Fat Nation

"I've seen the future, baby.
It is murder..."
- Leonard Cohen, The Future

Future Pundit posts on a topic of mass proportions - obesity in North America.

I have been following the fat crisis for awhile now, not only from the angle of health care costs but also from the perspective of culture and the body politic - and further still, to that of business and marketing.

I expect that there will be more diet fads and cosmetic trends. Quick solutions have been around for the past hundred years, but what is really intriguing is the concept of altering genetics in order to produce a leaner, meaner human body. Talk about ease! You won't even need to work up a sweat.

Now you may be wondering what this has to do with design, but what is more instrumentally well designed than the body? By extending the life and general make-up of the human body, we must consider how free will will be affected when will our physical self will be a composition of 1/2 nature, 1/2 laboratory. Intriguing.

We may just see an end to the diet industry some day - but it may not be in the form we like. When the message is eat more and an abundance of cheap food is at our disposal; and the standards of beauty are counter to the bodies we are producing; and the economy cannot withstand the cost of keeping obese people alive, it will come down to A) Personal Lifestyle Choice or B) Genetic or Biological Intervention.

Educating people and curbing the food industry will be too costly. Will power...we know how well that has worked.

Thoughts?