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of bacon, eggs, sausage and beans as a healthy way to start your day but very few of us these days actually sit down to anything more than a bowl of cornflakes or a croissant before we go to work. Aside from the oddly-paired partnership of bacon with maple syrup or grits (grainy porridge) slopped over sausage patties the Americans like to eat doughnuts for breakfast. Now, if you eat a doughnut in England it is usually accompanied by a nice cup of tea in the afternoon or maybe a mug of Nescafe for elevenses. Not so in the USA. Over here they buy doughnuts by the dozen and then devour at least three or four of them at one sitting. And have you seen the size of an American cookie these days? Forget Boasters and Hob Nobs American cookies are the size of tea plates.

Obesity rose 6% in the USA between 1998 and 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The increase affected all regions of the country and all demographic groups. Since 1991, obesity among American adults has increased by nearly 60% nationally.

I recently saw a film called Shallow Hal starring Gwyneth Paltrow in the unlikely role of a heavily overweight Peace Corps volunteer. The premise of this comedy is simple: Rosemary is fat, shy and has no confidence until she meets Hal. Hal is totally superficial and only dates women who are slim and beautiful, that is until he is hypnotized to see only the Inner Beauty of a person rather than their obvious physical attributes. Because Rosemary is such a kind and caring person Hal sees her only as the Gwyneth Paltrow we all know and love svelte, curvy and gorgeous! The comedic slapstick arrives from seeing chairs collapse under Rosemary's supposed weight and getting a glimpse of her gigantic purple thongs. At one point Hal's sleazy friend Mauricio describes Rosemary as a Rhino and refers to her ankles as cankles' - an anatomical appendage that occurs when someone is so fat that their calves hang down over their ankles. Sure, it's hysterical, but are we supposed to laugh or become conscience-stricken? If it is at all possible to fuse politically incorrect humor and sensitivity, it didn't happen for me in this particular instance.

For all those years I watched my mother deny herself the pleasures that most of us take for granted. And to what end? She ate lettuce instead of chocolate; she baked her potatoes instead of frying them. And even now, at the age of seventy-three, she cannot resign herself to the fact that a piece of cheesecake now and then won't kill her. Her guilt is too deeply ingrained. Her perceptions are skewed.

Pardon my pun, but humour is a funny thing. What might be hilarious to one person could be nothing more than insulting to another. And I have done my share of laughing over the years, I am not entirely blameless. I like to think, however, that by satirizing the subject of obesity it is possible to neutralize it and turn the joke around on those who throw the largest stones.

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