jenk

From The New York Times (www.nytimes.com)

'Fat Land': Supersizing America
By MICHAEL POLLAN
( Read more... )
Just since 1970 the proportion of American children who are overweight has doubled, a rate of increase that suggests the fattening of America has a specific history as well as a biology. ''Fat Land,'' a skinny book about this big subject, is the journalist Greg Critser's highly readable attempt to reconstruct that history.

At least from a business perspective, the fattening of America may well have been a necessity. Food companies grow by selling us more of their products. The challenge they face is that the American population is growing much more slowly than the American food supply -- a prescription for falling rates of profit. ( Read more... )
So what's a food company to do? The answer couldn't be simpler or more imperative: get each of us to eat more. A lot more. ( Read more... )

Some of the credit for creating this new environment belongs to an unheralded businessman by the name of David Wallerstein, the man Critser says introduced ''supersizing'' to America. Today Wallerstein is an executive with McDonald's, but back in the 1960's he worked for a chain of movie theaters, where he labored to expand sales of soda and popcorn -- the high-markup items that theaters depend on for their profitability. ( Read more... )
Wallerstein discovered that people would spring for more popcorn and soda -- a lot more -- as long as it came in a single gigantic serving. Thus was born the Big Gulp and, in time, the Big Mac and jumbo fries. ( Read more... )

So. Do I blame the food industry for the fact that I weigh 360 lbs? No. Being a bored kid who loved food, who found eating to be a good accompanent to reading, is a big part of it. So's planting myself on my butt for 7 hours of work and 7 hours of net-surfing (ah, those halcyon days before asb was filled with spam!). BUT, it's nice to know that I'm not crazy for finding 'Value' meals too big, even if they're not 'Supersized'. It's nice to know that it's not strange (or lack of cooking skill) that our new budget, which doesn't have much room for eating out & take-out, has resulted in my losing a few pounds.

Wonder if I should post this to