I am constantly surprised at the number of bigger and bigger things. Yesterday Ann was offered an "up-sizing" up on her already huge plate of fish and chips. Most of the vendors in the food court had similar deals, making large amounts of food and soft drink, well, larger, for a small charge.

SUV's have become wider and taller in the current model iteration, as if their occupants had burst out of their seats and ruptured the car frame. The brick that was once the mobile phone and which at one stage was heading towards miniaturization, has now begun to grow chubby again, in a quaint genuflection to its massive ancestor. Smart phones, now the rival of small tablet computers in size, can happily broadcast video and chat and whatever the user likes with no loss of quality. Houses too have become garishly large and some have even taken the epithet, McMansion, which, if you think about it, dovetails beautifully into any discussion of this portly age.

The other aspect of this curious phenomenon is people, who, in the Western World, are growing increasingly more substantial. This might be the nub of the issue or it might not. Do stout people like to buy over-sized cars? Or is it the anxiety of the age that promotes the big-is-better mantra?

Ann, of course, turned down the up-sized meal. And I settled for the tiniest box of salad I could find. I don't feel any more virtuous for doing so, only worried about where it's all leading.