Is Fat Phat?

Nick Gillespie | 5.9.2004 11:30 AM

Here's a happy story: A quarter of the world is overweight, according to the International Obesity Task Force, which sounds like a 21st-century version of SMERSH or, worse still, something out of a Matt Helm movie (shouldn't Victor Buono be the head of the IOTF?).

The main culprit in intercontinental corpulence is–damn them all to hell–"cheap, plentiful food. Even in poor nations, the relative cost of eating is declining."

And what about Mexico, a con queso test case for the new fatness? "[Forty] percent of its 105 million people live in poverty. Yet two-thirds of men and women there are overweight or obese."

Let's not mince words: There's something worth celebrating about a world in which even poor people have so much to eat that they can become fat.

So how does this good news get translated into newspaperese?:

Obesity now gluts the globe