why were people so skinny in the 70s?
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Tiny_Dancer_in_Pink wrote: »tensquaredlives wrote: »One contributor is the introduction of chemical "obesogens" into our food chain. These chemicals alter how we store fat. It has so poisoned our food system that even wildlife are fatter than they were 30 years ago!
Add that chemical alteration to a mostly sedentary lifestyle, bigger portion sizes and higher sugar consumption and you have an epidemic of obesity. Just look at the children. There is no reason a child should ever be over weight. They should have little fat burning engines just from the energy needed to grow.
Wait, what? Can you post your sources? I mean, "obesogens"? That really sounds made up.
Ah Dr. Oz
http://www.doctoroz.com/article/understanding-obesogens
And here I just thought the poster above was being glib and making a joke. (a little sad for humanity that I might be wrong about that).
Yeah, I kept reading the comment over to make sure I wasn't falling into the trap of making a serious response to sarcasm. Nope. I didn't think to look up "obesogens" on the web, it sounded too made-up.
My understanding is that there are a few researchers etc who coined this term and are researching chemicals they may disrupt hormones related to weight, which is a very worthy topic of study, but it seems that either some of these researchers or perhaps media and other usual suspects are hyping up their significance. It's very likely that some chemicala can cause changes in metabolism but not likely beyond what we have had to deal with throughout history.
We had far more dangerous chemicals in our environment before the 70s and the creation of stict pollution regulations and we are fatter now. I find it highly dubious that these chemicals are potent enough to account for the obesity epidemic.6 -
Think of how many fast food places that didn't exist back then that exist now.
Were you alive in the '70s? There were plenty of fast food options.
Just off the top of my head:
Jack in the Box
McDonalds
Carl's Jr.
Wendy's
Arby's
Alfie's Fish & Chips
Alberto's/Roberto's
Long John Silver
Taco Bell
Naugles
Burger King
Kentucky Fried Chicken
Der Weinerschnitzel
Round Table Pizza
Pizza Hut
Baskin Robbins Ice Cream
Dairy Queen
etc. etc.
Again, it depends on where you lived. I only recognize three of those names from back then. (And I was alive since the '60s).
Some of them are regional. Der Wienerschnitzel, Round Table Pizza, and Carl's Jr. are in the western part of the country. You may know Hardee's, and since a merger in 1997, Carl's Jr. and Hardee's are essentially the same. I've lived on both coasts and I've never heard of Alfie's, Naugle's, or Alberto's; they may be Southern California only. On the East Coast we had Arthur Treacher's, Blimpie's, Roy Rogers, and a few others I've never encountered in California.1 -
Think of how many fast food places that didn't exist back then that exist now.
Were you alive in the '70s? There were plenty of fast food options.
Just off the top of my head:
Jack in the Box
McDonalds
Carl's Jr.
Wendy's
Arby's
Alfie's Fish & Chips
Alberto's/Roberto's
Long John Silver
Taco Bell
Naugles
Burger King
Kentucky Fried Chicken
Der Weinerschnitzel
Round Table Pizza
Pizza Hut
Baskin Robbins Ice Cream
Dairy Queen
etc. etc.
Again, it depends on where you lived. I only recognize three of those names from back then. (And I was alive since the '60s).
Some of them are regional. Der Wienerschnitzel, Round Table Pizza, and Carl's Jr. are in the western part of the country. You may know Hardee's, and since a merger in 1997, Carl's Jr. and Hardee's are essentially the same. I've lived on both coasts and I've never heard of Alfie's, Naugle's, or Alberto's; they may be Southern California only. On the East Coast we had Arthur Treacher's, Blimpie's, Roy Rogers, and a few others I've never encountered in California.
I remember eating at Roy Rogers in the 80's.0 -
No helicopter parents, no TV/games if we wanted to see if friends could play we walked to their house first. My girlfriend and I use to walk 4 miles one way to hang out with friends and 8 miles the other to watch movies or go to the mall. If we wanted a soda we had to walk to the local gas station a mile up the road.6
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katphi1618 wrote: »No helicopter parents, no TV/games if we wanted to see if friends could play we walked to their house first. My girlfriend and I use to walk 4 miles one way to hang out with friends and 8 miles the other to watch movies or go to the mall. If we wanted a soda we had to walk to the local gas station a mile up the road.
My mother used to kick us out of the house if it was a nice day.
