Although it usually isn't easy to characterize a whole generation, Americans in their teens and twenties today are unquestionably fatter than the analogous demographic at any other time in the last 50 years.

This is the Fat Generation.

You can read the whole sad story in a simple chart prepared by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies for their fact sheet about childhood obesity in the United States.

Generation F was fatter when they were little babies, they were fatter when they were toddlers, they were fatter when they were in elementary school and junior high school and high school. They were fatter pre-teens and teens. They are fatter young adults.

The Fat Generation also reads less than previous generations, but it writes more. According to a massive study by the NEA, Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, Generation F reads 28% less in the way of literature than the analogous demographic in 1982, but 30% more of them engage in "creative writing."

Writers who don't read! It sounds like Generation F cheering for Obama on thousands of semi-literate blogs, and struggling hopelessly to wring something more expressive than "Hillary sucks!" out of their miniscule vocabularies.

But the Fat Generation is absolutely right to choose the most fun candidate and the fastest fast food and whatever other pleasures it can squeeze into the moment, because...

After what Generations X, Y, and Z have done to the planet, Generation F doesn't have much of a future.