We all know that Americans tend to be overweight, but to appreciate the extent of the problem you need to view the data at The State of Obesity.
At the top image I've embedded a screencap, but at the link the map and graph are interactive - for example, you can mouse over a state to highlight its individual line on the graph. They all go up, but note the degree of change: in 2013 the least obese state is more obese than the most obese state was in 1990.
The next thing you can do (at the original link) is access the timeline at the bottom and click back. If you go as far as 1990, you will see this national map:
If this change had happened between say 1880 and 2013, one might just brush it off as "this modern world," but 1990 was not that long ago - within the lifetime of virtually every reader here. The criteria haven't changed - just our dietary habits and our sedentary behavior. It's sad and somewhat scary in terms of the public health (and finance) implications. And I'm sure this phenomenon isn't limited to the U.S.
It's frustrating how people still fail to both explain and understand this. They say "it's sitting professions", not enough exercise, comfortable cars or a vague hint at bad diet.
ReplyDeleteHowever this phenomenon is well known and also ubiquitous and it is a consequence of a desire to increase profitability. You probably heard the anecdote about Henry Ford, asking his engineers to replace the most reliable parts of his T-Model, with cheaper ones, but somehow people wishfully think that this simple economy doesn't apply to food.
When food becomes "ready to eat" the main quality becomes taste, rather than quality, freshness, nutritional value. So companies make food from cheap ingredients, spicing it up with their well known bag of tricks. They don't do it out of malice or ill intent, that's just the law of the market, you make a profit producing out of the cheapest ingredients. It's straight forward mathematics. Profitability is something like the ratio of selling price / cost. And the denominator has a much more powerful influence. That's why any industry is notorious for trying to drive cost down for raw materials.
One possible solution is to smarten up and not to buy products that are "ready to eat", as well as not to eat in restaurants (excluding perhaps the very good restaurants, which still aim to mostly please your taste rather than your health.) However common sense is fighting advertising budgets in the billions at this point, as well as the lure of convenience.
The hopeful message here is that even without radical change to all self cooked food, we can tip the scales in our favor. The big take away (rather than take out) has to be that a healthy candy bar/pizza/sandwich is essentially impossible to buy, because it would be unprofitable to make and market, especially competing against what is cheap and easy. Not for a lack of trial, either.
Even successful slim/diet products sold to weight conscious customers, eventually contain nothing but cheap ingredients and empty promises.
Still there are further more nuanced reasons to avoid processed, "ready to eat" food, such as to avoid spontaneous bad decisions and the instant gratification which follows, gratification that gradually turns bad decisions into bad habits.
The comment above is a great one -- and makes a lot of sense. Compare the original Big Mac to the one available today. The hamburger in today's Big Mac doesn't even taste like hamburger; it tastes like reconstituted cardboard. My husband and I have given up buying fast food with the occasional purchase of a Pizza Hut pizza to eat while watching an NFL football game. We thought for a while that our taste buds had just deteriorated due to age, but your comment, Anonymous, has reinforced our judgment that fast food is not worth the purchase price!
ReplyDeleteAnd to cover up the "cardboard", they add all kinds of things, from bacon, processed chile peppers, fake cheese, onion rings, and who knows what else, until it's over 1000 calories of junk.
ReplyDeleteI'm *convinced* it's the low-fat diet that did it.
ReplyDeleteMy spouse and I both have overweight/obese siblings, so the genetics that predispose us to gain weight are there. We're the only two that are thin. The difference? Exercise and plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables- plant based meals. My husband put on 40 pounds without exercise, so he made a commitment to himself to work out every morning and the 40 pounds are now gone. Nothing fancy or trendy, no supplements. Lots and lots of walking. When we visit family, we're surprised by huge portions of refined foods, massive platters of grilled meats, ready to eat foods and the ever present bags of candy and cookies. Neither of us wants to deal with type II diabetes or face a quadruple bypass like other men in the family. The changes we made weren't that huge (to us) but over time, what a difference has been made.
