Well your "friend's cousin" is either hood as fuck or that's a fake story. Been American my whole life, and I have never met anybody who wouldn't be able to identify a pear or have only eaten "candied versions of fruit". I'm sure there are a couple people in the straight up ghetto or a trailer park who might not have seen a pear before, but pretty much nobody who wasn't on food stamps. In fact, the only people I've met who had never seen a fruit of any kind were foreign friends when it was a fruit they didn't have in their country.
Not sure what country you're from or if you've traveled much, but basically every country that isn't in Asia has a shitload of fat people. Most developed countries land somewhere between 30-45%. The US is probably at the higher end, but the trade off is that we also have more fit people and people who still take care of themselves after 30, while in Europe there are fewer big fat people, but like every single person over 35 looks like they've never exercised once in their life and they all have the same kind of mushy body and narrow shoulders and droopy skin. Poor people in Northern Africa and South America aren't fat, but it's fucking crazy going to some market and seeing their poor people that have like hunch backs, boyles on their skin, and missing teeth.
Like everything else foreigners claim about "Americans" when they don't actually know what they're talking about, you're probably confusing poor people with the whole country. Middle class and up are normal to fit, with a few fat people, but mostly normal weight to fit. Our poor people have most of the obesity, commit most of the crime, are bad drivers who smash into things and still drive around in a car with the door caved in or bumper hanging off, most of them have pit bulls, can't seem to hold down a job for any extended period, and they're mostly single moms and deadbeat dads who keep having like 9 kids with several people when they couldn't even afford the first one.
