Americans

When I travel, I spend a lot of time in airports and restaurants (or worse airport restaurants). Recently we ended up at the local mall on a Saturday. I like to observe people in these places - a general cross section of the American public.*

What I have seen the last couple weeks is interesting. Primarily I'll review some observed eating habits. Looking across the mall tables in the food court is very revealing. The ages represented vary from high-school kids to elderly but one thing was consistent. If you were thinly built you were eating sveltely - often Subway, but possibly Chinese or some other small meal. On the other hand, if you were of a 'robust' build you were eating much differently: super-sized McDonalds, two huge slices of stacked Sbarro pizzas, huge steak sandwiches. At restaurants, it's similar. Those who least 'need' a dessert are the most likely to order one (along with appetizers!) while those on the thinner side will have a salad and entree and still leave feeling stuffed because the portions are so large.

I don't have enough evidence to draw the logical conclusion. Are people fat because they eat like this? Are people thin because they don't? What if all the chubby people of America started eating salads and a single meal for dinner? What if all the skinny people had a fried appetizer, a salad with fatty dressing, a full entree of red meat and then some obscene dessert?

Spending three days in a row eating hotel breakfast, deli sandwich lunches and typical restaurant meals (no desserts) and I really felt like crap. A bloated pig. I would have been embarrassed to take my shirt off at the beach after the trip. And really, nobody but me would probably have noticed the difference. How can people rationally walk around with 30 pounds of fat hanging off their gut? Or 80 pounds?

Obesity is a real problem. Except for the 1% of the population with a real health condition, the rest of these people are just lazy. Too lazy to exercise. Too lazy to eat right. Too lazy to care. Then again, I've never seen an obese 65 year old....


* I know it's not a perfect cross section because you're narrowing the field to people who travel by plane, eat out at restaurants or visit malls. This excludes certainly the poor and to a lesser extent the very wealthy. But I'll submit that it is a 'decent' cross section of middle-of-the-road Americans.