It is a repulsive sight when you go to the beach to enjoy yourself and there is an obese whale lying on the sand, ruining your gorgeous view of the sunset. They beach themselves on chairs too small and sit there eating a consortium of processed greasy foods that makes Ramen noodles look like a gourmet meal.
They aren’t just ruining weekend getaways to the beach; they are sitting next to you on the plane taking up their own seat and half of yours, they are blocking you in the aisles of the grocery store while driving completely superfluous mobility chairs and they are eating all the cake at your birthday party.
We normal people know it’s their fault for being obese. The idea that a capitalistic mass society influences people to over-consume everything while simultaneously promoting an image of beauty based on unreal and unnatural expectations is a complete canard.
They expect us to feel sorry when they point the finger at others by saying supermarkets are filled with cheap, unhealthy processed foods and expensive healthy natural foods, or that they have a medical condition such as hypothyroidism or just simply bad genes.
Now the International Red Cross came out with a press release and said what we all have feared; the number of obese and overweight people is growing so rapidly that they outnumber starving people in the world. There are now 1.5 billion people who are obese and 925 million starving people.
The number of starving people is growing, which means that television programming will continue to fill up with commercials of starving children asking for money.
It’s not enough that every time South Park is on there’s an ASPCA commercial with Sarah McLachlan music and sad puppies.
I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious quantity of people that have adipose tissue hanging on their back, necessitating a back bra, or on their head, making their neck disappear, is a deplorable state of affairs, especially when compared to the prodigious number of people who have nothing to eat.
Whoever can establish a means of eliminating this problem in a way that is cheap and effectiveis deserving of not only our praise, also a large monument on nothing less than the D.C. national mall. It is my intention to eliminate both problems at the same time, or eat two birds with one bite if you will.
There is divergence in the distribution of food, the obese have too much and the starving have too little, leading to the extreme disparity in nutrition we see. I have given much thought to this, and it has led me to conclude that the most effective course of action is the manufacture of a new source of food specifically for the impoverished that have no access to regular sustenance.
Instead of annoying and burdening the rest of us who are normal, the obese should contribute to the feeding of the poor.
Their large fat bodies could feed a family for a week, and with 1.5 billion of them, they could help end world hunger, a feat that no one has ever achieved.
America would most likely suffer the largest population loss as a result and sadly, many all you can eat buffets would go out of business and we would lose some of the best comedians, but this is a small price to pay to solve hunger. The benefits of this are two-fold; no more feeling guilty from starving children infomercials during our favorite shows, and no more of that awful show The Biggest Loser.
There is bound to be opposition to such a forward looking idea from the obese themselves, those who disapprove of cannibalism and snack food manufacturers.
They are missing the point by injecting moral subjectivity into an objective debate, who are they to say forced cannibalism is a bad thing? Isn’t that what they do when they feed cows feed enriched with bovine scraps to provide beef for those delicious burgers from the 155° Grill?
This huge, large, heaping, audacious proposal is a start in the right the direction to fixing the disparity in food distribution, much like the Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift tried to end poverty in Ireland in the 18th century by feeding impoverished children to rich aristocrats.
Alex Caraballo can be reached at acaraballo21@gmail.com