Obesity today vs 40-50 years ago.

Our foods are prepared totally different and we have a lot more available when you just drive down the street. We are much less active than our grandparents were as many of them did physical labour while at home, not just on the job. It was and is a different time.

(from an earlier post- I can't figure out how to copy)
"I remember once my brother and I were at this conference and there was a man who was 400+ pound man in front of us. We were just so amazed that anyone could ever take themselves to that point. An old man leaned forward from the row behind us and whispered "when i was your age we'd have to go to the circus to see someone that big!"

That is crazy!"


The "how could they let themselves get like that" comment has always been irritating to me, for just the reason that this post brings up. "How they could let themselves get like that" involves a whole host of factors, including our biology being designed for a food insecure world where we are forced to move all day long. Our psychology is not designed to help us think about restricting our food intake for the sake of our BMI- it's designed to help us store enough fat to reproduce and make it through the lean times. We are also eating food that is designed to make us want more (e.g. easily digestible food-products that marry salt, sweet, and fat, and play to our instincts about what we need to sustain us), and we are living alone, often, with time to become very depressed and little to help us out of it except the comfort of food.

What perplexes me is the disgust we feel for the morbidly obese, when much of us have more pity for those struggling with substance dependence. Many of us feel more intense anxiety/disgust looking at an obese person than a smoker- why? I think it's because we all subconsciously identify with the risk that we all take by living in our modern world and eating modern food, that at any day, if we "let ourselves," we could "get like that." Please don't let the amazing steps you've taken to lose weight make you insensitive to those who have not yet begun that battle. Believe me, it's not because they are happy and lazy- they are struggling and likely working harder than you think on whatever their demon of the year is.


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My grandmother had 7 girls, a husband and three farm hands (Lancaster County Mennonite farmer). For lunch EVERY DAY, she made a full meal, bread, meat, veggies, and 5 pies (in her wood-fired oven). It was ALL EATEN every day. But no one was overweight, because they worked all day - up at 4:30 AM, milking, making bread, always moving. There was no sitting around. My mom walked 1 mile to school, back home for lunch, and back to school and then home in the afternoon. 4 miles a day just for school.

I agree, but we seem to work more and sit at the computer in our jobs than they did in that era. I am trying to go back to the old days of making all of your own meals from scratch and not buying ready made meals, packets or jars. Keep going youre doing really well.

I think there are a lot of factors that contribute, but for children, I feel like the lack of playing outdoors and the presence of junk food are big problems.

I am 40, and in the 70s when I was growing up, kids in my neighborhood played all. Day. Long. Every day. I remember my dad coming to the end of our street and giving a big attention getting whistle to call us home if we were still out playing when the street lights came on.

And junk food...while my folks weren't part of the health food revolution (our neighbors were...no chocolate, only carob), we didn't have Doritos or Cheetos in the house. Mostly because my Mom didn't want to clean up greasy orange fingerprints.

My folks also limited our TV and we were really too strapped financially to go to fast food restaurants...my Mom is a retired social worker, and when my Dad was alive, he taught in the public school system. Spending $10 at a fast food restaurant when instead that could be an entire meal plus leftovers...we just didn't do it very often.

We also had chores to do every night. Sweeping the floors, mowing the lawn, doing dishes by hand (the dishwasher was perpetually broken), folding clothes, ironing, vacuuming...these were the requirements of living in our home, not for allowance. We were not sitting on our fannies, playing video games and watching 5 hours of television every night. This is how it was in my house and in my neighborhood.

I just think things have changed. It's not just nostalgia talking...it's that the world is different and we seem to let it carry us along...

http://www.foodtimeline.org/fooddecades.html

Scroll down and check out the average meals.
Fun food facts too.

I think there are so many things that factor into the decline of our health with regards to our mental health, our kids' mental health and obesity and related diseases, which I believe includes more than diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.

I've done a lot of genealogy research in my family and I have photos of many people on my mother's side going back to my great-great grandparents. My great-grandmother was a bit plump and my grandmother started gaining weight in the 1960's when her thyroid went kaput. Even still, knowing that my grandma and great-grandma were very similar in body type, I would say that maybe they had an extra 20-25 pounds on them. They just looked bigger standing next to the others because the others were all quite thin.

I think the fact that we don't walk as much to get to and from places makes a big difference. When I was small, I can remember walking with my mom several times a week to the corner grocery store. My grandma and great-aunt each had one of those rolling baskets they took with them to the grocery store that was several blocks from their home. My grandmother and great-aunt never had a driver's license and walked and took a bus everywhere.

Also, we are inside so much now. When I was a kid, in the 1970s and 1980s, after school, on the weekends and during the summer, all of us kids were sent out the door after breakfast and didn't come home until lunch and then went back out again until dinner and if it was still light, we went out again until it was dark. I remember at 4 years old walking up to my friend's house all by myself. She was three years older than me and we'd go to the park up the street by ourselves and we'd ride our bikes blocks away from our house. Kids don't often do that now. We've become so afraid that someone is going to take our children and they are often kept on a short leash.

I think the biggest factor though is the processed foods made with all of the things we can't pronounce along with food dyes, many of which are banned in other countries. I think that has a gigantic impact on our physical and mental health. There are fewer home cooked meals and a home cooked meal is not an oven lasagna or a microwave dinner or frozen chicken nuggets. As parents, many of us are on the go shuttling our kids from activity to activity, or getting home late from work and grabbing a fast food lunch or dinner on the way. In some cities, there are no grocery stores and people can't even buy fresh fruits and vegetables and people get their foods at convenience stores.

Also, our portions have gotten bigger, much bigger. Our plates have gotten bigger. In our house the dinner plates that came with our set are as big as platters and are used as such. We use the salad plates as dinner plates. Portions at many restaurants, especially chain restaurants are gigantic.

One last thing is that we want all of our problems to be fixed with an easy pill instead of changing our lifestyles. We are starting with a large nutritional deficit and it is difficult to turn that around. It takes dedication, commitment, a change in our thinking and an adjustment in our overall lifestyle. It is easier for us to keep going as we are instead of making the necessary changes.

Of course when I say "we" and "our" I know that doesn't include every single person in the country. But, given the rising obesity and related disease, I think it includes a majority of our population.

My grandmother was a farmer, and she said that they had to eat a lot of food to be able to work out in the fields all day. She had 6 kids and fed them all. Now she has diabetes, because she's been eating the same high fat food that she always did, but she is much less active than she was back then.

I asked her one time what she thought of the recession and how it compared to the great depression and she said that it is much different. Financially it might seem the same, but when your mules get repossessed and you have to work the farm by hand, you feel the financial burden a lot more than if one of your many tractors got taken away. She said that they did a LOT of manual labor when she was a kid and they didn't think much of it because there was hardly any other options.