ReplyDeleteI have two daughters, three years apart, ages 8 and 11; we raised them both the same, not consciously focusing on food, yet their eating habits are polar opposites. One will eat 1/4 of a cupcake, the other wants the entire cupcake plus the 3/4 her sister did not eat.
DeleteI do not believe that this is all about "personal responsibility". Yes, someone with intense personal responsibility can go from eating 1.75 cupcakes to 0.25 cupcakes, but the person eating 0.25 cupcakes isn't necessarily more personally responsible. It's just naturally easier for them.
You may be interested in Minnesota's unique trend amongst all that data. http://www.health.state.mn.us/news/pressrel/2015/ship042015.html
ReplyDeleteI had seen the flattening of the curve, but had not heard about the postulated explanation. Tx, xcentric.
DeleteWe like to blame people/ourselves for a lack of exercise. But there really isn't that much causation between weight and exercise. Sure a "sedentary" profession and leisure activities are bad for overall health, (spine) musculature and fitness, but there really is little causation to weight. Like with all warm blooded animals, most of our caloric intake is used to maintain our body functions and especially temperature, something around 100 Watt (= Joule/s).
ReplyDeleteExercise generates excess heat, which replaces what we usually would burn to maintain anyway, it's almost a zero-sum game. Well not quite, we can generate up to a peak 2'000 W storming up a flight of stairs or about 200 W continuously bicycling.
Exercise cannot in the long run make up for bad nutrition, many jocks tried. The normal body reaction to healthy exercise is to gain weight and develop an appetite. Blaming obesity on the lack of exercise is thusly false, it may even be an insidious attempt to shift blame towards the victim.
Apparently none of you have heard of the fat acceptance movement or HAES. Lots of good stuff written about how the obesity crisis has been manufactured. I suggest, "Losing It: America's Obsession with Weight and the Industry that Feeds on It," by Laura Fraser; "the Obesity Myth" by Paul Campos or pretty much anything by Linda Bacon.
ReplyDeleteFor a good quick overview with citations, check this out: https://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/for-fat-patients-and-their-doctors/
I'm against prejudice of any kind- but I don't know how one can be "healthy," if one is obese; they are contradictory terms. As someone who grew up in the sixties/seventies, I would look at vintage photos of the circus "fat man" or "fat woman" and just wonder at how anyone could possibly get that large. Now you see people who make them look small on just about every block of any US city or town! There is no doubt that junk food, fast food, ridiculously sized portions and lack of exercise is to blame. Denying that obesity is a very real health danger is is denial writ large- as is excessive smoking, drinking and drugging.
DeleteDefinitely not limited to the US:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/noncommunicable-diseases/obesity/data-and-statistics/infographic-over-50-of-people-are-overweight-or-obese-download
It was news last week that if the current trend continues, Ireland will have an obesity rate > 70 % in 2018. The netherlands is one of the few countries where the rate is slowly decreasing.
You know what caused the largest increase in Obesity in this country? Reclassifying what qualified as obese.
ReplyDeleteI remember obesity being reclassified as a "disease." I don't remember the B.M.I. criteria for obesity being reclassified. When did that happen?
DeleteNinabi (above) raises a point that no one else has mentioned here: the AMOUNT of food eaten. This has apparently become huge compared to the past but the exercise etc has not increased. I'm not from the US and have never travelled there but people who have tell me that the portions in take-out food places and chain restaurants is really big compared to the past. This is competition in action: "Wow! the amount of food on the plate at X's was enormous and really good value. I will go there again." So the owners at Z's also put bigger portions - of the cheaper partsof the meals - onto their plates, too, to keep up. And then there is Coke and Pepsi and the sugar/calories in those sorts of drinks. It's simple, really. Eat a lot more fruit and vegetables. Exercise more. Eat a little less, generally speaking.
ReplyDelete