Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger!

Besides implements of war, war itself and low-skill jobs, the United States, famous for saving everyone's ass and then forcing them to adopt the worst parts of American culture, is now exporting yet another wondrous thing it seems to have perfected: obesity and all the ills accompanying it.

The New York Times today takes an in-depth look at the fattest nation in Europe, the newly gluttonous Greece, where more than three quarters of the adult population is now either overweight or obese. Another study showed that the number of overweight Greek 12-year-olds has increased 212 percent since 1982. And the rest of Europe hasn't fared much better. In Italy and Spain, more than 50 percent of the adults are overweight. In France it's 45 percent.

Why is Europe growing so? It's all about the food. It's the burgers and the sweets and the red meat and the Coca Cola, all of which have become huge sellers in Greece, whose Mediterranean cuisine used to be considered one of the healthiest in Europe. These days, Greek children love shit:

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Finally, another Western country is getting a little wide in the middle. The English are almost as fat as we are, and it’s only growing:

Experts say that most of the population will be obese by 2050 unless urgent action is taken and the associated rise in ill health would cost the NHS £50 billion a year.
The Government wants Britain to be the first major nation to reverse the rising tide of obesity and said it would focus on reducing within 12 years the proportion of children who are overweight back to the 2000 level of 26 per cent.

At present, 30 per cent of children are obese or overweight.

When we see a fat couple on the subway, we wonder to ourselves if they could ever be happy considering how unattractive they both are. But then maybe they have a different, and equally valid, concept of beauty, they have found real happiness. And if everyone were fat, there would be no need to feel bad about being a little chubby or slightly morbidly obese. Except for heart disease. That shit is a killer.