Currently, at least 50% (not sure exactly what the number is?) of the U.S.A. is overweight/obese. With food, fuel, and electricity prices at all time highs, what will these costs be a year from now? These people need to stop eating and start exercising? They eat all the time, drive everywhere, and use large amounts of heat/ac depending on their climate. Ultimately, as the demand increases so do the prices. Those extra costs will be passed on to everybody else to help pay their way and support their chosen lifestyle.
Electricity is produced by coal, natural gas, and nuclear. We have shitloads of that, especially coal.
Food costs are going up in part because of the rising cost of diesel fuel required to transport and produce it, and in the case of grain, diversion of crops to produce ethanol, the most bone-headed attempt at alternative energy ever seen. Oil is the real issue, not people eating too much.
As far as the "drive everywhere" comment, unless you live in a high-density downtown area (most of us don't), driving is the only option. "Fuel conservation" is not the answer and will never be the answer. What we need is an alternative to oil. That alternative will ultimately be electricity, probably electricity used to produce hydrogen from water, but possibly some battery-driven commuter vehicles as well. We can produce this electricity from our abundant domestic coal supplies, or if we want to be enviornmentally-friendly/ zero-emmission we can build more nuclear plants (which will be where we end up anyway, since at some point the coal will run out too, but not in our lifetimes or our grandchildren's for that matter).
