Taken from the article:

Here I’ve plotted out the relationship between time the average person in a given country spends eating and that country’s obesity rate (as measured by the percentage of the national population with a body mass index higher than 30).

Notice where the US lies.

Of course this is correlation studies (correlation doesn’t mean causation), but this goes with what Michael Pollan was saying in his book In Defense of Food. Spending more time eating means that you are more aware of what you’re eating.  If there’s little time eating, it usually means that what you’re eating is unhealthy, thus the obesity.