fat

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sun Jan 12 09:34:21 PST 2003


James Heartfield wrote:


>The general misery over obesity is characteristic of an epidemic of
>morosity that is gripping Western societies: real social advance
>seems to present greater problems than it fixes. But this is a
>misjudgement. Tragic as obesity is, it is a symptom of the first
>steps to the eradication of hunger.

Wow, James, I'm impressed. As I just read in today's NYTBR, the U.S. produces 3,800 calories a day of food per capita, 1,000 more than people need. This either goes to fat or goes to waste. It doesn't go to feed hungry people, of which we have more than a few in the U.S., but there are even more of them in the so-called Third World. In the U.S., some of the fattest people are also among the poorest. So obesity has very little to do with "real social advance." It has a lot more to do with maldistribution, poverty, and depression (which is what makes a lot of people eat compulsively). Of course, we can produce vast quantities of food, which theoretically offfers the possibility of the eradication of hunger, but it ain't gonna happen under present social arrangements. If the morosity were motivated by anguish over those arrangements, it might be worthwhile, but it probably has more to do with the upper classes moralizing about the pathological self-indulgence of the lower.

Doug



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