why were people so skinny in the 70s?

Didn't read the whole thread so I might be beating a dead horse, but I wanted to just give an example here.

I'm a librarian. I was also born in 1987, so I don't actually remember working in the pre-internet age. But I know how things used to work.

The reason I bring that up is that people frequently mention that more people have office jobs vs. manual labor jobs now when we're talking about this subject, but the truth is that even jobs that have always been white collar "office jobs" like mine have become more sedentary.

For example, at my job, imagine a patron comes in and wants to look at an article from the spring 1983 volume of the Journal of Musicology.

In the pre-internet age, my process for fulfilling this patron's request would be:

-Get up from my desk
-Walk over to the card catalog
-Sift through the card catalog until I find the correct record
-Turns out the Journal of Musicology is housed four floors down and on the other side of a giant building, and the patron doesn't know their way around, so I have to walk with them to where it's shelved
-Walk back to my desk

With modern technology, my process for fulfilling this patron's request is:

-Open the library website
-Navigate to the databases section and open JSTOR
-Show the patron how to download the PDF
-All of this can be accomplished without me even getting out of my chair

Obviously, the pre-internet way of doing things involves a lot more walking! So even in my "office job" I burn fewer calories than a librarian 40 years ago did.

I didn't read through this entire thread but did anybody answer "Because of all the energy they burned carrying around all of that body hair" yet?

catherineg3 wrote: »

In the 80's the American government changed the dietary recommendations to limit fat and cholesterol intake and encouraged large servings of grain based foods. This created an increase in highly processed fake "low fat" foods and much more added high fructose sugar to diet. Healthy natural fats like butter were replaced by artificially created trans fats in margarine. This was pretty much the worst idea ever, and now science is proving they were wrong. Fat is not the enemy, and removing it from our diets has created an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Not really.

Yes, there was a push to lower fat and grain recommendations went up. There's no indication that people really followed that -- the recommendations also pushed whole grains, limiting sugar, and eating lots of fruits and veg, which people did not do, and total fat consumed (in calories) increased, and did not decrease.

Highly processed foods do not appear to have increased in the diet due to these guidelines, but because they are profitable (whether labeled low fat or not, a huge percentage of high cal "highly processed foods" are high in fat and carbs, and some kinds of fat increased in the foods during this period, including both the addition of cheese and various oils). Unlike the '70s (when they were already quite common), there are a much wider variety of processed foods, they arguably taste better and are cheaper, and our culture seems more open to relying on these regularly rather than home cooking, as well as consuming more food between meals. (Decent book on this is Fat, Salt, and Sugar.) One example of how fat as increased as well as carbs due to such changes is that calories from fast food have increased, although the average fast food meal is quite high fat.

Yes, of course there were low fat processed options to respond to demand (some lower in cal than regular, some maybe not), but that's no different from all the "no sugar" or "low carb" options available now. Again, fat did not actually decrease in the diet, and consuming skim milk does not make you fat. Calories do.

I would agree that early margarines (which followed a slightly different time line) were worse than butter, although current margarines aren't generally high in transfats. The same kind of anti butter rhetorical often pushed olive oil, and again I don't think olive oil makes us fat (unless you consume too many calories).

I understand the desire to have a scapegoat, but we aren't fat due to low fat diets, the US has never had a low fat diet and the claims that we radically reduced fat are just lies. IMO, fat is fine, carbs are fine, diets with too much sat fat OR refined carbs are not a great idea, instead the pretty consistent dietary advice to consume more veg and fruit and whole grains (vs. refined) and whole food sources of nutrients is probably a decent idea. Macro percentages are unlikely to be all that significant, the US's macro percentages aren't out of line with other places with much better diets. Blaming carbs is no more sensible than blaming fat.

I was a kid in the 70s. I was overweight and so were my mom and dad. I have a good picture of the whole family and we were all pretty chubby. So everyone wasn’t skinny in the 70s.

