Americans are fat, they are getting fatter and as soon as they out eat the South Sea Islanders, they will be the fattest people in the world. This alarming message, from the journalist Greg Critter, has helped promote the provocative bestseller Fat Land. It reveals that six out of every 10 Americans are already overweight and that, if they continue to expand at the current rate, by 2050 all of them will be. So what should they do about it

There is an obvious and a not-so-obvious answer to this question. Greg Critser provides the conventional solution: they should eat more carefully and do more exercise. He traces the expanding American waistline to Earl Butz, President Nixon’s foul-mouthed Secretary of Agriculture, who drastically brought down food prices in the ‘70s by introducing subsidies for farming. The other great architect of obesity was David Wallerstein, the McDonalds executive who discovered super sizing- offering vast single portions of food so people eat the equivalent of the double helpings that they were too embarrassed to ask for.

But the issue has another reaction: not “I’m fat, so what can I do about it?” but “I’m fat, so what?” This is the line taken by fat activists and size awareness advocates. They believe that there is nothing wrong with being overweight: negative attitudes towards large people are simply prejudices that need to be fought.

In part perhaps due to fat liberationists, the USA is changing its views on size. The fashion press, for instance, recently announced that “fat is the new thin.” According to American Vogue the voluptuously curved Kate Winslet, Jennifer Lopez and Kelly Osbourne are much more attractive than the “stick-thin” Hollywood stereotypes. There is also a popular backlash against “self-hating” attitudes of an older generation that was inspired by feminism and sexual liberation to try always be perfect and in control.

In spite of this, one crucial factor seems destined to keep Americans trying to lose weight. Obesity, as Critser points out, is now - for the first time in the history - the disease of the poor, not the rich. And, in an aspirational society, if the well-off can see their feet, everyone else will want as well.

Adapted from SPEAKUP n.196, pages 18 to 20.