Fat and the Machine that will stop

It seems that dinosaurs were much leaner than we thought. Scientists have calculated that their bones could not support their bodies unless they were lean and wiry, instead of the fat bloated animals that are depicted in pictures and in the cinema. Dinosaurs wer not designed as a fat animal.

It also seems that Americans are much fatter than we think and that this is equivalent a great drain on our planet’s resources and ability to promote a sustainable planet. Indeed, if all the nations were as fat as Americans, it would mean in terms of food production and energy requirements, the same as having another billion souls on this earth.

Asia has 61% of the world’s population but only 13% of the world’s population by weight.

We become fat because we indulge ourselves to excess. We eat foods with great amounts of fructose sugars, which sets us on to an addictive route of weight gain. We consume far more than we need in the developed nations while the undeveloped nations regard it as a blessing if their people can consume almost what they need.

Perhaps the dinosaurs died out due to an excess of consumption causing obesity. Those lean animals simply ate themselves to extinction. Some of us are doing this now. Some even need lifts and hoists to take them out of their homes to be treated for obesity related illnesses in hospital. These are they who have grown too big to leave their homes, like Winnie the Pooh who ate the honey.

Most of us in the developed worlds are overweight, not drastically so, but we are overweight and conceal this with well designed clothes and we avoid the inconvenience of being overweight by using motor cars and labour saving devices. Every year it seems that a machine will do more for us and make us have to do less for ourselves. We do not look at the sky to see what the weather will be, but press a mobile phone’s screen. We do not make our own food but buy ready made food which we can warm up. We do not know what is really in the food we eat or the hands of those who made it or the hands of those who made the machines that made the food.

We are relentlessly moving into the world of Kuno and Vashti. Our self reliance is gradually being lost and we are increasingly dependent upon the machine. Instead of fixing problems by being less self indulgent we find quick fixes that enable us to continue to remain as self indulgent as we want to be. It is not just in eating that we are bulimic, but our bulimia is gradually extending to all areas of our consumption. Our affluence has brought effluence because of our inventiveness in creating machines and developing technology.

One day, when we are most reliant on the machine, the machine will stop and perhaps like the dinosaurs scientists from another species or world may conclude that homo sapiens was not really designed as a fat animal.