Ah, the hourglass figure. Romanticized in poetry, praised in myth and about to disappear altogether?

That’s what experts are saying, at any rate, and they’re blaming the “obesity epidemic” for its loss. Roughly 60% of the American population is overweight due, in part, to our culture’s fast food diet and lack of regular exercise.

But we’re not the only ones growing bigger. Autralian women’s waistlines have increased from an average of 29.5 inches to 32 inches in the past decade.

Even in Japan, a country known for its healthy diet and slim population, there’s been a 5% increase in obese males over the past five years alone.

All three countries have seen a surge in the demand for liposuction and gastric bypass (or lapband) surgeries.

I can’t help wondering, though, just what’s to blame for this “epidemic”?

It can’t be simply a matter of fast- or convenience foods, and yet efforts to find an answer run into an “Alice in Wonderland” type of logic.

For instance, the World Organization for Health (WHO) blames obesity on economic growth and urbanization, then notes that obesity coexists with under-nutrition in developing countries.

In other words, WHO thinks obesity occurs due to economic grown when a country makes more money, except where it exists in countries that aren’t making more money, in which case it simply exists.

I rather like the virus theory explanation which says that if you’re fat, chances are you caught adenovirus-36.

Tests on more than 500 Americans found about 30 per cent of obese people had been exposed to the virus, compared with 11 per cent of non-obese people. They identified 26 pairs of twins where only one had been infected with Ad-36.

“And just as we predicted, the infected twins were heavier and fatter,” said Dr (Richard) Atkinson (Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin in Madison), who has established a company that tests for the virus.

This happens to be the same virus that, when injected into stem cells, turned them into fat cells. Scientists are already busily working on a vaccine for the virus.

Promising news, eh?

But there’s always a “but”, isn’t there? (In my case it’s an increasingly large butt.) There’s one in this case, too: the vaccine won’t be ready for testing for roughly 5 to 10 more years, and by that point I’d be old enough to look ridiculous in hip-hugger jeans.

Damn the luck.