The war on us

Last night I didn’t have dinner before leaving the city, and with my blood sugar plummeting and gas tank nearly empty, I stopped at a Cumberland Farms in Millerton, NY. Shuttling as I do between New York and the Berkshires, I live in a bubble that excludes malls, box stores, and most of the trappings of modern America including obesity. Nearly blinded by the fluorescent lights and unaccustomed to the glitter of row upon row of processed foods, it took me at least 15 minutes to find something in the store that I would eat—an orange, finally, and some over-salted cashews. The person behind the counter was literally a mound of flesh with a face—a teenage girl who must have weighed 300 pounds. As she lumbered away I heard her say, “I’m tired,” to no one in particular. When I went outside to pump gas, a pickup pulled up and another human mountain, a teenage boy this time, extracted himself from the truck and waddled toward the store to buy poison marketed as food. The march against the war is on Tuesday in New York. The next one should be against Doritos.

San Francisco Chronicle, August 26, 2007
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, July 10, 2007