I t's not just Americans and Japanese sumo wrestlers who are fat nowadays. As a witty commentator put it recently in The Hindu newspaper, the world is round, and so are a growing number of its inhabitants. From New York to New Delhi, nutritionists are sounding the alarm about the rising tide of obesity, especially among children, and public health officials worry about how, or even whether, to try and stop it -- by fatwa, as it were. Unfortunately, as King Canute demonstrated a thousand years ago, tides have a tendency to resist orders.

There is no doubting the data. The United States, of course, has long been the world's poster child for chubbiness, and developed Western countries such as Britain, Canada and Australia have been right up beside it on the scale. Nearly two-thirds of all adults in the U.S. are overweight, and more than one-third -- an astounding number -- are considered clinically obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Even more ominously, some 14 percent of American adolescents are overweight, and the numbers are growing as fast as their waistlines. Others are doing even worse: The World Health Organization reports, for instance, that 20 percent of Australian children and adolescents are overweight or obese.