BY FOOD CRITIC ROGER DUMPLING

FRESH FIGURES from a huge survey of American weight, together with the recent demise of Jenny Craig, the Australian weight loss company, in the United States, have led researchers to a stunning conclusion: the sea levels around Florida may not be rising at all; because they don’t have to. Instead, Florida is sinking through human obesity.

Yes, the sunshine state, retirement haven, theme park central and Cuban exile heartland is now a prize victim of America’s ever increasing weight problem. And tourism appears to be the key. The millions of overweight citizens of the US of A congregating there every year are causing the state’s land to depress at the coasts, allowing the sea to creep in. Particularly around the great tourist hubs of Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Miami. The Disney and Universal theme parks are enormous sources of weight concentration and, if it continues at its current rate of increase, in danger of collapsing into the brine in the future.

“Man, it’s a wonder the ground doesn’t just give way now,” says Meat Swede, a diet guru and lead researcher in the Girth Project, which measured the problem. “You cannot believe the size of some of these motherfuckers who call themselves humans. Obese? That’s an insult to ordinary fat people. No, the people we’re talking about passed fat about a decade ago. And you can actually see the state sink when they visit in significant numbers. We have it all on computer.”

Critics of the project have condemned its participants as fatist, and judgmental. “Weight is a lifestyle choice, much like gender,” says Eunuch Kunt of Fat Bastard Is Not An Insult, a support network for people who either choose to be, or discover they have become, very fat. Kunt, who cannot move from his Alabama trailer due to his weight, insists that weight loss is a burden inflicted on America much like slavery. “We are victims of oppression, constantly bombarded with propaganda about healthy lifestyles and restricted eating. It’s deplorable. Fat lives matter, you know.”

The state of Florida, while it acknowledges the new research, refuses to comment on its findings. “Is this a Woke thing?” one official asked. “Because if it is, we’re passing. Governor’s got that in hand.”