We're fat, and that's a good thing

You're a big, fat, disgusting pig. Don't worry, you're in good company. One out of ten people world wide love stuffing Big Macs and sugary treats into their faces. That's about 650 million people who are considered obese. It's an epidemic of gargantuan proportions. There will always be the doom sayers. But obesity is a problem we should be glad to have.

For most of human history, food was scarce. Most people lived on subsistence farming. You ate what you could grow, gather, and ranch yourself. No mechanization, just back breaking labour. No pesticides, just total crop failure.

The entire nation of Ireland was almost wiped out as the result of a potato famine as recent as 150 years ago. Similar shortages occurred in Ukraine in the 1930s and in North Korea in more recent times. Kim Jong Il's people have some of the lowest levels of obesity in the world. Mostly because they're all starving.

The obesity epidemic can be traced back to the mid 20th century. Mechanized agriculture, modern pesticides such as DDT, and advanced fertilizers caused food production to explode. A single farmer could produce as much food as an entire farming community could 50 years earlier. Then came genetic modification, hormones, and advanced vaccines. Plants and animals became heartier and produced more than ever. Less and less land was needed.

So here we are today. We have so much food, we actually have the audacity to throw it away. Nutrition is another subject entirely. However, it's quite amazing that so few are now going hungry. The legendary feasts of King Henry VIII are now your average Thanksgiving for even poorer people.

So let's celebrate our enormous girths, instead of crying about it. Our fatness is a sure sign of the abundance more people are now enjoying. We live longer and better for it. Still, half an hour on the treadmill wouldn't hurt. So get your lardy butt moving!