A couple of questions for you all...

hixa30

#1 If you travel to Singapore you'll see a) lots of slim people b) lots of places to eat c) an affluent economy.

Why is this different from my country (New Zealand) where you have b & c but not a?

#2 Back in 1980 there weren't as many obese people as there are now, but you could overeat to the point of being sick without too much effort, or cost. What has caused the change? (PS food or farming subsidies haven't existed in New Zealand for approximately 30 years).

Tankiscool

It goes back to CICO. People have statistically gotten lazier over the course of the past 30 years. Think of all the advancements in technology alone just to get food to your house with you touching a screen, let alone putting on pants.
Let me be clear I'm not saying this is wrong, it's simply out of convenience. We are as a species will take the path of least resistance, that's nature in general. If you were to put one of those moving escalators you see at airports in Africa where tribes walk 5 miles one way to get water they would definitely certainly use it. But if they eat roughly the same amount of calories as they did when walking and now they aren't exerting the same amount energy, they'd gain weight. Point is there is no balance between what energy we put into ourselves and the energy that we expend. At the end of the day their needs to be a balance in order to stay "slim"

IsETHome

Obesity has increased probably due to processed easy high density cals, longer commutes, less fitness. Higher quality food costs more. Cultural diet changes.

lemurcat2

(1) You and Singapore -- different culture, possibly other differences I'm not aware of.

(2) You and 1980 you (I recall 1980, I was 10, although in the US) -- less and less tasty non home cooked options, less assumption that people would eat between meals (other than maybe a regular after-school snack), no huge cal coffees that people would eat, people drank smaller sizes of soda and thought of it as a treat rather than something they drank all day, fast food or ordering in was a special occasion thing and what you could order in was limited to so-so pizza and Chinese food, people still thought they should mostly cook and assumed they should eat some veg. Even more important, people had to be more active on a daily basis. Pretty much no kids were overweight when I was a kid in '80 -- we all walked to school, ran around a lot, ate processed foods but not awful diets overall or crazy amounts of soda, didn't really eat more than 4 times a day (3 meals plus snack), didn't have huge calories even if we had cereal for breakfast and hot lunch (I was picky in a weird way so had eggs for breakfast and brought soup for lunch).

Commutes have not changed much on average in the US, can't speak for other places (and in the US median is less than 30 min -- mine is more and I work way more than 8 hours a day and yet cook).

Lounmoun

hixa30 wrote: »

#1 If you travel to Singapore you'll see a) lots of slim people b) lots of places to eat c) an affluent economy.

Why is this different from my country (New Zealand) where you have b & c but not a?

#2 Back in 1980 there weren't as many obese people as there are now, but you could overeat to the point of being sick without too much effort, or cost. What has caused the change? (PS food or farming subsidies haven't existed in New Zealand for approximately 30 years).

Both globally and in Singapore, the prevalence of obesity and overweight in adults has been increasing steadily over the years. Singapore’s obesity prevalence increased 0.7 percentage point a year since 2004 to reach nearly 11% in 2010, only one percentage lower than the global average obesity prevalence of 12%.

from https://www.hpb.gov.sg/article/1.7-million-singaporeans-already-at-risk-of-obesity-related-diseases

Singapore has the second-highest overweight prevalence in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – at 32.8 per cent, according to 2014 age-standardised adjusted estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO). According to a recently released report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), among the ASEAN 6, Singapore was tied with the Philippines for the third-highest rate of increase in number of obese people between 2010 and 2014, at 24 per cent

. From
https://foodindustry.asia/the-state-of-obesity-in-singapore

1. Sounds like you visually perceive the population of Singapore to be slim when they have also been increasing in obesity.

2. What I remember in the US in 1980: No computers in the home. Barely any video games. Walking or riding bikes to school was more common than being driven by parents or bussed away to school. Less organized activities for kids. We had physical education and recess at school. Spending more time at home and outside for adults and kids. I don't remember people having riding lawn mowers. People were riding bikes, skateboarding or dancing. Playing frisbee was popular. My family rarely ate out. Portions were smaller at restaurants. My grandparent and parents were overweight but kids I knew were not. I think most of my classmates had a sahp instead of both parents working full time. I don't think we snacked as much between meals or had as many drink options. My family's common snacks were things like dry cereal or popcorn. I was 6 years old at the time. There are probably lots of little differences contributing to weight increase now vs. the 1980's.

