In Defense of Supersized America

The first Englishman to reach the New World brought home chips and fags. Or so we were told: many of us will remember primary-school lessons on Sir Walter Raleigh, fresh from Virginia, presenting Elizabeth I with potatoes and tobacco. In particularly colorful versions, his servants chuck the tubers and cook the poisonous leaves, or a gardener burns the plants only to discover edible potatoes. While these accounts may be little more than Victorian folklore — conquistadors probably brought these products to Europe decades earlier — it is nice to imagine the British getting their priorities straight from the start.