Why is there an obesity epidemic?

The last time I went into a grocery store an orange was around 10c A dinky bag of chips was 1.25- about an ounce of chips. ... People always say this- but it's ridiculous

No it's NOT ridiculous.

When *I* last went into a supermarket, I saw multipacks of carbage on sale at 2 for the price of one. You can get HEAPS more carbage for your money in the UK than any other foodstuffs.... PLUS as we all know, carbage is ADDICTIVE and comforting and filling in a way that an orange is not.

They love the blend of high sugar and those creamy, wheaty, oaty sort of textures on their tongues. They are driven by their tastebuds, their emotions and their wallets, not by rationality or nutritional knowledge.

People's palates become ALTERED by eating carbage, and an orange just tastes bland and ugh to them.

On top of that, the KIDS won't eat fresh fruit because THEIR palates have also been ruined by carbage. Poor people practically MEDICATE their children with carbage. The last time I was in a queue at my local post office I saw a mother give a jam doughnut to her 2-year-old daughter to stop her whining. I wished I could report her for child abuse, but apparently you cannot.

I read the above post and thought you'd mis-spelt cabbage as carbage. It didn't quite make sense. Cabbages are cheap, but are they really that bad? By the time I got to the end I understood! However, giving a child an occasional jam doughnut is not child abuse!

I think education and culture has so much to do with this "epidemic" too. I get so sad because I see parents stock up on chicken nuggets and wedges for their kids, instead of educating themselves about how to feed their kids. There is a perception that healthy food is more expensive, but that's BS. The german overlords (Aldi and Lidl) have made good, honest, whole foods much more accessible, but it's just laziness and lack of knowledge that gets in the way. Even breakfast cereals are a complete scam, yet most parents buy into it.

Don't you find, though, that if you buy "healthy" food and cook from scratch, you end up eating more of it? I got fat on healthy, homecooked food I'm afraid! For one thing, I think it's easy to overestimate and cook a little bit too much, and for another thing, it tastes nice so you end up eating more!

Personally I don't find that, no. My problem has never been the home-cooked meal, but the bottle of wine I swilled it down with, neatly adding another 1,500 un-needed calories a day.

I try to avoid processed foods wherever possible and that's simply because I find the idea of them utterly bizarre. I seem to shock people when I say that I've never had a fast food burger, taco or chicken piece. The nearest I've got to fast food was a Subway I had once...and I found it repulsive. For me it seems odd that people would want to eat that stuff - but I also recognise that my ideas are informed by my childhood in 70s Britain whichi involved living in a rural village with no fast-food joints or supermarkets. We had a butcher, a fruit & veg shop, a bakery and a fishmonger and that was IT. The food we ate was grown by my Mother, bought from a local butcher (or shot by us or friends) or foraged. I can remember very clearly that a bag of crisps was a treat that I had once a week after swimming in the nearest town. Pudding was something you had only after Sunday lunch (which, being the UK, was a roast) and sweets (candy) were a very occasional treat - generally Christmas, Birthdays or if you did something pretty special that deserved a reward. We didn't have fizzy drinks either. I remember my amazement at sight of a Soda Stream at my Grandmothers and being told that if I was very, VERY good she would make me a Coke with it.

Now when I look around me what I see is parents who think that a normal everyday lunch box for their child should have a bag of crisps, a sandwich, a chocolate bar, a yogurt and a ruddy fizzy drink. Well no wonder our children are suffering from the worst of the obesity problem....they're consuming stuff every day that were once weekly or rarer treats. The average kid's sugar intake is bloody eyewatering!

Don't you find, though, that if you buy "healthy" food and cook from scratch, you end up eating more of it? I got fat on healthy, homecooked food I'm afraid! For one thing, I think it's easy to overestimate and cook a little bit too much, and for another thing, it tastes nice so you end up eating more!

Personally I don't find that, no. My problem has never been the home-cooked meal, but the bottle of wine I swilled it down with, neatly adding another 1,500 un-needed calories a day.

