The Utopian vision society has always dreamed about was a world where people could eat so much for so little money, that it wasn't just rich people who could afford to be fat; anyone could.
Well, we have that. America is more self-loathing about its obesity issues than most countries but Italian kids are fat, everyone in Britain is fat, and even the French are closing in on a weight crisis.
But nothing compares to China, which in the space of a single generation has ballooned in a way it wasn't really thought possible. The World Health Organization estimates that 38.5 percent of the population was overweight in 2010 and, with male children prized in the population-controlled dictatorship, high-income boys are fatter than anyone. Overall, the number of obese Chinese people quintupled between 2005 and 2011.
In America, sociologists have tried to contend obesity was an income issue, or it was an urban issue, but those rules don't seem to apply in China. So what gives?
Sarah Goodyear, writing in The Atlantic Cities, has the breakdown.
