At breakfast in the motel café next morning I am surprised and delighted to receive, along with my eggs and toast and bacon, a decent portion of hash browns. I mention it to the waitress. “Most places just don’t give you enough.” She agrees. “Jest kinda tickles your appetite, don’t it? But d’you know, most people go out of here and leave their plates half full.”

I look at the table oppposite where some kind of feed salesman in a suit is toying with his breakfast as he talks discounts to a rancher in jeans, suspenders and boots.

The waitress has hit the nail right on the head. When it comes to eating a square meal, Americans simply can’t hack it. From deep in my memory comes an echo of a voice, a young high-school boy with wide eyes and a clear reluctance to believe what he’d just seen.

“Say, are you that Limey they’re talking about who sent back seven empty plates?”
It was a get-together of Western Lit. scholars in Hastings, Nebraska. The locals had put on a Victorian banquet I mean the whole enchilada, so to speak. Soup, followed by fish, followed by Beef Wellington… and on through the card. Decent portions, with plenty of time to let each one settle. I made myself comfortable and dug in. It took a while – but not that long – before the first murmurs of complaint reached my ear.

Before I go any further, I want to issue a disclaimer. I am not a fattist. I do not hate fat people. And certainly not fat women. It seems to me that a woman with no sub-cutaneous layer of fat has been wagiung war on Nature. I suppose I should add here that I’m talking about warm fat. Cold fat belongs on a joint of cold ham, where it is much to be desired. Warm fat – that is, plump flesh that has spent the night in a well-insulated bed and, having totted up a few hours of beauty sleep, is now glowing, curved, sleek and palpitating – oh man, let me at it. But again, I’m talking about moderate amounts of fat. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to draw the line at the excesses that some Americans are prone to. I mean the people you see in airports or Greyhound bus stations, the ones you go to speak to and find that while their faces are still right in front of you their bodies have shifted forward several feet.

Where was I? Yes, the first murmurs of complaint. “Oh - my - goodness! Oh, no! Oh, well, just a little taste, then.” It was the heavyweights, screwing up their faces and pushing their plates away. “No, really! Oh, I couldn’t!”

You see – one square meal, and it was all too much for them. They were the same people who shuffled along the counter at breakfast each morning, took a cup of de-caff or a glass of orange juice, guiltily slipped a single lo-cal bagel onto their tray, and then grinned conspiratorially as they told everyone within earshot – for Americans, read the entire bloody room – how wicked they were being. “But hey, I’m giving my paper this morning – I deserve to pig out!”

Pig out? On a ring of featherweight dough and a cup of emasculated Columbia? Give me a break. The day I delivered my paper I needed a plate of oatmeal, five strips of bacon, three eggs (over easy), a double serving of hash browns and an extra order of wholewheat toast. And even then the old stomach was rumbling all afternoon.

Which was just as well, because that evening it was the banquet. Meat and drink to me. Yes sir, seven separate courses, seven empty plates. I know. I was that Limey.

“Of course,” I told the high-school waiter who collected my discarded platters one by one, “we eat like that all the time back home. It’s what being European” – what being sophisticated, son – “is all about.” He stood there in his white shirt and bow-tie, the sweat trickling over his downy upper lip. He’d probably done Irony in school, but, not having travelled out of state, he wouldn’t have encountered it face to face. “So… how come you stay so… slim?”

Ah, the things you wish you’d said at the time. For example, “And how come so many of you people put on so much weight without eating?” It’s a fantastic feat. A modern-day miracle. Americans achieve colossal weight gain without ever eating a proper meal. A muffin here, a burger there. Here a Coke, there a Sprite, everywhere an ice-tea…. And just about everything they consume claims to be devoid of absolutely anything that makes food worth eating. I mean caffeine… sugar… fat… calories… bulk. Everything is reduced, everything is Lite. Everything is Bite-size.

So, if they’re taking in zero calories, tell me – what is all this flesh made of? That cattleman at the table opposite, I bet he’d pay a king’s ransom to know the answer. If he could get his livestock on the same eating plan as the rest of the population, he’d clean up.

The salesman has already found his breakfast too much for him. He’s shoved it to one side and buried it in screwed-up paper napkins. Of course, he has other things on his mind. He’s half out of his seat, leaning across the table to his client. “Take a look at this,” he says, snapping open his briefcase and pressing a button to bring up a computerised model on his lap-top. He starts to explain a mathematical calculation as to the effectiveness of whatever feed supplement he’s pushing. The cattleman takes a drink of coffee and tells the salesman about the claims made by a rival product. “Well,” the salesman says, “if they say they’re getting a hundred pounds of growth for a hundred pounds of feed – now hell, I can’t sit here and tell ya I can get you a hundred and one, now can I? It wouldn’t add up.

Oh, but wouldn’t it? I’m tempted - sorely tempted - to interrupt them and tell them about the Amazing Midwestern Bulk Enhancement Plan I’ve just come up with.

This is how it goes. Stick a huge pile of greasy food out in the feedlots, and make the cattle form an orderly line. One look at it and they’ll roll their eyes, clutch their waistlines and moan “Oh no, I absolutely couldn’t!” Then they’ll slip away across the meadow and fatten up before your very eyes.

But as the rancher winks at the salesman I can see they’d never believe me.