My Greed is an Environmental Crisis

To fill ourselves until we are sick is an act of self-terrorism; our powdered-cheese covered fingers the missiles and our stomachs ground zero.”

I’ve always overeaten. In memory alone I cannot remember a time I would look down at my doughy Michelin Man body and not want to cry. Family photos show me turning from a sinewy six to a tubby ten in the space of two albums, and by that point, starting secondary school, I’d begun eating all I could get away with, amassing Wagon Wheel wrappers under my bed; secret evidence of my sweet tooth and cause of my pre-teen paunch. Today I remain in battle with the nihilistic Haribo fiend of my past and her insatiable greed. I inherit my childhood addictions and struggle to transform my former habits even now, aged 28, a loose-skinned size 10.

While I’d enjoy palming off responsibility on my doting mother; on Mondelez with its Nutella and Oreo conspiracy; on the soda companies; or the government for not doing enough to curb childhood obesity, I have gradually come to accept that the buck stops with me. The gatekeeper. Fully grown and running out of places to lay the blame, I am forced to look inward and berate myself for my lack of willpower; my inability to control the mechanism that causes me to cram cake in my hole time and time again. As my mind broadens and my fat stores dwindle, however, I learn that blame is not…