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India Blames Fat Americans For High Food Costs

nytimes.com — Instead of blaming India and other developing nations for the rise in food prices, Americans should rethink their energy policy — and go on a diet.

Who dugg this? Made popular May 15, 2008

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  • SteelChicken, on 05/15/2008, -20/+145Every single problem in the world is caused by Americans. Once you understand this, you can sleep easy at night, knowing you have to take no responsibility for ANYTHING if you are not an American. How nice!
  • nirav72, on 05/15/2008, -5/+63Just to add a little perspective here - This was in retaliation to the comment that Bush made last week about how the growing Indian middle class is the cause behind the global food shortages and price increase.

    No need to get racist over it.

  • gelato822, on 05/15/2008, -7/+63Rising food prices? Isn't everything on the dollar menu still a dollar?
  • acespades, on 05/15/2008, -20/+58Let me think about this for a moment:

    US produces food to feed its own population - Americans can eat the food they produce in whatever way they want. Am I wrong?

    Now, India can't produce its own food and start pointing fingers at US because they can't feed its own overpopulated country and tell US what they should do with their own food production..!
    Either they need a reality check or farming revolution in there - if they have space for it of course...
  • inactive, on 05/15/2008, -15/+54Thank You, Come Again!
  • lazybat, on 05/15/2008, -9/+41Now that the reasonable arguments have begun let me pitch in.......... let's blame the scientologists ... feeding all their body thetans..
  • zolthar, on 05/15/2008, -4/+31They want Rice? Give them Condi
  • masamunecyrus, on 05/15/2008, -1/+24That's not the point he was trying to make. He was basically saying that if you can baselessly blame America for the rise in food prices because Americans are fat, then you can just as easily baselessly blame India for the rise in food prices because their population is massive.
  • ortucis, on 05/15/2008, -9/+34Actually, they just replying to the genius comments by your Bush and Rice.. people, about shortage of food in the western world because of 'Indians eating more'.
  • yaosio, on 05/15/2008, -3/+24It's good to know none of the other 6.3 billion people have anything to do with this.
  • justinx0r, on 05/15/2008, -21/+49Ha. I don't know, maybe they should grow their own food and not import it from us if it makes them feel better? The US is the bread basket of the world - if we didn't export the amount we do prices would be way higher.
  • jeebus, on 05/15/2008, -8/+31Hack journalism. This is all about ETHANOL.
  • inactive, on 05/15/2008, -8/+29Perhaps we should stop outsourcing. That might help their food price problem.
  • manjai, on 05/15/2008, -4/+27The debate began after Bush blamed India for rising prices. That statement itself was funny. Let us end this useless debate.
  • sacherjj, on 05/15/2008, -1/+19It still costs a dollar, it just isn't "food" anymore.
  • secondwheel2, on 05/15/2008, -13/+32wow im surprised on all the racist comments i have been hearing
  • faskill, on 05/15/2008, -6/+24Or we can just look at simple facts lazybat.
    According to a little organization known as the Central Intelligence Agency, India is populated by1,129,866,154 (as of july 2007) and an estimated 1,147,995,898 by July 2008 ( cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/in.html ). So the U.S. has 350 million people (estimated). According to studies, 1/3 of those is obese. So we'll say 120 million Americans are obese. Roughly 10% of what India's population encompasses is obese. So, even if that percentage of fat Americans were eating 3 times what an Indian would eat, that only eqautes to 350ish million individuals. Even if you want to take a broader estimate and state that we consume twice that, the sheer number of people in India would seem to imply that they would have to consume more than other countries with less (and better fed) citizens.
  • inactive, on 05/15/2008, -9/+23It's nice to see Americans coming together to agree that Indians suck.
  • inactive, on 05/15/2008, -10/+26Americans blame marble-mouthed Indians for bad Dell customer service.
  • coolkatz321, on 05/15/2008, -0/+16You know, they're not the ONLY ones affected by this food shortage! Why, just yesterday at Costco, I was informed I couldn't buy more than FOUR 50lb bags of rice. That's right, no more than FOUR! How the hell am I supposed to make my plastic swimming pool-sized tub of paella now?!
  • drakefantastic, on 05/15/2008, -12/+27Ummm...Hey India; you have the 7th largest land area, the 2nd largest work force, and a similarly uneven distribution of wealth. Look in a mirror for your day will come...We should also look in a mirror--have you seen how fat we are?

