Personally, this fat person hardly eats veggies. I know I should, but I don’t like many of them and to keep them around long enough to use them before they spoil, I tend to buy them in forms that are less nutritious, such as canned. Also? Veggies don’t have much in the way of calories unless it’s a starchy veggie like a potato. So, sorry, but fat Americans are not fat because Mexican immigrants need to be paid a penny more per bushel. That’s kind of silly.

Actually, we’re all in this together. Maybe you didn’t know, but body weight in the first world doesn’t play out the way it does in the developing world; poor people here are more likely to be fat than rich people are, ironically enough! But it’s a myth that fatness means “well-nourished.” A well-nourished person doesn’t get more than a little bit overweight–and I mean a *little.* Overweight is a lot more about hormonal imbalance and nutritional deficiency than it is about calories. If you’re eating right, your metabolism will work the way it should most of the time.

Trouble is, most of us in the first world don’t know how to eat right, and people in the developing world are fast forgetting. And this is of a piece with the kind of people who would balk at paying a penny more per bushel of tomatoes picked. The food industry is largely made up of thieves and scoundrels who will say and do anything to make a buck. Even if it means people are enslaved, starve, or become diabetic (as many fat people do–fatness being a sign of pre-diabetes in the first place).