More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.

—John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 4th ed., 1984)

Americans in 2004 are fatter than ever, the heaviest since the government started tracking patterns of body weight for the U.S. adult population in the first half of the twentieth century. An estimated 100 million adults weigh more than is considered healthy, and of this group, more than forty-four million are considered obese. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and U.S. Surgeon General, overweight and obesity afflict more than two-thirds (67 percent) of Americans and constitute a public health problem of epic and epidemic proportions. (An epidemic is not a specific number of cases of a disease or condition; an epidemic exists when the number of cases exceeds that expected based on...