I try to avoid processed foods wherever possible and that's simply because I find the idea of them utterly bizarre. I seem to shock people when I say that I've never had a fast food burger, taco or chicken piece. The nearest I've got to fast food was a Subway I had once...and I found it repulsive. For me it seems odd that people would want to eat that stuff - but I also recognise that my ideas are informed by my childhood in 70s Britain whichi involved living in a rural village with no fast-food joints or supermarkets. We had a butcher, a fruit & veg shop, a bakery and a fishmonger and that was IT. The food we ate was grown by my Mother, bought from a local butcher (or shot by us or friends) or foraged. I can remember very clearly that a bag of crisps was a treat that I had once a week after swimming in the nearest town. Pudding was something you had only after Sunday lunch (which, being the UK, was a roast) and sweets (candy) were a very occasional treat - generally Christmas, Birthdays or if you did something pretty special that deserved a reward. We didn't have fizzy drinks either. I remember my amazement at sight of a Soda Stream at my Grandmothers and being told that if I was very, VERY good she would make me a Coke with it.

Now when I look around me what I see is parents who think that a normal everyday lunch box for their child should have a bag of crisps, a sandwich, a chocolate bar, a yogurt and a ruddy fizzy drink. Well no wonder our children are suffering from the worst of the obesity problem....they're consuming stuff every day that were once weekly or rarer treats. The average kid's sugar intake is bloody eyewatering!

sugar is not the evil bogeyman you are trying to make it out to be.

Really good information here. A lot of people have done their research on this topic. I got a lot of information from the responses on this thread. All I can tell you is I'm a child of the 60's. My upbringing was poor. My mother had to stretch every penny to feed us healthy meals. She was so good at it that we knew what was for dinner every night of the week. For example, Sunday was always macaroni and meatballs. Friday was fish sticks etc Of course veges and a large salad for all 7 of us. Beef ha hardly ever. Dessert was only for special occasions and soda was never in the house. Enough of my tangent.

All of us kids noticed a huge difference when we hit Sophmore year in High School. This was 1977. More snacks were hitting the market and they were readily available. As the years went on, there was a climb in obesity. Now mind you this is pre-internet. Fast forward say 20 years. If you pay attention to the price of food and how much the cost has risen in comparison to junk food, the junk is way more affordable. I believe there's an economic factor here. To buy fresh vegetables, fruit and meat to prepare a well balance meal is probably double if not triple the cost of fast food. Fast food is cheap, filling and tastes great.

All of their calories in these establishments kept the calorie content hidden from consumers for decades. Also, over time, people lost site of what a "normal" portion is. Many had and still have the perspective of "WOW look at all I'm getting for such and such number of dollars. You can't beat this!" Unknowingly we're consuming high calorie, fat, carbs and lord know what else (meat fillers come to mind). By the time all of this knowledge became public, this was deeply imbedded in our culture.

Culturally, hmmmmm how many of us were raisesd with our parents brow beating us: You better finish everything on your plate. Don't you know there's people starving in China. There's the guilt factor. Remember when we were kids and we dropped a piece of food the 5 second rule or kissing it up to God and still eat it????

The food consumed in the US is over processed. There are good carbs and bad carbs. Same with fat, sugar and protein. The overprocessed food really has no nutritional value and is easily converted to sugar. There are so many different studies, viewpoints and opinions out there. I didn't see anyone post on the economics, cultural and era in which we were raised so I'm throwing in my 2 cents lol

Great thread!

Glycogen storage capacity and de novo lipogenesis during massive carbohydrate overfeeding in man

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/48/2/240.full.pdf+html

You folks who claim to have an understanding of de novo lipogenesis and carbohydrates, and yet still refuse to acknowledge how carbohydrates make people fat, are simply in denial over what you are reading. The science is clear. It's all about the inputs.

Fat does not make people fat, excess carbs and a sedentary lifestyle are what make people fat. One day, perhaps 50 years from now, this will be common knowledge.

*posted before I saw that the question had been answered. I must read the thread all the way through.*

When I go Any where- I can 100% say that the ratio is not 2 out of 3 for obese people vs people of a standard size. Can you? It's ridiculous to propagate such trash. and that is what that figure means- is that for every 2 obese people there is only 1 standard size person.

At my heaviest I was just a few pounds from obese and you wouldn't have guessed it. Have you weighed them all? Our perception of "standard size" is easily skewed. Back in 1997 I lived in France for several months. When I came back, I got off the plane and the FIRST thought that went through my head when I came out of the walkway from the plane was, "holy friggin crap everyone is fat as hell here!!!"

