Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Weighing Continental Fat�

Someone mentioned this morning that European Union had decided some time ago to put the Europeans on diet because they were getting so fat. And we thought we were the only ones!

A search gave this information from April 23 from Reuters: “Europe is facing major health and social burdens and the rise in obesity is reaching "epidemic" proportions, the 15th European Congress on Obesity in Budapest was told on Sunday.”

Budapest, maybe, but I can’t remember seeing so many obese people in Western Europe. A very few plump and happy ones here and there, and that was it. Not as much as I have been observing the overflowing girths around here during the recent years.

If terra firma had built-in weight scales, our country’s measure would sink the continent. When it comes to putting it on, we must be breaking all the records. Otherwise, why would Jay Leno start or finish quite a few of his quips with “How fat are we getting?”

Comics know everything. They have to. If they didn’t, they couldn’t find any material to make fun of. Maybe it is a better idea to just listen to comics to get the current news. Real news has turned tabloid and is either trying to scare us or modern newscasters are, in reality, fiction writers.

Coming back to the fiction of fat in Europe, I wonder if size zero, one, two, and three French models have managed to reach to size four. Now, that must be alarming. I wonder if this is why some of the diet pills first originate in European labs.

But then, if Europeans are getting chubbier, why did the publications on the subject of French women never getting fat become best sellers? Also, what happened to the famed Mediterranean diet? Or is it do as I say and not as I do?

Maybe what is happening to Europe has something to do with us. Maybe we are the new super-sized invaders super sizing everybody.