tkc, no doubt, the balloonification of the US (and seeping to other areas) is a big deal (pun acknowledged).
I too enjoy our dialogue, I hold well to my opinion as well (until I change it), ... and your content as always continues to inform me and at times afford such change.
There are a number of things I believe, from a biology perspective, that play into things.
Generally, nutritional surplus is rare. The US cranks out enough nutrition to feed the entire planet. The last 6 million years of human evolution have poorly prepared us for this. Those more able to store fat, lower metabolism, and thereby maximize yield won. Those traits needed to be balanced against forces requiring near instant recovery of stored carbon energy (fat=slow, sugar=fast) should the saber-tooth come hunting for you. So we evolved a matrix of competing interests, those good at lowering metabolism and creating long term storage (good for famine) and those interests for maximizing immediate value and high burn rates (good for outrunning a tiger in a pinch).
And then it came. Massive surplus food in every type and format.
While some lament HFC (high fructose corn syrup), the real fact is manufaturers simply cannot find other places to park all of this surplus capacity. Talk to somebody at ADM ... the purpose of HFC is to find a place to park excess capacity. Corn rots. Wheat rots. Things rot. Convert to HFC, and you have a storable product. Storeage inveitble leads to use. So we use HFC. I am only middling convinced that HFC is that bad stuff folks say, but I haven't really looked into it very well. I am fully informed of the processes for production, and fluent in isomerization and so on, but I am far less informed in how our bodies respond.
We make so much food we keep coming up with things to do with it ... HFC, ethanol for the gas tank, feeds for ruminants that require no such feed .... seriously, we cannot find places to dump this supply.
And yes, humans also starve. That juxtaposition does not sit well with my atheist god. We dream, fantastically, for ways to eliminate food in recognition that we make way way way too much, and people starve.
And yes, lots of people poor and rich alike, have nutrition issues, over and under.
I think I will stop there.
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