Fat Americans

I know it's a cliche', but the first thing I notice once I get back to Texas (besides the fact that it's about 2000 degrees outside) is that everyone is fat. 80% of the people at any given restaurant have a large mound hanging over their belt. And about half that have the mound below the belt, which I don't understand at all and makes me cringe in spiritual pain. There are many reasons for this - people drive around everywhere, dinner portions the size of an elephant turd, inexcusable laziness. Europeans who go to the US inevitably gain about 20 pounds while they are there. I don't know where I'm going with this, but there was a great article in the IHT yesterday about it. Check this out:

As my cab clattered through Brooklyn, negotiating a road with enough humps and bumps to resemble a low-grade roller coaster, teenage kids were emerging from school. To be a teenager is not a happy state: the skin erupts, the body distends, the mind rebels. But, even by these standards, the procession looked sinister. . These adolescents all appeared to have very small heads. On closer inspection, it became clear that this was an illusion caused by the enormous dimensions of their bodies. In fact, these forms scarcely resembled bodies at all; they were more like big clumps of amorphous flesh heaving with some difficulty across the street. . Of course, the clothing did not help the general impression: pants sagging between the knees, reversed baseball caps on those tiny heads, smocklike tops suggestive of billowing tents on some of the girls. America's youth on the march! No wonder the world feels a little fearful.