The obese are immoral

I start this debate on the assumption that my opponent agrees that wilfully allowing children to starve to death is immoral. If this is not the case, he or she should demonstrate that letting kids die of hunger is a good thing and that anyone who deliberately feeds a malnourished child is acting immorally. An observation - I have entitled the debate "The obese are immoral" rather than "The overweight are immoral" deliberately as I recognise that it is possible to be overweight but not fat, as is the case with some rugby players for example. In addition, some people are overweight due to water retention caused by medical complaints and do not, necessarily, consume food to excess. So, for the purposes of this debate, let "the obese" be defined as people who are fat because they eat too much out of pure greed. I would like take this opportunity to urge readers to vote on the quality of the debate, not on any personal allegiance to thin or fat people - after all, many of us who live in the West will know somebody we like who is obese, indeed, some of us may be grossly overweight ourselves. Now, please allow me offer you the following scenario: Mum, Dad and their children, Montmorency and Ethelbertha, load up their touring trailer, hitch it to the back of their truck and head off on vacation. Now this is a big family, not in terms of number, but in terms of size, as they are all obese. Some time later, they arrive at their destination and set up camp. That evening they have a slap-up barbeque with 21-day matured t-bone steaks, minted lamb chops, tiger prawns, Lincolnshire sausages, marinated pork steaks and stuffed chicken breasts which they consume with heaps of corn-on-the-cob and piles of fries, all washed down with lashings of beer and pop and followed with cream cakes and chocolates. In short, they ate far more than their recommended daily calorific intake in just one meal. Nothing wrong with that, you may say, why not? It sounds very nice. Aha! But that's not the end of the story, because the camp they chose to park up in was a refugee camp in Africa full of starving people. Clearly, polishing off a massive feast while desperately malnourished mothers holding their dying children in their arms look on is more than "not very nice" – it's immoral. That is because they have each consumed far more calories than they actually need to stay healthy and their excess body weight is evidence of ongoing gluttony. It is my contention is that, if the fat family had consumed the same meal in a National Park in California or a campsite in the South of France, it would have been as equally wicked as having the nosh up in the refugee camp - the truth is that the obese family knew there are starving people in the Third World and the fact that the starving people couldn't have seen them greedily scoff up their grub, doesn't absolve them from blame, because those facts wouldn't have made the malnourished campers any less desperate for food. We all know there is a global shortage of food yet this could be greatly alleviated, and millions of lives could be saved, if people in the West ate no more than they actually required to keep healthy and the food saved was diverted to the starving in the Third World.