There’s a new doughnut shop opening up in the village near our house soon. We’re all very excited. We can’t wait until it’s ready for business. But every week, it seems, there’s some new article that says doughnuts are bad for us. That they’re making Americans obese. That they’re not healthy. Well of course they’re not healthy! They’re bread deep fried in oil and covered with sugar. Hobbits would love doughnuts. They would probably have “Beer and Doughnuts” night at The Dragon or Ivy Bush. But a Hobbit like Bilbo would be able to enjoy doughnuts and not turn into Fatty Bolger. How? Because Bilbo (and all the other Hobbits) walk everywhere, unlike us Americans who are addicted to our cars.

I once knew a girl in college who lived directly across from a store and would drive her car there to get cigarettes. A distance of about fifty yards. I am not making this up. She would get in her Suzuki Samurai and drive to a grocery store she could have hit with rock thrown from her front yard, even with her weak arm.

Frodo and his friends (along with Strider) averaged 17.5 miles per day on foot over a period of twenty-eight days on their trek from Hobbiton to Rivendell. And Bilbo probably walked about two thousand miles from Bag End to the Lonely Mountain and back again. No wonder he spent the whole trip whining about how hungry he was! So if you feel the urge to eat a doughnut, why not try walking to the doughnut shop. That’s what Bilbo would do. (And he might even get an extra one to eat on the way back home!)