land of the fat, The

Spectator, The, Aug 18, 2001 by Langton, James

After a decade of growth, Americans are more obese than ever. James Langton on US expansionism

Kinnelon, New Jersey

WOULD you like me to supersize that? We're talking about America here, the greatest country in the world, in every sense. Where never is heard a discouraging word, especially when it's mealtime.

The best estimate is that three out of five of the population are overweight, or about 156 million people. Of those, nearly 30 per cent are clinically obese, meaning that they are at least 20 per cent above their ideal body weight. That's approximately 50 million people so fat that they probably need to turn sideways to get through the front door.

Except that they don't. America is expanding. Everything is bigger here. It has to be, when the equivalent of the entire population of England and Wales thinks that it's perfectly normal to eat a 670-calorie, Cinnabon cream-cheese frosted roll for breakfast. The home of Cinnabon is Atlanta, Georgia. Coincidentally, it's also the birthplace of the mighty Coca-Cola Corporation, which runs a popular tourist attraction there called `The World of Coke'.

At the end of a tour that includes a free tasting room, visitors pass through the souvenir shop. One shelf is devoted to what look like glass thimbles, designed perhaps for a dolls' party. Actually, these are exact replicas of Coke glasses from the early years of the last century. Filled to the brim, they hold six ounces of the sticky brown fluid.

By the 1950s, the average Coke serving was eight ounces. Today the standard plastic bottles in vending machines contain 20 oz. But that's nothing. In the late 1980s, the 711 chain of convenience stores introduced the 'Gulp', a 32 oz plastic container to be filled at its help-yourself soda fountains. Not long after came the `Double-Gulp', a 64 oz bucket of pop that, for a while, represented the ultimate in liquid gluttony. Then, in 1998, came the 'Beast', from the Arco chain of motorway service stations. You could bath a baby in a Beast, which holds 85 oz and comes with a handle. It's refillable, of course.

In other ways the expansion of the Great American Mealtime has been stealthier. The American National Restaurant Association confirms that in the last 20 years the typical dinner plate has grown from 10 to 12 inches in diameter. It might not look like much, but those two inches represent a 30 per cent increase in serving size.

Is this cause or effect? Are Americans eating more because they are hungry or because it is plonked in front of them? To put it another way, is this the chicken or the egg? Most likely, it is both at the same time: the chicken deep-fried and the eggs over-easy, served with a side-order of fries, breadsticks and an all-you-can-eat trip to the salad bar.

The effects of all this are literally stupendous. I've lived in the United States for almost six years and, at six foot, now weigh a little over 200 lbs - perhaps a stone heavier than in London, despite abandoning a lifetime habit of clearing my plate. If I buy a shirt, it's mostly a large. If it's a Tshirt for slobbing around in, an extra-large. This makes me a middleweight in American terms. Most clothing shops, including Gap, stock T-shirts in XXL. Recently, I have begun to notice piles of XXXL. By way of an experiment, I tried the Internet search-engine Google, using the word 'clothing' and a series of Xs.

'Clothing' and 'XXXL' produced 4,630 sites, mostly mail-order companies. At XXXXXXL, we were down to 38, including the last gasp of the Morbid Obesity Support Group, which recommends stomach-stapling as a cure and produces a `Look I'm Melting' T-shirt in this size.

By XXXXXXXL, we were down to four entries, including a New Zealand shop that once supplied the King of Tonga. Curiously, the Americans seemed to have dropped out at this stage. At XXXXXXXXXXL, though, Team USA made a comeback with the Fat Shack, a `size-positive' mail-order firm from Georgia whose biggest number is a $26, 83-inchchest shirt reading, `This isn't a belly, it's a work of art'. At 11 Xs the search finally petered out, suggesting either that the limits of gluttony had been reached or that it was simply time to try tent manufacturers.

It's not just clothes, though. In the Big Apple, the New York Transit Authority has abandoned its 17-inch `bucket-bottom' seats in subway cars because of persistent complaints about overhang. The new seats are now flat, to allow a greater spread.

In the last few years `love seats' have made a comeback in American cinemas. Originally designed for courting couples, they are now intended for patrons whose girth cannot be accommodated by normal seats.

Almost every concert venue, from the Kennedy Center in Washington to the Hollywood Bowl, has now put in bigger seats, almost always reducing capacity in the process. One sports stadium decreased its capacity by 5,000. The Century City Opera House in Colorado replaced its 17inch seats with a 22-inch model, and held an open day for patrons to try them

Quaintly, the American Association of Architects still lists 18 inches as the industry standard in building design. As Tim Hussey of the Hussey Seating Company puts it, though, `We make 18-inch seats, but nobody's buying 'em.'