why were people so skinny in the 70s?

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  • ccrdragon
    ccrdragon Posts: 3,368 Member
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    dgarwood8181 wrote: »
    ccrdragon wrote: »
    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

    First, there is no reason to get nasty toward my post. I was stating information retrieved from medical sources. like The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which states that "since 1980 child obesity rates have tripled with the rates of obese 6- to 11-year-olds more than doubling (from 7.0 percent to 17.5 percent) and rates of obese teens (ages 12 to 19) quadrupling from 5 percent to 20.5 percent" [NHANES, 2011-2014 data]" "It further goes on to say that nealy half of americans drink sugar sweetened beverages on a given day and most americans exceed recommended levels of solid fats, added sugar and sodium." If you will look at my post more closely. I am saying in the 1970's people were skinner at the beginning of the decade, but at the end, they were starting to gain wait for all the reasons you mentioned and we as Americans continue to get further from our food is in its natural state, which our body requires to be healthy. You are correct there were non-microwaveable foods that would be cooked on the stove that was highly processed. However, those foods are even farther from their natural state today. Look at mac n cheese. It no longer has the powdered cheese, but a big packet of over processed creamy cheddar cheese that has been highly processed, so it will keep longer on the shelf. That is all accomplished with chemicals. Take all this with the decline in activity of all Americans and it adds to an increase in weight. Those processed foods are higher in calories for the amount of food you eat, which means it takes more processed food to make your body feel stronger. A grand Big Mac and a Large diet coke come in at 1150 calories with 52 g of fat and 152 g of carbs. This doe does not even include a large fry. This is what I was trying to say earlier. The calories of the means compared to when we were kids were not as calorie dense. From the 1980's on it has steadily gotten worse.
    Here is the link to the article I referenced for you to read. https://stateofobesity.org/obesity-rates-trends-overview/

    To respond - I did not get nasty, I merely disagreed with what you said and then added as to why I disagreed.
    dgarwood8181 wrote: »
    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

    this statement of begging me to make reference to chemicals is asking for me to say it so he can attack me. Just like everyone else in this forum. I gave a logical explanation backed by evidence as asked. The cheese powder was made in a very different way because it was taken to a dehydrated state, where more chemicals have to be added to the cheese sauce packets to make them stay on the shelf longer. I can research in the Cochrane Systematic Review database and find the links to several hormones and antibiotics that are placed in our food today that are causing you, girls, to develop breast tissue earlier, which places them at a high risk for developing breast cancer in their lives. Also, the heavy use of antibiotics in food has now produced some of the most drug-resistant strains of bacteria we have ever seen. So that is all I am going to say about that.

    Heck of an assumption you make there... so now, disagreeing with you is attacking you... got it.

    Here's an attack then - your example of girls hitting puberty earlier has nothing to do with obesity. Do you have any examples of chemicals (in the highly processed non-natural foods that we are currently eating) that actually lead to obesity?

    Also, antibiotics are not placed in food - they might be fed to animals, but they are not placed in food, and the antibiotics for animals are not the cause of the 'superbugs' - over prescription by the medical community for humans is the largest cause.

    Also, just as an aside, depending on which box you grab from the shelf, Kraft Mac-n-Cheese still has the little powdered cheese packets that you mix with milk to create the 'cheese' on the macaroni.
  • French_Peasant
    French_Peasant Posts: 1,639 Member
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    dgarwood8181 wrote: »
    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

    this statement of begging me to make reference to chemicals is asking for me to say it so he can attack me. Just like everyone else in this forum. I gave a logical explanation backed by evidence as asked. The cheese powder was made in a very different way because it was taken to a dehydrated state, where more chemicals have to be added to the cheese sauce packets to make them stay on the shelf longer. I can research in the Cochrane Systematic Review database and find the links to several hormones and antibiotics that are placed in our food today that are causing you, girls, to develop breast tissue earlier, which places them at a high risk for developing breast cancer in their lives. Also, the heavy use of antibiotics in food has now produced some of the most drug-resistant strains of bacteria we have ever seen. So that is all I am going to say about that.

