Where's the Allure in Gluttony ?

Everyday I come across some piece of information that puts my Counter Intuition observation into the Confucian league. Yesterday was no exception -
In 2008 The US President Bush ruffled a few feathers here in India when he claimed that there could be a food crisis because Indian and Chinese are consuming more owing to prosperity...
The claim was strongly refuted through a bunch of statistics like the one below :
"Each Indian gets to eat about 178 kg of grain in a year, while a US citizen consumes 1,046 kg."

And the issue fizzled out after providing all concerned their 5 mins. slot of fame.                 

However, the NPR Topics:Business podcast ran an introduction to a study yesterday that fetched the above information back into main memory - 

Study: Fat People Burden Earth's Resources

The following bits of information were interesting - (paraphrased slightly)

• The number of humans on the planet is now more than seven billion. And our total weight is 287 million tons
• North Americans are the heaviest - and while they make up 6 percent of the population of the Earth, their obesity rate is such that they make up a third of all the excess weight.
• If every country in the world had the same body mass index distribution as the United States, in mass terms it would be like having an extra billion people in the world
• Wherever gasoline is cheap, it is over-consumed, not only is it bad for the environment, but instead of using food energy for human movement, gasoline is used and the extra food energy gets stored within..

This post is not about repartee, the US and the developed western countries have been at the forefront of shaping the modern world and deserve their prosperity which reflects (among-st several other ways) in their citizens being well fed. This is also not about the concern of obesity in rich countries - that's a problem with sufficient awareness among everyone concerned.

This is more about the possibility of us in the "developing world" migrating towards the same fate. Convenience is probably the largest market out there and has churned out automobiles, air conditions, electronic gadgets and the virtual world. While this is all good, it probably has blindsided us to the fall-out or the flip side.

When we eat more, we should work more is a simple and fundamental assertion. The flip-side of the simplicity is that it is easy to violate without even realizing it. 

Typically, things that appeal to the eyes, ears take over the blood supply to the mind - so while it is really nice for us to have that car, house, fancy restaurant, club and travel access that our parents never had, it would probably be useful to "retain" a little bit of our own old world order if it means :

Defer cars and bikes for distances more than - let's say - 3 kms

Actually getting down to doing household chores in the weekend

Eat Intelligently - Plan the junk food intake etc. etc.
i.e find the sweet spot of balance between splurging for convenience and sweating for it.

[This is more significant in light of a recent study that the Huffington Post published which alluded to the fact that exercising on the side is driven more by will than by necessity - which means that serial exercisers do it because they like it and not because their health demands it. Which pretty much rules it out as an option to use up our food energy for many of us]

The good news is that we have that choice, but the bad news is that it's a hard sell even to ourselves in private - we naturally look westward for everything and this could mean that we end up taking the bad with the good. The trick is to look and validate and adapt... - but if only it were that easy! Maybe picturing ourselves at the top of the charts of the most Obese nations in the next decade may help.. :(