How Americans grew too fat to serve their country

How Americans got so fat they cannot serve their country; obesity; obese; USA; United States; America

Kids want to enlist because the Army has jobs – but they can’t do push-ups and can’t run

LAST UPDATED 12:31 PM, NOVEMBER 6, 2009

If Jonathan Swift traveled to the United States today, he would surely ditch the little guys, the big guys and the horses and just feature Gulliver being squashed flat by enormously fat people.

I suppose I first noticed how fat Americans were getting about a decade ago. Along supermarket aisles you'd see the odd whale unhappily chugging along on a mini-kart, pulling fat-enhancers off the shelves.

In early October I drove east to west across America along Interstate 40 - much of the western portion is the old Route 66, famed in song and story - which runs from Asheville, North Carolina, to Nashville, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Albuquerque and on through Arizona into California.

Every truck stop, every diner, every mall offered its tumid diorama of human hippos. We're talking every age group here - starting with humpty-dumpty adolescents and ascending through the decades to 50-year olds, stertorous and grey of countenance.

My friend Wilbur who runs a trailer park in South Carolina told me there's a woman in one of his double-wides who's up around 400lb and can't get out the door even if she wants to. She sits and watches TV all day and when she passes on, Wilbur will have to get a giant can opener to rip open the side of the trailer to winch out her corpse.

There’s a lobby that says it’s prejudice by the slim crowd, and fat people are perfectly normal – just heftierIn Eureka, my local town here in northern California, a couple of years ago they had to get new scales in the clinics and bigger MRI tubes. The Pentagon could probably make a buck or two for the taxpayer, selling torpedo launchers from decommissioned submarines for MRI conversion. It's not quite what the swords-into-plowshares movement had in mind, but that's America for you.

And it is America. I was just in Paris and in the course of a week Alya and I saw precisely one person - a young woman - who could be classed by a European as very plump. In America she'd still be dreaming of going to ballet school.

Of course there's a lobby that says it's all prejudice by the slim crowd, and fat people are perfectly normal - just a bit heftier. I remember picking up a magazine in the lefty book store in Pike Place, Seattle a few years back called Fat Dykes and the Women Who Love Them and it's true, on my observation, that a very fat lesbian will not pine away for lack of slim young baby-dyke admirers of her inviting corpulence.

There's the old tale of the dwarf who married the fat lady in the circus and when the acrobat and the clown took

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The useless couch-potato nation that ate itself to death.

Posted by Neil McGowan at 8:57am on November 6, 2009

The US armed forces have had special obesity units for quite some time - and give obese personnel an ultimatum to lose weight or lose their job. It is merely a reflection of how the whole of American society has gone astray. Few in the USA realise what a shock it can be for anyone from Europe or elsewhere to see what Americans have inflicted on themselves. Even if the US starts in earnest with what would appear to be an unacceptable regime of healthy eating, it would be be 50 years before there would be a return to a 'normal' situation. What must stop now is exporting the US problem to the rest of the world. Junk food corporations are already grooming new generations in China and the rest of Asia as well as the rest of the world to regard artificially flavoured fat and sugar as an acceptable diet. Macabre absurdity indeed.

Posted by Neville Rigby at 10:38am on November 6, 2009

It's all a Pentagon plot to get more money for research into unmanned combat aircraft (UCAVs) - even the obese can wage war from a video screen.

Posted by Jess D at 11:02am on November 6, 2009

Hey, let's look on the bright side! 'no one off the major trails' in national parks means less disturbance for the animals, and if the military runs out of Americans capable of walking to the transport plane to take them to war, America may evolve into a less beligerant nation. They could also start planning to use all that fat in power stations, solve their carbon emissions. But it's really not such a recent development; in the sixties I bought a consignment of used denim jeans from the US, planning to repair and recycle them [this was before the days when jeans came pre-stressed and pre-faded] but when I investigated I found that they were all massive, typically, two Brits could get into one pair of American jeans, some were so large we thought they had to be joke clothing for a circus or something. We used the masive expanses of denim to make lots of different items; bags, floor cushions, sofa covers... I guess what's new is that it's spread to the majority of the population now. Cheech and Chong had a word for them, lardasses.

Posted by Peter Simmons at 11:38am on November 6, 2009

Double Big Mac meal please! Oh yes please, supersize it too!

