Cigarettes Are Why We Are Fat

This is a hypothesis I'm working on that has yet to be tested, thus, why it's not a theory (I'm sciency like that...though if I was, I probably wouldn't use the term "sciency"), but I do believe that we can trace the obesity epidemic back to the popularization and subsequent demonization of cigarettes. 

They also prescribed whiskey for PTSD. Probably. Source

Bear with me (or "bare" with me as I'm writing this totally nude as to discourage any further stuffing of my face with food). 

Throughout the majority of the 20th century cigarettes were hailed as a spectacular herbal remedy. Doctors would recommend a pack of filterless cigarettes as a cure for that pesky cough. "Hey, son, do you have asthma? Try Menthols, they really open up those capillaries." 

Up until the mid-90's you could smoke everywhere, bars, clubs, movies, airports, the airplane itself, child burn wards, petting zoos, and most importantly restaurants. 

Smoking affects your taste buds, dulling a person's sense of taste. 

In addition, if you're smoking, you're pacing the rate at which you shovel mountains of flavorless food into your chew-hole. Even if you yourself weren't the one smoking, how appetizing is your steak after passing through a thick cloud of smoke flavored with chemicals and other people's halitosis (the biggest danger of second hand smoke)?

See, it helps bad breath too. Source. 

During the mid-20th century came the rise of the fast food chain. I see a correlation here between ubiquitous smoking, dulling of taste buds, and the rise of fried, hyper-salted food. Fast food substituted texture for taste and made everything extra sweet so that it could fight through the cemetery of dead senses to the zombie remnants of taste left on a smoker's tongue. Everything got saltier, more sugary, more fatty so that people could taste the food through the nicotine film that coated everyone inside and out. 

Thanks, 60's, you make my point for me. Source

So why now, with smoking being demonized and banned everywhere are fast food joints still popular? Blame your parents. Since they couldn't taste, they took us all to fast food so they could taste things and not growing up with a subtlety of flavors, our own taste buds were not developed. Our tongues are like the feet of a Chinese girl, bound so they can't properly grow. (Yes, I am acutely aware of how offensive that is, but my sense of decorum has been dulled by the movies of my parents. Also, it's a joke, I know that foot binding is no longer an accepted custom. Thanks for making me kill my own joke, fake heckler I invented in my own guilt-riddled brain.)

Further, now we don't have the luxury of pacing ourselves, interrupting the flow of food from fist to mouth with the occasional puff of a death stick. 

Thus, why we're fat. 

Oh my god, a rotund icon smoking? This is my thesis! Source

But in comparison, is this necessarily a bad thing? Diabetes and heart disease are treatable, and good for the economy. As are all these pseudo miracle weight loss placebo pills. Lung cancer? Not as good for the economy. There's not a huge black market for black lungs. And I don't care what anyone says, a couple of love handles will always be sexier than a trachea ring. Also, second-hand fat doesn't exist and doesn't make non-fats' clothes smell. 

I think my argument is so solid I feel confident upgrading from hypothesis to theory.