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These posts have been great reading. This is a question I have thought about myself and is the reason I came up with my screen name when I first opened MFP account! I have seen pictures of my parents from the 1970s and couldn't believe how fit they were at the time. In fact, it wasn't until the 1990s that they started to beef up -- during my preteen-hood, that I recall junk food in the house and a transition from hot weekend breakfasts of eggs and bacon on the weekends to bowl after bowl of sugary boxed cerials. At the age of 13 I started dieting, something I'm sure my mother didn't need to do at 13! That was the beganing of my struggle determining what food is best for my body. I never was overweight, but I felt unhealthy in a lot of ways for a long time. I think our nation as a whole has become a whole lot more nutritionally versed because of the changes in our diets and I wonder if we will be healthy again.4
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I think what's been most fascinating reading through this thread is how many people assume that everyone in the 70s lived the exact same life, and everyone now lives the exact same life
I ate way more packaged and convenience foods growing up in the 70s than I do now. Hot dogs, canned pork & beans, Elios pizza, fish sticks, tater tots, Frosted Flakes, Kraft Mac & cheese, Hostess cupcakes, pizza at McCrory's (it was peach colored and greasy and sat under a heat lamp for days), Ruffles chips, frozen waffles and pancakes, canned pudding...
The only veggies I ate at home until I was double digits were canned. We didn't eat out as much, but that was a budget thing. There were plenty of fast food places and restaurants.
But that was just me, in my home town. I'm sure other places were very different.
I assume the culprit is a combo of less disposable income, less screens at home, more movement required for almost everything, different cultural norms, and a few other things I'm not thinking of. And honestly, there were still overweight people. Maybe not quite as many, but it's not like everyone really was skinny.18 -
I think it's a combination of factors:
1) More sugar and HFCS, not only in the obvious culprits like super-sized sodas, but also used as an additive in lots of foods you wouldn't expect. For example I can't even find ANY whole-grain bread in the supermarket that doesn't have sugar added to it (except for Ezekiel 4:9 bread which is one of the most expensive breads in the store). Sometimes the breads even have HFCS and sometimes there is up to 5g of sugar per slice. It is ridiculous that you have to pay a premium just to have bread that doesn't have unnecessary sugar added to it.
2) Car culture. Maybe someone already mentioned this but I didn't see it. There are many suburban neighborhoods in America that were deliberately designed to be unwalkable and unbikable. Cul-de-sacs, streets with no sidewalks, neighborhoods where you can't even get to the supermarket without having to drive miles away using a highway-esque main road without any place for pedestrians or bikers. Even in my neighborhood, which has grid streets and sidewalks, there are many intersections that are dangerous for pedestrians (over 1/2 mile between crosswalks on main roads, blind corners, etc.) Car culture started long before the 80s when the obesity epidemic really began, but the factors that lead to car culture have been increasing over time.
Another aspect of car culture is the entitlement of drivers. I don't know if they were this way in the 70s or not, but many drivers are completely entitled and make it very hard to be a pedestrian. Almost every time I walk outside I almost get run over by someone. They are supposed to yield to crossing pedestrians and over 95% of them don't (even to little old ladies walking with canes!) I believe that the reason that so many drivers act this way toward pedestrians is because they know that society is designed around their convenience.
3) Stranger danger. In the 70s kids played outside. Now not only is everyone is afraid of their kid becoming an unsolved mystery if left unattended for even a few minutes, but there have been many cases where people actually lost custody of their kids and were investigated by social services for allowing their kids to play outside unattended (not toddlers, kids age 6-10). If kids get regular physical activity it is now often scheduled in the form of sports teams, etc. and their parents are working more hours on average so less time to take them to the playground, park, etc. Also many kids live in unsafe neighborhoods where they literally can't play outside because they could be hit by a stray bullet while playing on the playground -- these neighborhoods often have high rates of obesity.
4) I'm sure nobody mentioned this one yet and this one will probably be controversial: psychiatric medication. About 20% of the US population is on psychiatric medication. This was not the case in the 70s (I could talk about the reasons why these prescriptions and mental illness diagnoses have skyrocketed, but I'm sure that would be even more controversial). Many psychiatric medications cause metabolic changes which lead to weight gain. Two people in my family gained over 50 pounds in less than 6 months after beginning to take psychiatric medication. One of them is still on it and now has high blood pressure and many other related health problems that they never had before going on these drugs. In my experience doctors do not take these side effects seriously at all.12 -
Portion size. Sugar was a problem but not as much added then. I was there.6
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paulandrachelk wrote: »Portion size. Sugar was a problem but not as much added then. I was there.
Interesting thing about this point is that my mother added way more sugar to every thing while I was growing up in the 70s and early 80s than my wife has ever done in the 30 years from 1988 until now.