Posted by Kevin Swalwell at 11:57am on November 6, 2009

I agree. In 2008 I went to America and saw those hippos on the mini karts. I thought they were crippled, not just too fat to move. These people are unbelievably fat. So America has resized. So if you took an American '5' in 1990 you take an American '3' in 2000 and today you take a '0' although you're the same size. An American '10' now fits those who are just plain fat...and is often marked...'small'. The junk they export all over the world is causing high rates of diabetes in places which never had diabetes.

Posted by suzann Dodd at 3:08pm on November 6, 2009

The only way to solve this is to make being fit fun. The exact opposite of what they did at my school.

Posted by Barry Cash at 3:19pm on November 6, 2009

England has had a case of sour grapes against The United States ever since the days of crazy King George III. Do you really think we care what 'you people' think? By the way, does your country have a shortage of dental professionals and tooth brushes? It seems like all of you have rotten teeth... even the 'Royals' look like their teeth haven't been touched by a tooth brush in years.

Posted by DGS DGS at 10:35pm on November 6, 2009

Well, if a nation exploits weaker nations on a large scale, the "easy living" off the efforts of the less fortunate does create a lazy, imbecilic populace of the empire and the results are clearly to be seen -- let's celebrate the "horses asses" in the US, because it is a clear sign of the decline of this disgusting empire. :o)

Posted by Michael Reinelt at 11:13pm on November 8, 2009

While the author may be American, the comments from the suet and spotted dick eating "peanut gallery" are truly laughable. But then no one visits Jolly Old for the cuisine do they?

Posted by whipnchill at 2:31am on November 9, 2009

It is all about money when you look below the surface, anything which makes money is perfectly acceptable, even if it kills, literally. Portions here are absurdly large, my husband refuses to eat any cakes or desserts except those I occasionally make from scratch as he fiinds them far too sweet. I wrote to General Mills once complaining about the amount of sugar and salt in their cereals. They thanked me for my observation and sent me $7- worth of coupons, which are still lying somewhere about in my handbag. Only a revolution would change things. The population is getting more massive right before our very eyes!

Posted by Yolande Agble at 6:30am on November 9, 2009

Fear not Brits, we'll never be too fat to fight your wars for you. Now go have some nice sugary tea and don't forget to brush your teeth.

Posted by whipnchill at 10:32pm on November 9, 2009

Prof. Richard Johnson in his book 'The Sugar Fix' explains how HFCS makes for food cravings and how allopurinal the anti gout drug helps reduce it by lowering the blood uric acid levels. I think it has something to do with human population cycles. By now America should have either had a major depression or a major war where food supplies became scarce. When times are good we probably naturally fatten up to be ready for the lean times. Fat is stored energy. So the poorer people should become the fattest first because it would be harder for them to find food in lean times. And in high productivity countries where food prices are low then the fatter the people will become waiting for the lean times to arrive. Well not to worry. Lean times are on their way. They should be here within 3 years with the collapse of all the fiat currencies. Then theoretically the fattest will survive the longest unless they become a food source for others.

Posted by Bernard Palmer at 1:27pm on November 10, 2009

You have such balls for writing this piece across the pond. Not. As a Californian, I can't help but wonder why you didn't challenge the U.S. by publishing this on American soil. Unless I'm missing something. Or did you just need the easy ego strokes by bashing American eating habits, corporate practices and health care reform issues in a place where you'd be easily cheered?

Posted by Judy Asman at 6:29pm on November 12, 2009

In past civilizations, in Europe also, *fat meant wealthy*, Americans are wealthy, and for the most part content, we have our problems, but are living the dream. Euro populace are an uptight, constipated, socialist leaning society who have never accomplished much of anything, hiding behind the powerful, rich America, and the war machine, that you criticize constantly (you are all so messed up in your heads you could not fight your way out of a wet paper bag to save your own life). So, yes, the wealth and the complacency that follows may bring America down, but who are you Euro? NOBODIES that's who, SNOBS U R ! The Muslims are smarter than you Euros and will make all of you their slaves soon anyway.

Posted by Dee at 8:01pm on November 15, 2009

"Euro populace are an uptight, constipated, socialist leaning society who have never accomplished much of anything" ...yeah right Dee, Europeans never did anything except maybe America from scratch and give you our language - English

Posted by GeoNeil at 2:38pm on December 6, 2009