Damn! We is some fat people

One thing I´ve definately noticed in my travels around the world is that whole US obesiety epidemic thing...not a joke. We are by far the fattest people I have met anywhere in the world.

I suppose some of that is just natural, given our standing as the world´s economic juggernaut (at least for the time being). For much of human history being fat was considered a sign of wealth and success. So maybe we´re just carrying on that long standing tradition.

It can´t be genetics, seeing as we are a very diverse nation. That leaves diet. And while we might eat a lot of fried fatty food, we are by far not alone in that regard. I don´t think the Colombians have met a food they haven´t tried to deep-fry. And these peopel can eat! But amazingly enough I hardly see any fat people here.

But personally I think it´s all just politics. I blame it on the high-fructose corn syrup that we put in everything. It´s weird, people are just as addicted to coke down here as they are in the states, but no one seems to blow up the way we do. And I´m pretty sure it´s because they use real sugar in everything instead of that corn by-product.

I don´t think anyone else in the world uses high-fructose corn syrup as a sweetener they way we do. And I´m not a doctor or anything, but my own ill-informed opinion tells me that stuff has more than a little to do with our weight problems.

And the reason we have so much of it. Iowa and Florida. But perhaps more accurately our screwed up presidential election process. Or just politics as usual.

Iowa´s presidential primary is among the first in the nation. This gives this silly-little square state full of farmers an exhorbinant amount of political clout. Any politician who has even the remotest presidential aspirations knows the quickest way to kill of a candacy is to piss off the corn-huskers. And that means screwing over the nation to subsidize the good ole´boys in the form of ethanol subsidies and high import taxes on sugar. Hell they gotta do something with all that corn, might as well throw it in our cars and pretend it´s sugar!

Florida of course weilds it´s own political clout. Every year it´s one of the most hotly contested states in the electoral map. And given Florida´s make-up of multiple, highly-organized, special-interest groups that vote together in blocs gives them all an amazing amount of political capital (think senior citizens, cubans and of course sugar cane farmers). Yes Florida gives us one more reason to keep the import taxes on sugar quite high.

What is a cheap product everywhere else in the world is fairly expensive in the US, luckily for us we have a great alternative in the form of high-fructose corn-syrup. Too bad we´re all becoming Orca fat and gonna die of heart-attacks (at least I think that´s true, any doctors out there know for sure?).