Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that Carson C. Chow,
an MIT-trained mathematician and physicist, has taken a new look
at America's obesity epidemic and found that a food glut is
behind America's weight problem, with the national obesity rate
jumping from 20 percent to over 30 percent since 1970.
'Beginning in the 1970s, there was a change in national
agricultural policy. Instead of the government paying farmers
not to engage in full production, as was the practice, they were
encouraged to grow as much food as they could,' says Chow. 'With
such a huge food supply, food marketing got better and
restaurants got cheaper. The low cost of food fueled the growth
of the fast-food industry. If food were expensive, you couldn't
have fast food.' Chow and mathematical physiologist Kevin Hall
created a mathematical model of a human with hundreds of
equations, boiled it down to one simple equation, and then
plugged in all the variables — height, weight, food intake,
exercise. The slimmed-down equation proved to b