Part 1
Some of you may not like this record that I'm about to share. The date is currently 2088 and I was ordered to keep silent about the solution to the world's ever increasing weight problem among humans.
A bit of background on this issue, before I go into detail on how we solved the problem. I was born in 1987, and yes, I am now 101 years old, which seems ancient to you, but our medical advancements have allowed us to live much longer than before. Positronic brains for those with a failing organ, synthetic blood for the anemic, and micro-surgeons (a classier term than nano-bots, this is no longer 2013) to perform ongoing maintenance. These developed a decade after the weight crisis, though.
When I was a young man of 26, I remember McDonalds, Burger King, and all the other fast food (processed meats and food type items that could be purchased in drive throughs) companies were becoming powerhouses of malnutrition in the former United States of America and other countries. People were becoming lazy, they relied on technology even to add the numbers 2 and 4. It was a sad, uneducated time in our country.
Google and Apple were the world's leading technology companies around that period. They continued to grow before merging into GAP, which became a company kind of like Buy N Large in the movie WALL-E. Look back into the extreme classics section of your movie library, you'll find it there.
GAP didn't let the world go to hell and clutter the place up, as you can see when you step outside and see green and smell fresh air. Many environmentalists were concerned that our world would fail and that we would destroy any ecosystem we could get our hands on. They were wrong. Oh well.
Anyhow, GAP produced product after revolutionary product that would make our lives easier and more efficient. Amazon began delivering products with drones, and you could purchase food synthesizers that would produce whatever your heart desired (and wallet could acquire). The well to do, and even some of the middle class, could subscribe to their favorite restaurant chain and have whatever meal they desired. Applebees, Olive Garden, Waffle House, to name a few. The average person could really only afford to subscribe to the fast food chains, and those on government assistance would receive even worse than that.
Families no longer went grocery shopping, and the chains slowly transformed into matter providers. One of the catchiest slogans was "What matters to you, matters to us!" Just simple, fad things that people could hang onto and whistle around dinner time.
The food synthesizers were great, but like any machine, they needed to be fed. Some naturalists got big into providing organic matter and home mined matter. We now know there is no difference. Down at the atomic level, there is no right or wrong, it just IS.
The problem of obesity really began with these synthesizers. People no longer had to leave their homes to get matter, delivery was a popular service. As life became more efficient, people cooked less, moved less, and ate more. Leaving the house became less of a daily ritual and turned into a weekly or even a monthly occurrence. This industry was unregulated, and while not everyone went hog wild, a large percentage of the population now had the freedom to eat whatever they liked, whenever.
The government welcomed all of this with open arms and tax subsidies. World hunger was ended! But over stuffing was just beginning. Move more, eat less was my most favorite saying, and still is. If you eat more than your body needs without exercising enough to burn it off, you will get fat.
The food synthesizers boomed in the 2020s and became commonplace by 2028. It wasn't about what you could cook, it was about the subscription you could afford. Eating out was purely for atmosphere by this point, and the restaurants downsized and developed a new expertise in matter rearrangement to suit their menus. Whatever was tastiest was the best.
The average household was consuming 60 pounds of raw matter a day by 2035. By 2040, this increased to 73, and by 2055, the average leveled out at around 100 pounds per day. To put this in perspective, for every 10 pounds of matter used, 1 pound of food is produced.
Part 2 to follow
