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The reading public, the theatergoing public, the skindiving public, the horse-playing public -- all these and others fill substantial roles in U.S. life, but none is so varied, vast and vigilant as the eating public.

The Department of Agriculture averaged out U.S. food consumption last year at 1,488 lbs. per person, which, allowing for the 17 million Americans that John Kennedy said go to bed hungry every night, means that certain gluttons on the upper end must somehow down 8 lbs. or more a day.

That mother hen of the weight-height tables, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., clucks that 48 million Americans are overweight.