Many people worry about America’s obesity epidemic (AEO) Blame for this health crisis generally falls on processed food and sedentary lifestyles. Culinary historians, however, point to the signing of the Declaration of Independence as the trigger event of the march to obesity. The previously thin founding fathers put on such a lavish, after-signing pot luck that all put on a layer of founding fat. Some of the signers did go on diets to lose their signing blubber. Many of the other great kept piling on the gravy, the turkey dinners and got fatter. Ben Franklin exclaimed later, “I can’t for the life of me lose this founding fat. It’s turned to hard fat.”

During the early 1810s the British made such, unrelenting fun of our tubby politicians that we felt a moral imperative to chastise them in the War of 1812. And so concludes today’s history lesson.

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– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.