AnnPT77

I assume that NZ wasn't that different from the US, when you compare 1980 to now. I agree with what others have said about the culture differences between 1980 and now . . . only I think they may understate them a little.

I wasn't a child in 1980. I was an adult (25), married, and working full-time. Even "sedentary" jobs involved substantially more movement than they do now. I had to walk down a hall to fetch books, files, supplies - things that now involve clicking a few keys on a keyboard or mouse. That's not even getting into non-sedentary jobs, which were then more common (because of dramatically less factory automation, for example, and less need for "knowledge workers" like computer programmers, who are mostly sedentary on the job).

Grown-ups watched some TV, but there were dramatically fewer channels, no consumer-facing internet (even AOL dial-up was later), vanishingly tiny amounts of video games (really started getting rolling around 1975, not ubiquitous, mostly used by kids, and not absorbing enough to cause immersion/obsession for anyone even remotely well-adjusted). Instead, adults who had time for hobbies . . . did actual stuff, instead of watching other people do stuff on video, or doing virtual stuff. What? Going dancing, playing cards/horseshoes/bowling/golf/softball/you-name-it, biking, canoeing, playing musical instruments, gardening, doing crafts and carpentry, and so on.

Food was not 24 hours, not all available in drive throughs, not supersized. Most people cooked most of their food in their homes. Lots of people packed lunches, many fewer (especially blue collar and the lower-compensated office workers) purchased a lunch pre-made. Grocery stores had giant aisles full of ingredients, and many fewer aisles full of completed "just heat" foods. Gas stations were mostly just gas stations, with maybe a pop machine and a spinner rack of chips; now they're nearly all convenience stores with hot prepared foods and giant soft drink cups.

Household chores were less automated. Fewer people had dishwashers, riding mowers, roomba wasn't invented. Shopping pretty universally involved going to stores, and walking around in them. Even remote controls for electronic devices (let alone voice controls) were not universal at that point. The differences were hundreds of tiny things that were different in most people's days.

Bottom line: We ate less, moved more.

If you parse out the "obesity epidemic" to a per-capita basis, it's a few hundred calories per day per person difference. (100 excess calories daily will cause 10 pounds of weight gain in a year, another 10 next year, etc.) Changes like the above will easily get you to those few hundred calories per day extra, with every year a creeping increase in consumption/decrease in activity. (Add in the factor that the fatter we get, the less we like moving, on average.)

There's no nefarious explanation. Evolution wired us to seek food in time of plenty, and we've gotten really good at that. Evolution wired us to avoid unnecessarily expending effort, and we've gotten really good at that, too. Add, on top of those, that for millennia, human culture has celebrated gustatory indulgence and ample leisure time as status symbols.

. . . and you've got yourself a recipe for an obesity epidemic.

clicketykeys

Ann, your posts are always enjoyable to read. They're well-reasoned, organized, and provide specific supporting details. You are incredibly patient and encouraging and supportive.

Thank you for making me smile on a regular basis!

MPDean

Schools and the internet need to stop promoting reading.

ConfidentRaven

My husband and I had a similar discussion the other night I'm ten years older than him and the difference between common food items and activities during our childhoods were vastly different. For example soda was extremely rare in my house and was saved for a special occasion, usually my or my brother's birthday, my husband says they had tons of soda and was the main drink in the house. I was sent outside most days that the weather permitted, we had an atari, but my dad claimed the tv and we weren't supposed to touch his cool toy. My husband sat inside playing his sega. Dinner was cooked by my mom from scratch, and eating out for the whole family was rare, maybe only once a year. For my husband it was a rare week that didn't include at least three eat outs, tons of processed food or tv dinners. If you consider that these trends probably extend to most of society it's no wonder there is a rise in obesity rates.