Any answer to this will be an oversimplification, but my short answer is increased poverty makes for more people with unfulfilled needs. With holes to fill as it were. Food fills that hole. Not perfectly, but enough that people use food in place of what actually fulfills. But food is only a substitute, so it doesn’t sate. There are many things people can substitute for what’s actually fulfilling, but sugar is the cheapest “drug” on the market. The same dynamic is a huge part of what underlies the opioid epidemic.
Also once you are addicted to over consumption you cannot just give it up completely. Alcohol, gambling, opioids can all be stopped using a sensible program and never touched again. You ask any addict of those three if they would never lapse if they had to take them in moderate amounts every single day for the rest of their life and they would laugh at you.
Couple this with easy and cheap availability of the most addictive food types that are heavily advertised, it’s no wonder it is so hard.
This is so true and so sad. It is like eating disorders really truly clicked for me with this statement.
While I now live outside the US and have curbed my eating habits drastically and I am now no longer obese, just on the cusp of overweight/healthy weight, I struggle every day not to indulge in over-eating, as that has been a stress-response my entire life I’m pretty sure. Living abroad has made it easier to fight it because they don’t have aisles upon aisles of ready made crap. And the boxes/bags they come in are pretty small so you can’t eat say, an entire family size box of cheez-its or little Debbie’s because neither of those are even sold here. There is some junk food but variety is extremely limited, so that definitely helps.
This feels like the keystone problem – and it’s probably intentional. They’ve created the problem to sell us remedies.
It’s also important to point out that poverty leads to increased consumption of cheap food such as fast food other unhealthy options.
Capitalism. Anything that isn’t bought fresh in the US is LOADED with sugar because food manufacturers figured out that sugar is extremely addictive, and they also buy a lot of politicians so that nothing can be done about it.
Don’t forget corn subsidies that make corn syrup and corn products artificially dirt cheap. Other crops get subsidies as well but you better believe fresh fruit and veg aren’t on that list. It’s the same reason meat is so cheap in the US.
Sugar is only part of it. Corn and wheat based products are just as bad.
The truth has to do with food availability as well, not just what it’s made of.
Food availability has increased in the US over the past 50+ years, to where we have over 4000 calories per person a day now. Easy access to unhealthy food is a major contributor to our obesity. People don’t even understand what a healthy diet looks like and have a very poor grasp on how much to eat. We just eat until we’re stuffed and then wonder why we’re fat.
It’s especially tough as people age. I’ve been tracking my diet for 180+ days, eating under 1800 calories a day, and I still struggle with losing weight. Without a lot of effort towards eating the right amount and the right foods, people get fat.
Something else that I have noticed, that I believe is related to capitalism as well, is the portion size at restaurants and take out. They have conditioned us to think that a 1200 calorie meal is a normal size and if it’s smaller we are not getting a good deal. Cheesecake for example sells the skinnylicious meals that are about 550 calories, which I consider a normal dinner size, as if it’s diet food. It’s almost impossible to eat out and stay within a reasonable calorie range.
Seriously this. I lived in the US for most of my life until 2020 when I moved to Norway. If Americans paid what we pay here for the portion sizes given, they would absolutely riot. It’s so expensive to eat out here and the portion sizes are like, a third of what you’d get in any US restaurant. And that’s okay because…
I lost like 60lbs the first year we were here by simply eating a sensible portion size and not having a shitload of ready to eat mindless consumption snacks in the house. (also walked everywhere. Everywhere.)
Now I can tell who is a tourist just by size alone like 80% of the time (I live in a very touristy city). Brand new sneakers and look to be over 300lbs? Almost always walk by me speaking American English. It’s honestly quite surprising to see a very obese person here and then hear them speaking fluent Norwegian.
The lipid hypothesis was funded by the sugar lobby. The entire food pyramid was a scam by the carb pushers.
Greater availability and affordability of unhealthier, more processed foods filled with carbs and fats and devoid of other nutrients. Car culture that discourages natural amounts of walking in a daily routine. Sugar, caffeine and alcohol addictions with advertisers preying on people vulnerable to addiction of every kind.
I was with you until caffeine. How does caffeine addiction contribute to the obesity epidemic? Are you talking about addiction to caffeine leading to people consuming more sugary soft drinks?
I’m probably being naïve because 100% of my caffeine consumption comes from black coffee and tea.
Yeah I’m mostly talking about Sodas like pepsi, and but a big one is also colourful energy drinks like Redbull, Monster and Prime. Tons of ad money and sponsorships being thrown on these very unhealthy drinks.
On the coffee side, Tis the Pumpkin Spice Latte season from you-know-which chain. A 16oz cup of that has 150g caffeine, 9 grams(45% recommended DV) of saturated fats, and 50g of sugar. A 16oz Coca-Cola bottle contains a very similar amount of sugar at 52g. The special kinds of coffee at chain shops seem more like a caffeinated milkshake than coffee, nutritionally.
Regular coffee and tea aren’t bad but caffeine has to still be taken in moderation.
