The United States is the most obese country in the world, according to an OECD study, remarked on by MarketWatch:
The obesity rate for American adults (aged 15 and over) came in at a whopping 38.2%, which puts the birthplace of the hamburger and the Cronut at the top of the heftiest-nations-in-the-world rankings, according to an updated survey from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Not unrelated I think is this:
Running at a not-too-close second is border pal Mexico, with 32.4% of population considered obese, followed by New Zealand, Hungary and Australia (the U.K. comes in at No. 6).
For a more detailed analysis this report from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the U. S. Department of Health is helpful and this diagram is interesting:
Grey indicates extreme obesity, dark green indicates obesity, light green overweight. This graph is interesting, too:
Offhand, I’d attribute our increasing obesity to a combination of diet, sedentary habit, age, genetics, and misuse of antibiotics, particularly in the 1950s. If you’ve got an explanation for the bump in the late 70s other than demographic change, I’d be interested in hearing it.
I’m no sylph but I’m thinner than my parents were at my age but that’s because I’m extremely disciplined. I must be the exception.
Update
I’ve come up with another potential explanation: the Egg McMuffin, i.e. the availability of fast foods all day long. McDonalds officially started offering breakfast in 1977.
Several significant changes to our food supply iccurred in the 70s- the introduction of high fructose corn syrup and the transition from saturated fat to hydrogenated vegetable oils.
In addition, fast food consumption increased dramatically (this from my own observations, I suspect could be corroborated by data but don’t know for certain). A big contributer to that trend, I think, was the number of women entering the workforce so far fewer moms at home cooking meals.
Although it may be a contributing factor, on HCFS the timing doesn’t work. Coke changed over in 1980 and the other soft drink manufacturers thereafter. That’s even more true in the case of hydrogenated fats. They replaced saturated fats early on. They’re practically synonymous with mass-produced foods because of their longer shelf life. The big bump in the obesity rate took place in the late 1970s. I’m going with the Egg McMuffin.
What do you think about the fats though? I know USDA and AHA were definitely pushing the low saturated fat diet in the 70s (my dad had a major heart attack in ’74 so our family diet was altered.) I don’t know if any major shift occurred by manufacturers or as a result of any mandates though. I do recall a lot of TV commercials extolling the virtues of “polyunsaturated oils”.
Ah either you edited or I missed part of your comment. Anyway, I’m not sure on timing of a mass shift to hydrogenated fats but I know there was a lot of hype about it in the 70s. And to me it looks like the graph showing the obesity rates taking off right around 1980 so the timing doesn’t seem off.
As for egg mcmuffin- I think you’d have to show your work on how many people were eating fast food for breakfast. McD’s may have started that trend in the 70s but I don’t think a large portion of population shifted dramatically to drive thru breakfasts at that time period. And for that matter I don’t think that traditional breakfasts that most people eat at home are nutritionally much better than the Egg McMuffin anyway.
My recollection is that docs started pushing it in the 60s. By 1963 it was already a part of the popular culture: in Allan Sherman’s second collection of song parodies (My Son, the Nut) there’s a snippet of a song parody:
Eating cereal (in the 1940s and early 1950s we ate oatmeal, shredded wheat and cornflakes) was better than the breakfast sandwiches. Trix and the other super-sugary cereals were introduced in the mid-1950s. I always thought that the introduction of Cap’n Crunch (1963) marked the downfall of Western Civilization.
All those charts would be easier to read if they’d contrasted the colors more. The legends are awful. My eyes are not young.
As for hydrogenated fats, Crisco was a staple on my mother’s shelf before I was born.
SNAP aka food stamps went nationwide in 1974.
Clearly, the charts are to publish not to read.
Good point. Probably a factor.
Cereals with higher fiber and less sugar, sure, but as you point out that shift had already occurred by the 60s.
The cereal discussion also reminds me of another thing that might be relevant- milk production methods. Not sure if the timeline fits but the hormones given to both dairy and beef cattle could be affecting the end consumers. For that matter we’re getting bombarded by estrogenic chemicals anyway in everything from sunscreen to the glyphosphate in GMO foods and in our water supply. Very likely to be affecting fertility rates, but probably also obesity.
Although it might be a factor, rBGH didn’t really catch on until the 1980s.
Returning to demographics, note that the big jump occurred from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. One possible explanation is the jump is largely demographic, reflecting the late 20s-early 30s metabolic shift of the Baby Boomers who started turning 30 in 1976 and had all turned 30 by 1993.
As I wrote in the body of the post, there are probably multiple factors behind the rise in obesity.
I’d say it’s multi-factoral. I haven’t done much research, but here are some ideas off the top of my head (can’t vouch for their accuracy):
– Calories are cheaper, therefore we consume more of them.
– IIRC the late 60’s and early 70’s was when federal school lunch aid and various nutritional regulations really got going to become the institutional food our kids now enjoy. I’d add federal nutritional guidelines generally, along with regulations to enforce those guidelines. We now know weren’t all that great.
– The rise of convenience foods. Fewer things made from scratch, more things from a box. This synergized with the increase in single parents and households with two working parents.
– Decline of physical labor in the workforce and in also in everyday activities
– More dining-out
– Societal change in parenting – when I was a kid, I could roam my neighborhood on my bike. These days a parent doing that will get a visit from social services. The result is kids spend less time doing physical activity and more time sitting on their asses watching various screens.
– Reduction of recess and gym class in public schools.
I also see this as a generational thing. I’d guess the increase that started in the late 1970’s was baked in a decade or more before with gen x kids growing up and the boomers leaving their peak metabolism years. The pre-boomer generations lived through the depression and valued thrift more, to include diet.
Again, I haven’t done the research, so these are just guesses/ideas at this point.
Oh, I see you’ve already mentioned metabolism and multi-factors. My bad for the repetition.
All I know is that I spent money as a kid for Joe Weiders “weight gain supplement”. Tried to drink it all but never gained a pound. At 14 I was listed @ 98 lbs. on the football roster. At 33 years old I weighed 130 lbs. and ate anything I wanted to, and that was a lot. My children became obese early and have been fighting weight ever since. Ditto my grandchildren. Whatever is going on, it is not food.