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Blow-Up

by Alexander Cockburn

If Jonathan Swift traveled to the United States today, he would surely ditch the little guys, the big guys and the horses and just feature Gulliver being squashed flat by enormously fat people.

I suppose I first noticed how fat Americans were getting about a decade ago. Along supermarket aisles, you'd see the odd whale unhappily chugging along on a mini-kart, pulling fat-enhancers off the shelves.

In early October, I drove east to west across America along Interstate 40 — ...

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Posted by: Masako
Comment: #1
Fri Nov 6, 2009 7:36 PM

Think alcohol, Cockburn. We knocked out cigarettes, which were really good at counteracting the onslaught of the lipoid body snatchers. But magically, wine and other alcoholic beverages turn out to be good for us, at least according to those in a position to make some money off of them. That's been a huge wrong turn. I don't see any real analysis on your part as to why the French present as skinny by our standards. Plenty of MacDonaldses sell their cattle-torture and immigrant-labor, artificially-cheap burgers there and all over the world. The problem here, and soon to be there and all over the globe, is cultural anomie and fantasy production costs, fueled increasingly by the unchecked explosion of the human population. Villifying the food industry for selling cheap but basically nutritious (albeit high caloric) food without looking behind how that is accomplished isn't going to do anything but fuel both of those toxic torrents. Think again, Buddy. You're way off.

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