Americans are, inarguably, a people of large appetites.

We have a seemingly incessant hunger for new and engaging art, film, television, technology and, as is evident now more than ever, consumer goods. We strive to acquire anything from McMansions to SUVs, along with the credit to obtain these items.

Unfortunately, constant borrowing and spending in an attempt to satisfy our hunger has diminished thrift to an extreme extent. Americans’ waistlines represent the most basic, most visible and most insatiable hunger our nation has.

According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, about two-thirds of Americans are overweight, a third of them being obese. In 2007, only Colorado had a prevalence of obesity less than 20 percent. This represents a major change from 1990, when no state had a prevalence of obesity more than 15 percent.

As much as our television channels and advertisements, such as commercials showing fast-food restaurants inhabited by only skinny people, lead us to ignore these facts, the numbers don’t lie. Take a walk in any American town or city, and your eyes won’t deceive you either.

We need to understand that all Americans don’t look like those on television  — which is okay. A population of various shapes and sizes is a good and natural thing. But an obese one — a population with a greatly increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease, cancers and Type 2 diabetes, just to name a few negative outcomes — is not.

Of course, most Americans know the risks of overeating. Regardless of that fact, very few can say no to the little ones when they ask to stop by McDonald’s for a quick dinner multiple times a week. And understandably, few can exercise the willpower to withhold ordering some McNuggets for themselves. Those without kids are also vulnerable, as it’s equally tempting to drive by the convenient Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through window during the morning commute, or to indulge in the cheap lunch deals at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Want proof? According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the average American gets a third of his or her calories from eating out.

Facing a dour economy and a national psyche committed to convenience and instant gratification, the prevalence of eating junk on the cheap probably isn’t going to change anytime soon. Two federal lawmakers, however, are hoping to tackle the problem by educating individuals about how unhealthy the crap they consume is.

The Menu Education and Labeling Act — the MEAL Act for short — recently introduced by Connecticut’s Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Iowa’s very own Sen. Tom Harkin, would require fast-food and large chain restaurants to post food items’ calories on menu boards and food display tags. In addition to the calories, the restaurants must also post information about the fat, carbohydrate and salt content of their food items on printed menus.

Akin to a bill signed by California’s governor last September, the bill’s purpose is to help consumers make more informed choices about what they order.

Margo Wootan, nutrition policy director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, spoke highly of this idea, stating that “consumers play an impossible guessing game trying to make healthier choices in restaurants.”

While the bill, supported by much of Congress and most national restaurant chains, is on its way to passage in the near future, one should ask if this bill is going to change anything.

Supporting the dissemination of otherwise-unknown information to consumers is always a good thing, as is trying to influence Americans to eat healthier by any means possible. If the bill worked to its utmost potential, it could even contribute to a major cut in health care costs, as individuals’ healthier choices could lead to millions of fewer hospital visits and procedures.

The key, however, is that the bill fully relies on the assumption that informed individuals will act differently than uninformed individuals. If human beings were fully rational creatures, this assumption would no doubt be correct. Yet Americans — and people in every other country in the world, for that matter — are not and never will be fully rational. Some of the time, yes, but all of the time? No way.

Few among many things that we all know: It is safer to drive with a seat belt than without, smoking kills and heavy drinking can lead to all sorts of bad things. The list goes on, but humans around the world continue to drive belt-less, smoke multiple packs of cigarettes a day and party hard.

Pertaining to the issue of obesity is an article in the April issue of the American Journal of Public Health. In the article, researchers from the psychology department at Yale discussed a study in which they observed consumers’ behaviors at New York City-area fast-food eateries, such as McDonald’s and Burger King. Though all restaurants provided nutrition information in some form — calories were listed on posters, in pamphlets or on touch-screen computers — only six out of 4,311 people looked at it.

While the authors of the study concluded that making such information more prominent would influence consumers, the study suggests something else to me. Americans choosing to regularly eat at fast-food restaurants in the United States do not care about calories, fat or anything else that is in what they are about to eat.

These people care about price, taste and convenience.

So while the MEAL Act is a nice thought, and calls attention to what is essentially a national pandemic, I am holding my breath on how much it can change. We should tackle this problem of a fat nation with policy changes such as heavily increased fruit and vegetable subsidies, heavily decreased corn subsidies or healthier cafeteria foods. Maybe then I will believe that a fit nation can exist.

– Steve Adams is graduate student in journalism and mass communication from Annapolis, Maryland.