    Our problem is that Americans under the poverty level are fat, meaning that they buy too much cheap, processed foods. Instead of blaming fat Americans for rising food prices, blame Pringles and dietary ignorance for fat Americans
  • markgl, on 05/15/2008, -7/+19yeah, no doubt. its easy for the rest of the world to blame us all the time. it keeps them from having todo or explain themselves.
  • Grimdotdotdot, on 05/15/2008, -2/+14Indeed.
    Looking at the comments that are being dugg up and the comments that are being dugg down makes me depressed.
  • BuzzFriendly, on 05/15/2008, -2/+16Well I can't disagree that many Americans eat too much and are overweight I am not convinced this is causing a food problem for India. For instance are Hostess HO-HO's Entemans Ultimate Chocolate Donuts (awesome with cold milk) or the crap ingredients used to make them part of the India's diet? Is there a reason why India cannot produce its own food or eat its own beef cattle?
  • RedHerringHack, on 05/15/2008, -6/+18Let's just stop food exports. Saudis are stopping oil exports, and food is more powerful than oil.
  • drvcr, on 05/15/2008, -0/+10Exactly. This may be obvious, but a good number of diggers looked at the mislabeled article title and used it as an excuse to spew their racist/frustrated remarks without actually reading the article.

    The article simply states that India believes President Bush wrongly attributed to the world's food shortage crisis to it's burgeoning middle class. Nothing more. It's simply a childish argument between two nations.

    Many of these comments could have been averted if people just took the time to rta and establish a rational discourse. People fear what they cannot comprehend and unfortunately that's what we are seeing in this thread.

    Instead of discussing the economic ramifications of both nation's agricultural policies, both sides have resorted to the name-calling that their leaders have engaged in. I enjoy Digg quite a bit, but some of these comments have reminded me of the old adage that ignorance is bliss.
  • gnomead, on 05/15/2008, -1/+11India does grow its own food.
  • glock22ownr, on 05/15/2008, -2/+11Americans being fat is not to be blamed on lifestyle, for the most part I think it's quite the same as 50 years ago. The use of high fructose corn syrup and everything else corn can be correlated to the start of obesity in America. True story, look it up. Now the reason that food costs so damn much in the US is Ethanol fuel usage spiking. Since we eat bread, drink pop/soda, cake, whatever all sweetened and filled with HFCS and we're now burning more of it as fuel for vehicles the price is going up. Not surprising. Cattle, chickens, turkeys whatever all get corn feed... again price of meat is going up.

