The Skinny on America’s Obesity

The sweaty-browed, ruddy-cheeked fat kid who’s always picked last for the dodgeball team is the implicit protagonist of journalist Greg Critser’s Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, a cultural history of fat America released in paperback this January (Mariner Books 2004). What first started as a Harper’s Magazine cover story on obesity evolved into an insightful 200-page glimpse into a land of Super Mario Brothers, 7-11 Big Gulps and the expanding extra-large sweat pants sported by an increasing mass of dodgeball-hating citizens of America, young and old alike.

We weren’t always this fat. The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports has focused on the prevention of sedentary lifestyles since 1956. Critser quotes John F. Kennedy, who expanded the council and likened promoting fitness to political strategy: “We do not want our children to become a nation of spectators. Rather, we want each of them to be a participant in the vigorous life.”

But a string of economic crises, political changes, technological advances and marketing breakthroughs gave way to a land with abundant supplies of high fructose corn syrup and trans fats, not to mention Taco Bells and Krispy Kremes on every corner. Catchy fast-food advertising jingles stuck in our heads while cholesterol stuck in our arteries. As physical education programs faced cuts, food was becoming cheaper, tastier and more accessible. By the 1990s, American culture read like a recipe for obesity.

Thus one is not born, but instead becomes, the easy dodgeball target. Though Critser devotes ample time to the hereditary factors of obesity, he offers more compelling insights into the hazardous environmental factors feeding the fat kid, which include the school cafeteria, the fast food restaurant and the American living room.

Fast food restaurants are his most visible creators and sustainers of America’s dodgeball targets. A serving of McDonald’s French fries, for example, has gone from 200 calories in 1960 to 610 calories today. Critser says that the Del Taco Macho meal weighs in at four pounds. Schools have indulged in opportunities to outsource cafeteria lunches to fast food giants, which in turn fill hungry students with several hundred more calories than a traditional school lunch. Two factors are at work—Americans’ obsessions with largeness and value. Even in a society of abundance, we still want more for less.

The more-for-less phenomenon is amplified for poorer families, a group which feels the devastating effects of obesity most acutely. Critser argues that the poor still believe that “scarcity [is] just around the corner. ”

“The impulse is to eat for today, tomorrow being a tentative proposition at best,” he writes.

Confronting the impact of eating disorders on obesity research, public policy and societal attitudes toward fatness, Critser dismisses research claiming that parents fear that their children will acquire body image issues if they discuss weight problems. He quotes Judith Stern, a professor of nutrition at the University of California at Davis, who argues that “the number of kids with eating disorders is positively dwarfed by the numbers with obesity.”

“It sidesteps the whole class issue,” she continues. “We’ve got to stop that and get on with the real problem.”

In implying that eating disorders may not be a “real problem” when compared with obesity, Critser’s approach to the issue seems unsympathetic and harshly dismissive. He argues that fears of poor body image and anorexia have been sensationalized by the media and adopted by concerned parents, who Critser suggests might have been the last picked in dodgeball themselves. The bottom line for Critser is that the “anorexia argument” is one more way Americans condone obesity.

Crister’s Fat Land is more than just another suger-coated exploration of cultural history. It demands that we step on the scale, face our problems and come up with palatable solutions. Will anyone in corporate America step up to the plate and eliminate the evils of trans fats or high fructose corn syrup, repackage products with smaller portion sizes (like the eight ounce soda cans sold in parts of Europe), or even discontinue jumbo single serving product lines? What role should the government take? Is it necessary to place a “fat tax” on Double-Stuffed Oreos and Doritos? What about parents? Will they ensure that five year-old Johnny will not Supersize his Mountain Dew, and that “would you like fries with that?” is not commonplace dinner discourse? For Critser, the element of self-control and discipline is perhaps the hardest factor for Americans to digest. Will we encourage ourselves to run that marathon or are we content to watch the eight-hour Simpsons marathon on TBS? Obesity is a national crisis, but it also bears likeness to a game of dodgeball—will we play or will we remain easy targets?