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Attack of the Giant Killer Food
By Michael FumentoCopyright 1997 Michael Fumento
For Homer Simpson or a cliché cop, it's a dream. I have before me a doughnut just smaller than a dinner plate, many times larger than the current average American doughnut that in turn is larger than doughnut sizes from two decades ago. And while this preposterous pastry might seem like a dream to some, dinosaur doughnuts are representative of one of the major causes of a growing American nightmare. We are the fattest people on earth. We are suffering an epidemic of obesity. An estimated 300,000 Americans a year die from obesity-related causes. Obesity greatly increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and other diseases that kill, along with a host of diseases that don't kill but can make life miserable. For example, a 5'4" woman who is merely 44 pounds overweight doubles her risk of breast cancer and more than doubles her risk of the most common form of stroke. You may have heard the expression "fat, but fit." Sorry, but there's no such animal. There's more bad news. Our eating and exercise habits have made Americans the fattest people on earth. Fifteen years ago, a fourth of us were considered obese. Now it's a third. Three-fourths of us are heavier than optimum health allows. And no, it's not just doughnuts doing us in. Monster muffins are now commonly sold in sizes seven times larger than they once were. The original McDonald's hamburger, bun included, weighed 3.7 ounces. Then came the Quarter Pounder at six ounces and the Big Mac at 7.6 ounces. The recently introduced Arch Deluxe tips the scale at almost nine ounces. The Green Burrito chain sells its namesake in three-pound portions, while Little Caesar's boasts pizzas it claims are "bigger than the sun." It's only a slight exaggeration.
All You Can Eat (and Then Some) But fast food, just like doughnuts, is only part of the obesity equation. The Cheesecake Factory restaurants heap pasta helpings so high that Sir Edmund Hillary would have trouble climbing to the top, and even makers of the Lean Cuisine, whose meals presumably are for people watching their weight, have introduced new hefty portions that are 50 percent larger. More ominous yet is the tremendous growth in steakhouses. In 1995, two of the top 20 fastest-growing chain restaurants were steakhouses. These restaurants commonly sell porterhouses at 28 ounces, not to mention the accompanying french fries or potato with globs of sour cream and butter. At new Brazilian steakhouses that are springing up, you're not even limited to that. For $15.99 or so you can just keep eating meat until your belly-button pops out and hits a busboy in the eye. GIANT FOODS COMPARISON
Table Source: Prevention Magazine Drink sizes are also skyrocketing. The original Coca-Cola bottles held six ounces. Then it jumped to eight ounces, then 16, and now bottles from machines offer 20 ounces of carbonated pleasure. By contrast, standard bottles in Europe hold about eight ounces. Many convenience stores in the United States now sell drinks in bucket-size, 64-ounce cups that pack more than 800 calories. One wonders if the lids are to keep the contents from spilling or the consumer from accidentally falling in. Portions of Massive Proportions If you're pondering why Americans are so much fatter than Europeans, look no further than portion sizes. Consider a popular European chocolate bar, the Ballisto. It comes in only one size: 20 grams. The regular American Butterfinger weighs three times as much – and that wasn't enough for Americans, so Nestle came out with the "king size" Butterfinger that is more than 50 percent larger. Even this didn't satisfy American appetites, so Nestle created the aptly named "Butterfinger Beast." At seven times the size of a Ballisto, it's a wonder some cities haven't outlawed them as lethal weapons. Europeans are painfully aware of our obsession with outlandish serving sizes of food. "It doesn't take much expertise to figure out the story behind the [obesity] statistics," said British writer William Langley. "By the comparatively restrained standards of the rest of the world, American portion sizes border on the obscene." "They train the stomach to expect a big meal and to cope with a big meal," added Andrew Prentice, a nutritionist at Britain's Medical Research Council. Quantity not Quality "In Europe, people have a sense of satisfaction with good food, and they don't tend to overeat," said Martha Rose Shulman, a cookbook author who recently moved to the United States from France. Europeans look more for quality in food. But to Americans, quantity has a quality all its own. 7-Eleven shouldn't be selling 64-ounce drinks. That sends all the wrong signals. If people need 64 ounces of soda (and somehow they never used to), let them buy two cups at 32 ounces. Penny-wise and Pound Foolish On the other hand, there have been no reported cases of a 7-Eleven employee forcing a customer to buy such a drink, and nobody is forced to eat 28-ounce steaks at gunpoint.
Part of the reason is that oversize portions of food are cheaper by the ounce than smaller portions. We are literally penny-wise and pound-foolish. But perhaps the main reason for this American obsession is that it provides an excuse to pig out. After all, it's just one burger – even if it could feed the population of a small African town for a week. In this era of self-indulgence, in which traditional values are sneered at, we have replaced the motto "everything in moderation" with "nothing succeeds like excess." Terms like "sloth" and "glutton" sit behind the barn with the rusty old Studebaker. The obesity epidemic is symptomatic of a much larger national problem, and solving it is going to take changes in society that go way beyond food.
Calculate your BMI to see if you are obese. What the scores mean:
Read Michael Fumento's additional work on obesity. Michael Fumento is the author of The Fat of the Land: Our Health Crisis and How Overweight Americans Can Help Themselves (Penguin, 1998). Michael Fumento is the author of numerous books, including Science Under Siege.
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