincidentally the cheapest of commodities. Spinach dip is a green-coloured "tasty dish of salt on fat." Double fried Buffalo wings are "fat on fat on sugar." You'd be hard-pressed to find an appetizer at Chili's (over 1,400 locations) or the Outback Steakhouse that isn't fat on fat on salt/sugar (and way over-portioned).

Kessler went deep into food-production territory for his research. Fast-food scientists candidly revealed what they strive to achieve with pinpoint chemical precision: craveability. They explained that Oreo cookies are so popular because the "unique, bitter taste of the chocolate wafer combined with the sweetness of the cream fillings" creates "dynamic novelty." Snickers is such an "extraordinarily well engineered" chocolate bar because of its "even disappearance and clean getaway."

Competition breeds sickening excess when rival franchises join in unholy matrimony with the social connection and entertainment worlds. A regular Starbucks Frappuccino packs the caloric wallop of a personal pizza with sweetness equivalent to six scoops of ice cream. Jumper's Chocolate Motherlode Cake, featured on the Food Network, contains 2,150 calories a slice. Pink's hot dog stand in Los Angeles features "Three dog night dog" -- three hot dogs wrapped in a giant tortilla served with bacon, cheese, chili and onions.

We're in a reverse-famine crisis, created by a deadly symbiosis of hedonism and ignorance, real and willed. Education isn't working; for 40 years I've nagged my family about the evils of sugar and white flour. They ignored my Cassandric warnings until their bodies scared them straight.

Kessler offers no magic bullets. Resisting hyper-palatibility still comes down to exercise and will power, which works temporarily, but rarely long term(seen Oprah lately?). Absent the food police or a safe diet pill--a Fen-phen with no side effects (if you didn't have a heart attack, it worked very well!) -- Americans will get fatter and fatter and fatter, sicker and sicker and sicker. Depressing, eh? Pass the Oreos.

 

bkay@videotron.ca