If you wander through YouTube, you will videos offering many explanations for why Americans are obese today, when they were not in the 1950s. Certainly, my recollection is that in my elementary school classes (1963-1968) it was usually one kid in each class who was fat. (By junior high, that was me.) Pictures of 1950s and 1960s American seem healthily skinny. But did fat people not get photographed?
United States Long-Term Trends in Adult BMI (1959–2018): Unraveling the Roots of the Obesity Epidemic
. 2024 Jan 9;21(1):73. doi: 10.3390/ijerph21010073
As you will not be surprised to see, obesity in America has always been a poor people's problem. But look at the BMI in 1960 through 1980. What did Americans eat back then? Steak, potatoes, hamburgers, hot dogs, butter in and on everything, milk shakes, cookies, cakes, pancakes, sausage, bacon: You know, a really fattening diet. Care to throw your hypotheses into the comments?
The late 70s are about when the so-called 'healthy' prepared meals, low fat, weight watchers, slim meals, etc started being made. Also I recall that's when various exercise schemes like jane fonda's work out, Richard Simmons sweating to the oldies, etc, and 'destination' gyms with 'smoothie bars' also started. The running craze (Jimm Fixx, etc) started just before then.
ReplyDeleteSuch foods, and the bias they introduced into the food chain, are not healthy. Exercise programs where any gains are dismissed by the 1100 calorie fruit smoothy afterwards also didn't help.
Carbs are bad. There are NO essential (in the sense that your body MUST take them from exogenous sources) carbs. Any carbs (glucose, mostly) your body needs can be made from fats and proteins in a process called gluconeogenesis....but the food manufacturers like growing carbs (it's easy), shipping carbs, storing carbs, and making foods with them (cheap, easy to store and ship, and very, very fattening).
Fruits and fruit sugars (fructose) are just as bad. Eating an apple is healthy. Drinking a liter of synthetic apple flavored beverage, sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, is not - aside from being a LOT more calories, it provides no fiber, few minerals or vitamins and fructose is not healthy in any sense: It is the worst sort of carb to eat because unlike any other glucose source, there is no feedback loop to tell you you've had enough and stop eating/drinking it.
When People quit eating carbs they lose weight - the benefits of an Atkins, keto, or carnivore diet. Since carbs are a major part of most peoples diets, drugs like GLP-1s also work through carb avoidance.
Really, lifestyle and portion size.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/V9iZNf-aoXg?si=_FM7H3LWabSMKf2u
Wanna lose weight? Move more, eat less. Works every time
Of course a simple answer to this is not to be had. But the one thing that I do know has changed is the extensive of HFCS, or high fructose corn syrup. That added to the majority of our workforce changing from intensive hard labor to that which is often some type of assembly line, etc., or an office type job.
ReplyDeleteWhile RFK Jr. has some things that stick out as being a bit extreme, there can be no doubt that he has some ideas that, if everyone embraced them, could do a lot to improve the general fitness/health of a lot of the nation.
The problem is that the major food producing companies like ADM, General Mills, Conagra and the rest have actually made it so that we are able to produce food for a population that has more than doubled since I was in elementary school in the early 1970's. So while we don't have the large numbers of starving people that we used to, the health of the world population as a whole has taken the hit.
If you have not read, Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It (Gary Taubes), I recommend it. Distilling a book down to a blog comment is difficult, but ... US citizens eat too many refined/simple carbohydrates. The glycemic index is a good way to determine if the food you are eating promotes creation of adipose tissue. Non-citizens eating in the US frequently notice food here is sweeter than their normal diet, due to the addition of sweeteners (high glycemic index). We in the US are shifting (and have been shifting) away from home-prepared meals in favor of shelf stable foods (frequently flour based; high glycemic index). Carbs are not bad. Refined carbs are bad (sugar, all-purpose flour, bread, pasta). Native Americans in the US did not have an obesity epidemic until they began living on reservations supplied with non-traditional food, including all purpose flour. Once flour was added to the diet, there was a correlated increase in obesity.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Even things that you don't think should have sweeteners in them do....For example, the mayo, ketchup, mustard and bread at McDonalds all have sweeteners (likely HFCS) added. To make the food more palatable for young children?
DeleteMaybe no personal screens...
ReplyDelete