    This is the Debate forum, so just be aware, people might debate you, and would certainly appreciate links to peer-reviewed medical publications and studies that support your contentions. Although also be aware that those might also be critiqued, because there is a lot of medical literature that establishes correlative impacts that are then positioned to Joe Public as truefacts without flagging that causitivity has not been established.
  • WinoGelato
    WinoGelato Posts: 13,454 Member
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    janejellyroll wrote: »
    dgarwood8181 wrote: »
    I did not mean to place you at the juncture of my sentence. I meant for to just say causing girls. my, apologize for that. The reference to chemicals meant antibiotics, hormones, MGO's, pesticides and the whole list of things that the geek fella said he threw out of his house for being dangerous. My original post was meant to say that society changed drastically in the 70's and so did meal preparation. It did not mean we got fat in the 70's, but a majority of us are fighting weight and obesity issues now and I believe a majority of it can be traced back to overall societal changes in the 70's and 80's as I said.

    Thanks for clarifying.

    The increase in chemicals in the 1970s is only relevant if the chemicals in question lead to obesity. Do they?

    And if you can name the chemicals and provide peer reviewed studies supporting those claims.... as of now we just have the vague classification of “chemicals” and “less natural” as being the cause of our obesity issues
  • ccrdragon
    ccrdragon Posts: 3,368 Member
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    dgarwood8181 wrote: »
    Consumption of ultra-processed foods and obesity in Brazilian adolescents and adults https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2015.07.018
    ultra-processing uses chemicals

    The study finds a nice correlation between processed foods and obesity but it has several flaws, not the least of which was that it did not control for total calorie intake and it also relied on food surveys which are notoriously inaccurate. Also note that correlation does not imply causation (even if that is the what the study authors claim).
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
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    dgarwood8181 wrote: »
    French_Peasant wrote: »
    dgarwood8181 wrote: »
    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

    this statement of begging me to make reference to chemicals is asking for me to say it so he can attack me. Just like everyone else in this forum. I gave a logical explanation backed by evidence as asked. The cheese powder was made in a very different way because it was taken to a dehydrated state, where more chemicals have to be added to the cheese sauce packets to make them stay on the shelf longer. I can research in the Cochrane Systematic Review database and find the links to several hormones and antibiotics that are placed in our food today that are causing you, girls, to develop breast tissue earlier, which places them at a high risk for developing breast cancer in their lives. Also, the heavy use of antibiotics in food has now produced some of the most drug-resistant strains of bacteria we have ever seen. So that is all I am going to say about that.

    This is the Debate forum, so just be aware, people might debate you, and would certainly appreciate links to peer-reviewed medical publications and studies that support your contentions. Although also be aware that those might also be critiqued, because there is a lot of medical literature that establishes correlative impacts that are then positioned to Joe Public as truefacts without flagging that causitivity has not been established.

    I do not have a problem being debated at all and I am more than happy to provide medical research. as I just did.

    You're provided some links that are somewhat related to your claims, but nothing that establishes your specific claims.

    I asked if the chemicals you're claiming increased in food in the 1970s *cause* obesity and your response was a link about ultra-processed foods containing chemicals. But even that link isn't claiming that the chemicals *themselves* are the cause of obesity.

    Another claim you made was about certain chemicals causes early breast development. I asked about that and you still haven't provided any additional context for that claim.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
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    dgarwood8181 wrote: »
    Is sugar a chemical? in any form? since that was my main point that we were starting to consume more sugar in our diets than in the decades before. Does sugar make you fat?

    Sugar is a chemical. So is water. What's the relevance of something being a chemical? I'm not even sure if you know what you mean by the term -- can you clarify what it means to you when you label something a "chemical" or claim that there are more chemicals in our food now than there were prior to the 1970s?

    Sugar doesn't make you fat, consuming more calories than one burns makes you fat. Can those calories be from sugar? Yes (although they can also be from fat, protein, or other forms of carbohydrates).

  • ccrdragon
    ccrdragon Posts: 3,368 Member
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    dgarwood8181 wrote: »
    Is sugar a chemical? in any form? since that was my main point that we were starting to consume more sugar in our diets than in the decades before. Does sugar make you fat?

    Not in-and-of-itself. Total calorie consumption over the amount you need to maintain your current weight makes you fat, regardless of where the calories come from.
  • ccrdragon
    ccrdragon Posts: 3,368 Member
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    dgarwood8181 wrote: »
    Osnt high fructose corn syrup a chemical made from corn? Does HFCS 42 as they call it cause you to be fat?

    See above response.

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