Its a combination of a lot of things. Obviously exercise and portion control helped me lose weight, along with MUCH healthier food choices. But I do think its interesting that WHENEVER i travel to other countries with less processed food I lose weight, regardless of exercise or anything like that. In france I did not eat "healthy" food (aka I ate criossants and drank wine for 5 months) and yet I lost weight and was overall "healthier". In israel I had a similar experience. I think its a mistake to ignore the non calorie impact of what we eat.

Additionally, if you think about the evolution of human bodies in time vs. the evolution of agriculture, they dont line up. That could be part of it.

I think it can be controlled by healthy eating and exercise but I dont think lack of those things is necessarily the root cause.

Believe it or not, there's a lot of psychology behind overeating. Stress eating, eating disorders, socialized eating, psychology of advertising, environmental learning, etc. Your brain is wired to derive pleasure in the easiest way possible. The link between having a delicious restaurant meal with friends and having a great time associates itself in your mind. A friend's reaction to eating vegetables can cloud your own judgment about how they taste, even if you liked them before.

I whole heartedly agree with this post. As I was reading this some of this thread I was struck by the answers that were very blunt and negative abour "personal choice", "lasy butts", etc. and completely ignored the social aspect of food (like everything else) since humans are social creatures. It reminds me of the discussions we social workers have around choice and when what on the surface seems like super self-destructive behavior is really a forced choice between very bad options. Yes I ultimately have control over what goes into my "gullet" (as one posted nicely put it) but most of the food that we have access to is a set up, reinforced by constant advertisting for all sorts of processed choices. Unless you are nearly hyper vigilant about the food you buy and have the ability to have large amounts of self control and the ability to adjust your food budget up to by more local or organic, which should probably cost less but in actuality often costs more, the task can seem nearly impossible. It can be done but it compounds the challenge of getting healthy.

I think that the food science industry, food producers and marketeers have created this forced choice situation. They are setting us all up for one thing. To make money! This is not about feeding the hungry, providing the best food we can, keeping small towns vibrant or any of the other crap they try to tell us. This is about one thing, greenbacks. If I had a way to divest my 401K (thank the universe that I even have one) from all of these specific monoliths of manupilation I would.

We often berate the individual for their poor choices instead of banding together to fight the entity that has the greater power in the situation. Obesity is just another example. I know that this sounds very idealistic but insteady of piling on the negative towards obese individuals, we should be working as a large group to demand, yes demand, that these things stop. That the porcessed food be what is expensive and hard to find. That we stop being programmed every day through every communication medium to want these things. That HFC is not in everything. And that we can all have a fighting chance to make the best choices possible with our food.

...Which has really done nothing for heart disease because your body turns all the extra sugar into fat anyway...

Quote a reputable source for this, please. While in a caloric deficit, nothing is converted into fat.

I watched a report on it. Sorry, for the life of me now I can't remember who was the source of it now.

As far as the '70s - I was a pre-teen and teenager through the '70s. I remember TV dinners, boxed instant meals like mac n cheese, more candy/chocolate bars than are on the market now, full-sugar sodas, Ding Dongs, Chocodiles, Twinkies, Fruit Pies and all other manner of sugary/processed things. I don't for one second buy the notion that there were less sugary things around in the '70s....I lived them. Anecdotally, I'll also note that in the '70s, I walked and/or rode my bicycle to and from school, delivered a daily paper route on my bicycle, and was outdoors playing and running around until after dark every day, as were most kids. I played sports, so I had practices/games all week long, then I raced bicycles and/or rode dirt bikes on weekends. Our activity levels were far higher than most children today. We didn't sit on our butts while our parents drove us to/from school, then go home and sit on our butts some more in front of a gaming console.

Yeah I was a preteen then too. And I also did all that active stuff.
But I didn't gorge on candy and my mom cooked dinner for us every night that was not made from processed food. So speaking for myself personally, I was NOT getting all the sugar in my diet that I'm getting now. I am one source.

True. Food is a drug. And I wanted to add something more informed - that people are more affluent now than they were in the early twentieth century and the rising numbers of working professionals means people are after food which is convenient. At the same time there is the emergence of the supermarket with ready prepared food. People used to buy base ingredients and cook from scratch which is happening much less now. In the past, people probably did much more outdoors as well so general fitness might have been better in some cases. But we have so many more ways to make a healthy lifestyle than we used to. Just seems like people don't know how to take advantage of that or don't want to.

