Obesity is smoking of the 21st century. Only it kills slower, because the constellation of metabolic disease is less aggressive than lung cancer and more manageable with drugs.

This is one of the worst regressions of human civilization. We are, on average, much less fit than in 1970, and the regression is even stronger in the more developed countries.

And there seems to be no one willing to spend political capital on this problem. Too many people feel uncomfortable just voicing their concern. One of the reasons might be that the problem is ubiquitous. Liberals are fat, conservatives are fat, atheists are fat, Islamists are fat, nationalists are fat ... perhaps not to the exact some degree, but aside from the Amish, all kinds of people are fat and this alone makes the topic awkward.