The Corn-Fed Empire Re: Food for thought

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Wed Oct 9 15:43:26 PDT 2002


On Tue, 8 Oct 2002, Doug Henwood wrote:


> Why is it that people in the other imperialist countries aren't so fat?
> Is it just being top dog imperialist that produces massive corpulence?

I think the key is snacking. Most European countries still eat meals, rituals with a beginning, a middle, and an end. In a snacking culture, you can literally eat all day long and think nothing of it. You can get shovel in a lot more food per day that way.

There is one other country that snacks like us, and produces similarly awesome blimps, if not as many of them: England.

Add continuous eating to having a genius (if you can call it that) for fast food (a taste for eating it, a skill for inventing it and a country covered with convenient outlets for distributing it); and being more of a driving culture (because less urbanized and more spread out than Europe or Japan); and perhaps watching a bit more TV; and it's probably no wonder we're the heavyweight champs.

Michael



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list