As I observed a man who resembled a beach ball on legs, heave his body towards the walkway at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, I knew there was no way he could occupy a single seat on any aircraft. How much, I wondered, had he paid for his own transportation?
But I'd grown accustomed to the spectacle of fat, to wobbling women and men who haven't seen their own knees - never mind other body parts - for years, because they've fallen prey to the ultimate postmodern disease, the leisure-and-pleasure syndrome, the reward-yourself-you-deserve-it habit of overeating. These people simply cannot bend.
Then I remembered a black-and-white video I'd watched in Monterey, on Cannery Row's tourist beat, a few days earlier. It showed the history of the Californian sardine industry in Monterey up to the time of its decline in the 1940s. I was struck by the leanness of the women working in the factories back then, beheading and canning sardines. Outside the workout and gym brigade, there are few women like that in the US today, who bear the typically rangy, sinewy frame of the worker whose diet is low to moderate in fats and sugars.
From a dietary perspective, North America is, frankly, shocking. Ethiopia starves to death, but the US is paradise on earth for gluttons. In 21st century America, everybody has allergies (or thinks they have), the environment is a hot topic (responsible Americans dispose of dog dirt in cutesy little bags, yet produce more plastic waste than any other nation in the world) and fat is a health issue of epidemic proportions.
The number of sphere-shaped Americans waddling through the Californian sunshine is bewildering. This is a society in which oral gratification is one of the highest rewards available to citizens.
It takes a number of forms. One of them is speech gratification. To communicate and articulate something, anything, so long as it sounds fashionably profound, is desirable. To say little, or worse, to decide not to articulate personal feelings and responses, is subtly frowned on.
But having spoken, American jaws must be exercised in other ways. To that end, the tongue is tantalised, titillated, kept in a state of salivating desire by the culture of advertising which slams home its own dizzying diet of mendacious wisdom. Supermarkets are stacked to the ceilings with fresh food which cannot possibly be bought and consumed, such is its quantity. And top restaurants in California plaster anything fresh with high calorific sauces and dressings, while meals at home come laden with fats and sugars.
Americans seem convinced that if they cut back on fats they can stuff just about anything into themselves. That includes huge sugary muffins, sugar-tainted breads, and sugar-coated cereals. Most breakfast foods in the average hotel come pre-coated with sugar. Hotel guests clamour for low-fat milk at the breakfast buffet and then stock up on four or five doughnuts.
US government data show that in 1988 not one state in the union reported an obesity rate surpassing 15 per cent of the population. By 1999, however, all but 10 states had reached or topped that threshold. Nationwide, 22 per cent - more than a fifth of Americans - are now considered clinically obese.
On the surface, everybody worries about issues like air quality and allergies, smoking is treated as a social evil, and the wearing of perfume at public functions is banned in some Californian counties. At the same time nobody seems particularly perturbed about the number of people gulping cans of sugared fizz, or munching Danish pastries or muffins. Whether they're in transit, on trains, buses, or just along the street, those jaws just cannot stop mashing, sucking and chewing.
It is bizarre that this country, one of the foremost implementers of ideas regarding progress (death penalty aside), is educating a collective of food-fixated worker bees whose primary characteristics are that they can articulate anything about their psychological well-being, the more grotesque or trivial the better (especially on national television), telling you when they feel "hurt" and why, and make a virtue out of the fact that they refuse to stop eating.
This isn't meant to be a diatribe against fleshy people so much as a reaction to a society which seems, on the surface, so unquestioning of its gluttony. Support groups which aim to protect the feelings of the fat proliferate, which is fine, but how about some reality therapy too?
Interestingly, wheelchairs parked on standby at Disneyland, are not only for invalids, but for people who have gorged their way to near immobility and are happy to have someone else push them down Main Street Disneyland so they too can meet Alice in Wonderland or Mickey Mouse.
And of course, excessive weight is tolerated by airlines, some of whom are considering redesigning the width of their seats to accommodate the wobbling ballast of the hypertensive, diabetic, over-fed, under-exercised North American. Yet if luggage is even six pounds overweight, certain airlines will charge $300 unless the offending excess is removed.
Meanwhile - the link is emotive but somehow valid - Ethiopia starves.
Mary O'Donnell is a novelist. Her latest book, The Elysium Testament, was published in November by Trident Press, price £10.