BUT another point to note, my wife grew up in a completely different cultural space than I did.6 -
I remember going to McDonalds about once a month. To the best of my recollection we could order hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, soda, and milkshake. My father would always have one hamburger and he would split the fries with mom. Now we have a triple bacon cheeseburger with super sized fries and soda.2
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Aydens1nana wrote: »I remember going to McDonalds about once a month. To the best of my recollection we could order hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, soda, and milkshake. My father would always have one hamburger and he would split the fries with mom. Now we have a triple bacon cheeseburger with super sized fries and soda.
And I have yet to see a fast food worker running down the street forcing people to eat the food that they are serving. It is not the fault of fast food, it each person's choice to at it.9 -
Aydens1nana wrote: »I remember going to McDonalds about once a month. To the best of my recollection we could order hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, soda, and milkshake. My father would always have one hamburger and he would split the fries with mom. Now we have a triple bacon cheeseburger with super sized fries and soda.
And I have yet to see a fast food worker running down the street forcing people to eat the food that they are serving. It is not the fault of fast food, it each person's choice to at it.
Yep, I have fast food often, and I've never gotten a triple bacon cheeseburger or super-size fries. Even before I was counting calories, I never gorged myself when I got fast food. And once I started calorie counting, I didn't find it difficult to find several options I could choose from that fit my calorie goal with a deficit.
Back in the 70s when I was a child, my mom would make a platter of hot dogs in potato rolls, a big pot of homemade mac & cheese, and a bowl of Campbell's pork & beans (talk about added sugar!). I would eat until I felt like I was going to explode. I eat much better now, and personally I think it's easier to eat better now.
People now choose to eat mindlessly, eat far too much, and move very little during the course of the day. If people would just focus on those three things, they'd be able to be as skinny as people were in the 70's.9 -
I was born in 1973. I used to always play out after school, climbing trees etc. as there weren't any gaming console's or tablets/smart phones. We used to walk everywhere too.2
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Does this answer your question?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_cereal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Association
Cereals, large portions etc were heavily marketed back then & throughout the 90s as being "healthy" or "part of a healthy breakfast". If you wanted to be healthy, you ate cereal.
Which, ironically, made you fatter because the portion sizes for 1 serving was not enough to keep anyone full and it was basically dessert.
The Sugar Association is a nasty beast if you want to do some digging into what they've done.9 -
Almost all of my friends (kids) in the 70s and 80s ate cereal for breakfast, often sugary cereal. I did not, because I have always hated cold cereal (occasionally I'd be forced to choke it down after spending the night since it was polite to eat what was provided, of course). My sister also ate it, she particularly loved Apple Jacks. None of us thought sugary cereal was particularly healthy, kids ate it because they thought it tasted good and I assume parents thought it was easy (I started getting my own breakfast from an early age due to the anti cereal thing -- I did like plain oats with fruit, although I mostly liked eggs).
For a special treat we got to eat frozen waffles, and on the weekend sometimes we'd have a family breakfast with pancakes and bacon.
None of my family or friends were fat then, and fat kids were pretty rare.
My sister who loved Apple Jacks has basically no sweet tooth at all now, and has never been close to overweight.
So no, I don't think eating cereal made people fat.3 -
The idea that any one single thing made people fat is silly anyway. Eating cereal didn't "make me hungry", I had emotional reasons for overeating as a kid and used to gorge myself after school when I was alone and stress eat. It wasn't that I was particularly hungry when this happened either. I just wanted food. As I said, it was emotional.
Both my sister and I ate cereal for breakfast, and while I was overweight, she most certainly wasn't.
It's really tempting to point blame, but obesity is a very complex issue and people get fat for a lot of different reasons.10 -
Does this answer your question?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_cereal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Association
Cereals, large portions etc were heavily marketed back then & throughout the 90s as being "healthy" or "part of a healthy breakfast". If you wanted to be healthy, you ate cereal.
Which, ironically, made you fatter because the portion sizes for 1 serving was not enough to keep anyone full and it was basically dessert.
The Sugar Association is a nasty beast if you want to do some digging into what they've done.
So I guess your point is it takes 40 years for sugar to make you fat???
I ate tons of Frosted Flakes, Apple Jacks, and frozen Cinnamon French Toast in the 70s and I was a little string bean. I didn't eat any sugary cereal in my 30s when I gained weight.
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Hah. I was skinny in the 70's because the only time I ate was when my parents forced me inside for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Otherwise I was running around with a mob of my friends looking for trouble. Snacking was typically just begging for a quarter from my mother so I could buy a frozen Kool-Aid cup from a neighbor during the summer.1
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