Wrong plane

Now and again, in these pages, the question of the length of the American mid-sagittal plane (how tall we are) comes up. Along with other contrarian opinions on the subject, I've suggested that we should be more concerned with the transverse plane (how wide we are).

The biometric factoid that has consistently pulled journalists' chain has been the idea that "Oh my god, Americans are no longer the tallest people in the world!" Americans never were, so we shouldn't lose much sleep over that. However, whilst American life expectancy hasn't led the world for many years, it was at least advancing.

Not any more. We have now a measurement called quality years of life, and Americans' score on this measurement is appalling and getting worse.

In the obesity wars, this new parameter is like coming up with a climate change measurement that causes all the scientific skeptics to throw in the towel and leap to the other side.

We're fat. Worse, we've managed to have the fattest poor people in the world. We convince ourselves that these fat people must be a) well-fed and b) lazy because they are fat. I know this opposition isn't rational. It's the denial of people who have had more change than they can cope with, have thus opted out, and demand that their denial be supported by science and government.

Just how many gargoyles have to fall off our civic edifice before we get a critical mass of people who can swallow some truth with their Big Macs?