IN OUR CRUEL, MISTRUSTFUL WORLD, FAT STILL TELLS COMFORTING TRUTH.

Byline: MICKEY GUISEWITE

It seems you can't open a newspaper or turn on the TV anymore without seeing another story on the shocking fat epidemic in this country.

News item: One-third of all Americans are obese.

News item!: The average dress size has shot up over the last 20 years.

News item: We're an average 10 pounds heavier than we were 10 years ago.

Why, we ask ourselves? Why is a nation of people who have spent the last decade re-educating ourselves about food and diet so overweight? Is it stress? Work? Are our sedentary lifestyles to blame?

Or could it be that in a world of uncertainty, disappointment and mistrust, humans have come to embrace one of the few things left that is exactly what it says it is: fat.

Fat. It doesn't pretend to be good for us. It doesn't promise to solve our problems. We've never stuffed ourselves with fattening foods, fueled by the temporary hope that they would raise our IQ, cure our diseases or make us live to be 120.

Consider the chocolate bar; 240 calories, 70 percent of them from fat. Nutritional value: zero. Health benefits: none.

Or a gallon of ice cream: Serving size: a thimbleful. Calories: 600. Fat: a week's worth. For a family of four.

Or a bag of potato chips: Contents: fat. Health claims: will make you fat.

It's all so clear with fat. And in a decade where so often things aren't as they seem, maybe that's why we're so attracted to it.

The other morning I couldn't help but be struck by the integrity of fat.

I woke up to the clock-radio alarm blaring the news that an overtly pious politician had been caught in a sex scandal, after which I flipped open the paper and saw that the electronics store that yesterday swore I only had one day left in order to save at their sale was now giving me an extra week.

It turns out the self-help guru whose book I've been reading is a screaming, chain-smoking basket case. The exercise machine that was going to transform me has been found to cause joint damage. And the fish I thought was fresh has been sitting on my grocer's shelf for a week.

By the time I made it into my office, my anti-static-treated skirt plastered to my legs, I had been lied to and cheated 27 times.

It was then that I encountered the cinnamon roll.

Compared with everything else that morning, it suddenly seemed so pure. Cinnamon and sugar oozed out of the swirl of butter-drenched dough.

Every gooey crumb of it announced that it would set my diet back two weeks.

How beautiful. How free of deceit and ambiguity and ulterior motives.

As I sank my teeth into the cinnamon roll, I did so sparked by a new revelation:

If a full third of us are overweight, maybe it's because some of us are simply hungry for the truth.