We're afraid of fat (which doesn't actually make us fat) so we go for fat-free versions of everything, but they taste like crap and we don't like the texture, so we add thickeners, and the thickeners actually do make us fat.
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous. - - - Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" 1897