Caffeine CAN mess with a person’s cortisol levels which CAN affect weight.
Not everyone is affected the same way. However there is the tofi problem. Look it up.
This is a good summary however I believe part of the issue is that due to high intensity farming the mineral levels of the soil are way down thus mineral levels of the foods we eat are basically nonexistent. People are hungry all the time because they are, essentially, malnourished. The body needs many different trace minerals to function well and if it doesn’t get it will be hungry.
A fat man can be fat and malnourished at the same time. Truly a first world problem.
More people have been eating ultra-proccessed food low in nutrition and high in calories. They’ve gotten fat because nutritious food is expensive. But don’t worry, it’s not a plan by our Fat Cat overlords to extort is all for healthcare $$$, I’m sure we’re just headed for a Wall-E future for is all…(nervous laugh)…;(
Low quality processed food with loads of corn syrup even in food where it does not belong.
The processed food industry, both in the supermarket and in the fast food businesses, is basically fattening up the population.
My wife stopped eating out for nearly every meal recently and started cooking 90% of what we consume, best decision we’ve made for our health and our pocketbook. Food is processed less and we can control what’s in it, and in turn we’re both almost back to our college weight. Turning fresh produce and protein into a meal is where it’s at.
There’s probably even a small handful of foods doing most of it, like white bread, sweetened cereal, soda. However maybe the trick is to require livable wages for all those fast food workers and hope there’s some truth to franchisee claims that it becomes an unsustainable business
There’s probably even a small handful of foods doing most of it
Sadly, no. This is a plague that goes across the board when it comes to processed foods. While some are worse offenders than others, some even healthy appearing foods (cereals, smoothies) are horrible dangers for your health.
Maybe for context could you share any reference article or graph which triggered this question? Increased in relation to what, since when?
Not in the US, but from materials read before, it is a combination of things.
Typical causes of weight gain in an individual is simply more calorie intake than is being burnt off. Across a population you can consider environmental, lifestyle and social factors which may contribute to this.
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Higher calorie intake (super-sized portions, highly processed foods with high sugar and fat content, cheap convenient fast foods and drinks, expensive healthy/nutritional foods, growth hormones in meats?).
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Less exercise (infrastructure not built for cycling and pedestrians, less manual labour jobs, Netflix, Home delivery services, etc).
Health education, Food Advertising/Sponsorship, Chain loyalty discounts, Low wages (poverty), and Political influences would all play a part.
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Lots of reasons.
I suspect one of them is some people get shockingly little exercise. When I lived in the suburbs, my daily could often be “walk to car, walk from lot to office desk (taking the elevator instead of stairs), walk from there to car (via elevator), walk from car to home”. Total walking time less than five minutes.
When I moved to New York I got at least twenty minutes of walking to and from the subway every day just going into work. Plus now I walk to the grocery and other stuff.
Car culture sucks.
That doesn’t really explain why obesity has increased. If anything, it is often easier to get by without a car today than 20 years ago. For example, my own city is full of bike paths that did not exist then.
They did add a bunch of bike paths in my town too, yet I’m 5 minutes by car from my nearest grocery store, but by bike have to cross a bridge with fenced sidewalks and no shoulder, ride on a 80km/h+ road, and a bunch of other BS just to get there. Bike infrastructure doesn’t mean good bike infrastructure I guess.
Sure, it’s still not good. But that can’t explain why people are more obese now than a couple of decades ago, since bike infrastructure was even worse then.
I wonder if part of it is more likelihood to have multiple cars, less likelihood to have someone prepare meals from scratch … or maybe that’s more than a couple decades.
COViD helped me discover a passion for cooking (baking too, but not just baking) so in the last few years my kids have had more meals prepared from scratch, more balanced and nutritious, and a lot more exposure to meals from other cultures.
One of the new tools I got is an air fryer. It’s a really convenient way to make the equivalent of grilled chicken or other foods …. But all too often I find myself feeding it processed junk like chicken strips and frozen fries
Yeah, fair enough.
While not the only reason but it seems that low fiber foods (highly processed) contribute more calories to the body than high fiber foods.
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Unhealthy, processed food is cheaper to produce, cheaper to buy and more appealing to the consumer. Couple that with a society which is trending towards a more sedentary lifestyle and obesity rates climb. The issue is we’re seeing the results of this about 20 years too late to do anything to reverse the effects.
Should mention that I’m in the UK, but the story is a similar one; albeit currently slightly less extreme.
Hyper processed foods loaded with sugar, seed oil, and trans fat.
Food desserts
Typo, but it works either way 😃
I’m glad to see this question has sparked a lot of discussion, but I’d like to remind everyone to please include a credible source for your answer.
Rule 9: Source required for answers.
Provide credible sources for answers. Failure to include a source may result in the removal of the answer to ensure information reliability.
Simple carbs have a poor satiation response.
Probably bc unhealthy food is usually a lot more accessible and cheap than healthy food in the US