GeekStick wrote: »

I believe the main reason for obesity is our food sources. Almost everything is now processed with MSG or "Natural Flavors" and that causes you to eat more. Look at the labels of the food you eat, MSG is now hidden on the labels, and in the manufacturing. Some sources: MSG, "Natural Flavors", Yeast Extract, Citric Acid, Soy Sauce. The list goes on and on. I recently discovered this and removed all the food in my home that was high in Glutamates, it was about 90% of the food in my pantry. I also believe there is a strong case that it is the cause of other neurological problems like Autism.

http://www.truthinlabeling.org/IVhistoryOfUse.html

strong first post - and total woo

dgarwood8181 wrote: »

GeekStick wrote: »

I believe the main reason for obesity is our food sources. Almost everything is now processed with MSG or "Natural Flavors" and that causes you to eat more. Look at the labels of the food you eat, MSG is now hidden on the labels, and in the manufacturing. Some sources: MSG, "Natural Flavors", Yeast Extract, Citric Acid, Soy Sauce. The list goes on and on. I recently discovered this and removed all the food in my home that was high in Glutamates, it was about 90% of the food in my pantry. I also believe there is a strong case that it is the cause of other neurological problems like Autism.

http://www.truthinlabeling.org/IVhistoryOfUse.html

In the 70's mothers still shopped two to three times a week, so food was in their whole state when prepared. Breakfast, lunches, and dinners were prepared with some consideration involved and not by a microwave. Although food processing was invented in 1809 by Nicols Appert for bottle stuff for French troops. The flooding of processed foods in America did not become mainstream till the introduction of the microwave oven to the American public. While the first microwave was sold publicly in 1955 as "radarange", it was so big and expensive the general public could not afford it. It was not until the 1970's when the mass production brought down prices to a point that middle-class families could afford to buy microwaves for their homes. Now the processing of our foods is in high gear. 1977 economy forces mothers out of the kitchen and back into the workforce, so families could afford to send their kids to college and retire without starving to death. This introduced snack foods, fast food restaurants that were cheap in comparison to feeding a family of 4 at home. The increase in chemicals and the massive amounts of sugar being consumed by the American public was on a steep climb up. Physical education in the late 70's and early eighties is being decreased in schools across the country along with an unhealthy lunch offering to students, cause mothers were no longer packing lunches as often. The late 70's enters television sets in every home, the first home computers and the Atari gaming system which drove kids and parents alike from healthy outdoor activities with family to indoors gathered around some device that entertains them, but does nothing for their need for an active lifestyle. If you look at the data being published the late 60's and early 70's was the beginning of the obesity problem in America. It also did not help that with these new processed foods, you got more and more chemicals which hamper our health and nutrition. Just my 2 cents as an Emergency Room Nurse on the subject.

Have to disagree with just about all of this.
1. I graduated HS in 1980, so I grew up in the 70's... we ate fast food as a family at least 2 times a week, and depending on how much overtime my father was working, sometimes more.
2. By the time I was a senior, I was eating more fast food than home-cooked food because of school activities/work and missing meal times at home
3. We had processed food - mac&cheese, canned veggies, boxed potatoes, white bread, etc
4. we never had a microwave at home
5. my mother never worked outside the home
6. I routinely (as did all of my friends) ate snack cakes, packaged cookies, chips, etc.
7. I took my lunch to school because it was cheaper than buying lunch (and better tasting food)
8. There were very few overweight kids in my high school (it was a small enough number that it was actually noticed - unlike today)

I weighed 150 lbs soaking wet when I graduated HS. I didn't gain any significant weight until after college when I got a desk job and stopped moving so much while still eating the same amount of food as before.

Oh, and please name all of these harmful chemicals that we are putting in the foods... I always see people say 'its the chemicals' that cause us problems but I have yet to see anyone name the chemicals and show scientific proof of any damage that the nasty chemicals have caused.

edited for spelling and clarity

I'm going to say it's the vehicles. Cars were way bigger in the 70s. People were small. As cars became smaller and smaller in the following decades, people grew bigger and bigger. Blame GM, not GMO's

That correlation makes about as much sense as chemicals and microwaves.