    Now some may say thats a bad thing, but I think all the crap we have done with corn that is completely un-natural and un-healthy will go away and hopefully we'll find a sweetner or whatever that doesn't add empty calories and make everyone bulge out to enourmous proportions. I eat tons of food, people are amazed, but I cook it all myself. I am not overweight, I work out, and have a generally healthy lifestyle ( although I did have Wendys last night ). The overuse of corn is what has gotten us into trouble not India, not China and so on. But far be it for Bush to think before he speaks and pisses the world off yet again.
  • regularsteven, on 05/15/2008, -1/+11people are ***** idiots - there should me some digg reading/comprehension/ test to weigh peoples answers. This article was submitted with a wrong title - second para states that 'the response, basically, of a growing number of politicians, economists and academics in this country'.
    People jump at the chance to slag off others, and that's the real issue. Are this amount of people this 'tough' / 'stupid' in real life?
  • normalkid0615, on 05/15/2008, -7/+17lets blame television and the internet and an ever increasing sedentary lifestyle. Why do we ever need to get off our over-fed food-wasting american fat asses? Ill tell you why, to refill on ice cream or get the door, its dominos.
  • dirtyfrog, on 05/15/2008, -1/+9If I remember correctly the midwest agriculture in the USA produces far more food per year than we can use. I also believe that the government pays small farms in the USA to produce less of certain crops so that the cost of food here doesn't crash down to nothing. If we import more food than India, it has nothing to do with us not having enough. We could easily stop importing processed foods from other countries, there would just be less of a variety.
  • milkmage, on 05/15/2008, -2/+10yeah, American companies outsource purely out of sympathy for the "poor", underdeveloped countries.. yeah, has nothing to do with cutting operating costs or anything because it's purely out of generosity - the fact that it's cheaper is a nice bonus though.
    /sarcasm
  • inactive, on 05/15/2008, -1/+9"so there's a shortage we can all agree to that"

    No, we cannot all agree to that. There really is no shortage of food. There are countries that cannot afford to feed their people (or do not have fertile land to grow food) but to say there is a shortage of food is an outright lie.

    The U.S., Canada, much of South America, much of the U.K., etc. have an abundance of food that is sold to other countries that can afford to purchase the surplus food.

    The problem is the price of food. It is on the rise. And for India to basically sidestep the original intention of the comments from Bush (which many others have agreed with) is sad. Bush was pointing out that food prices are on the rise due to the fact that India is experiencing a financial boom and therefore the people are demanding higher quality food. This means that since demand is rising the fair market value is rising along with it.

    Besides, America was fat before India was prosperous.
  • MammasMilk, on 05/15/2008, -1/+9at the very least you could beat up Bluto and fight to the finish with your ridiculously huge forearms.
  • faskill, on 05/15/2008, -0/+8Let's discuss this over lunch. (And on a side note, the top ad and side ad are both for McDonald's new Chicken Biscuit sandwich).
  • CiXeL, on 05/15/2008, -1/+8what? you mean india isnt endless fields of convenience stores?
    i will digg you up though because you made me laugh.
  • 4rp4n3t, on 05/15/2008, -4/+12Right. And you hang out in the toilet, watching people take *****, because *that's* the kind of guy you are.
  • CrispyOne, on 05/15/2008, -1/+8Whoa, whoa - let's not bring Pringles into this.
  • CrispyOne, on 05/15/2008, -0/+8HFCS?
  • orlyfactor, on 05/15/2008, -1/+8Ya think?
  • secrity, on 05/15/2008, -0/+7Much of it has to do with the US government encouraging corn production and not allowing sugar imports. Some of the reasons: The US population eats more corn than many other nations' populations eat rice and other starches. Many American food manufacturers use HFCS rather than sugar. The US uses quite a bit of corn in animal feed. The US uses corn to produce methanol and other bio-fuels. Corn oil is commonly used as an edible oil. There are several other reasons.
  • milkmage, on 05/15/2008, -0/+7i'll bet 75% of that corn isn't consumed as fresh corn. it's turned into High Fructose Corn Syrup (spot on Crispy) which is in EVERYTHING.
  • dycc07, on 05/15/2008, -1/+8i love them music, so filling....serve up some more of that sweet sweet sitar beats
  • Bostocks, on 05/15/2008, -3/+11It is a great plan if you have no idea how capitalism works, I'm not sure that this guy knows it's not the governments fault when people eat too much and then get liposuction. That or he's being sarcastic.
  • shaba1, on 05/15/2008, -0/+7India exports more food than the US
  • nynety, on 05/15/2008, -2/+9Holy *****! I cannot believe the racism on this page! Digg has found a new low.
  • sagat, on 05/15/2008, -10/+17Stop breeding like rats India!
  • inactive, on 05/15/2008, -3/+11But religion actually DOES cause a *****-load of problems.
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