So true. My grandma could make bread that melted in your mouth. It tasted 1,000 times better than anything I've ever bought in a supermarket. I think I don't cook because I'm not very good at it. But then I don't do it enough.

It is because we don't think about what we eat. We go for what tastes best and is cheap. Fried and fatty are cheaper and cheaper. We rely so much on technology that we don't get up and do things.

When I started my diet, I never thought I was going to make a lifestyle change. I am only in 5 days so far, but I feel comfortable and full eating what I am eating. Working out is a bit hard, but I have to push myself, because I know I have been incredibly lazy for years. In my opinion..it might be a little hard to get off fast food..well for me it is..but the last few times I have gone..lets say..McDonalds. I have gotten a grilled chicken sandwich. Once with out the bun (but added fries), and once with the bun, but no fries. It filled me up, and it tasted good.

It is all about choices, people have to wake up and realize that they no longer want to be obese-FOR THEM. I tried dieting so many times because people called me fat..it didn't work. It took me to realize that I wasn't happy with myself. Being obese has made me depressed, tired, lazy, and just miserable. As soon as I started eating less and better, I started feeling better in general.

Because modern animals (not just humans, not just mammals) have about a billion years of selection on surviving in an environment where calories are 1. patchily distributed in time and space and 2. hotly contested. That necessitates storing energy on our bodies (the best defended place we have) wherever possible, and selectively favors those individuals who can run their bodies on less energy and store more.

So humans and other animals who have the ability to gain weight rapidly and conserve it well when calories are plentiful are fitter (in the evolutionary sense, not the athletic sense), and therefore they should predominate in modern populations. This is evidenced by the fact that most modern humans, and indeed most animals, WILL get fat when consuming calories in excess.

How do animals get to be obese? Our appetite regulation, also the product of millions of years of evolution, tells us to eat more than we need strictly to survive and reproduce. This is a buffer for short-term exertion and long-term deprivation. 'Overeating' is adaptive, and a billion years of evolution is tough to counter when circumstances have changed only in the last 100 years or so.

Why are humans obese in such high proportion at the present time? Because we have removed the patchy distribution of calories, both temporally and spatially, such that calories are readily available and require little risk or effort to acquire. Humans are still adapted to eat more that necessary WHEN calories are available - but in the modern western world, they are available all the time. Until there is a selective advantage to not gaining weight on caloric excess, this pattern should remain. It is interesting that overweight humans tend to live longer - perhaps suggesting that the ability to efficiently store calories as fat comes with other, health preserving genes to make a generally 'fit' human.

The enjoyment we get from food is a way for our brains to get our bodies to overeat (in crude terms, appetite is a complex and elegant system), and a brain shaped by hundreds of millions of years of food scarcity has a tough time understanding that the food need not be eaten now because it will still be there tomorrow.

Now do I think there might be a food industry/pharmaceutical company conspiracy in this country, absolutely. The fatter and sicker we are, the more money they make. We catch on, they give us manufactured "healthy" foods that turn out to be worse for us. (Think margarine, artificial sweeteners, almost anything that says zero calorie, non fat) While doing this, they keep the natural and less processed items in the higher price brackets. Interesting that the less "work" a product needs, the more it costs a consumer.

Okay, off my conspiracy soapbox, that was fun.

It's actually a pretty good conspiracy theory. Roll back the clock 150 years and you had food producers (farmers), the merchant level selling the raw ingredients farmers produced and then the consumer who bought those ingredients and made them into a meal. Now we have food producers, an entire new artifical level of 'food manufacturers', then the merchant level and then the consumers. Food manufacturing is big, big business and it's obviously not in their best interests for everyone to suddenly switch to buying basic ingredients and cooking almost everything from scratch. It's also not in the interests of big food retailers - imagine your local out-of-town Tesco or Walmart as it is now; then imagine it if you removed all the aisles that contained manufactured products so that you were left with only base ingredients. How much vacant space would that Walmart or Tesco have do you think? I'd bet on a good 60-70%. That 30-40% left would be an awfully restrictive set of products to try and generate the billions of £s/$s of profit these big retailers make.

Then we have the diet industry...and it's no coincidence that the mega-corporations behind many of the famous diet brand names are also food manufacturers. It's a symbiotic relationship; one part of your industry pumps out nutrient-poor, calorie-dense crap whilst the other end suckers you into buying nutrient-poor, calorie-restricted crap in your panicked attempts to get the fat off. Either way...KERCHING!