'FAT, DUMB, AND UGLY' | A review Author fails to back up his statistics

The book purports to document the sad state of America.
By MIKE MAZA
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
"Fat, Dumb, and Ugly," by Peter Strupp (Simon & amp; Schuster, $9.95)
Subtitled "The Decline of the Average American," this little collection of statistics means to document the sad state of our American Way.
What the author means by fat: About 46 percent of Americans were considered overweight in 1980. Now it's 64.5 percent. We spend $30 billion a year trying to control our weight. Meanwhile, average lifetime ice cream consumption per person is 1 ton.
Dumb? Only 10 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds can find the United States on a blank world map. About 47 percent of Americans think evolution theory is bunk, while 48 percent think astrology is scientific.
Ugly: With 5 percent of world population, America consumes 33 percent of world resources and produces 19 percent of its trash. The average American two-car garage is 25 percent bigger than the average Tokyo home.
Unfortunately, publisher Simon & amp; Schuster contributes to the dumbing. Strupp mocks by not requiring sources for all these numbers. We don't know what devious interest groups produced them, or by what extrapolations survey results were applied to the general population.
So when we're told that 70 percent of American adults say they've had cosmetic surgery, we can only shrug and say, gee, that seems awfully high. Do you suppose that number includes circumcisions? Hairy nose-wart removals?
On the other hand, there's some great paradox spotting here. Example: 49 percent of Americans say they've been subjected to "loud and annoying" cell-phone calls, but 83 percent of cell-phone users say they've never done that.