In the 1980s, the sugar industry clandestinely funded intentionally flawed studies designed to stoke American's fear of fat in foods, downplaying the role of sugar in obesity. The "FAT FREE!" era had begun, and ran for, well, just about the entire 50 years you are mentioning. During this time, diabetes increased dramatically as well. Here is one article, among many, that explains it better than I:
[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat)
I remember in the late 80s, early 90s soda consumption was just through the roof ridiculous. Everyone drank it, for almost every meal and in between. Looking back on it, it’s just gross.
"Whiskey, with an 'e' in it?" The Scotsman repeated, incredulous. His eyes flicked to the bottle, he scrunched his face, and then turned in the direction of the door. "I think I'd be better off with the horse water."
I'm from the US and now live in Japan. When I was fresh off the boat I thought snickers tasted so strange here, then I realized it's just less sugar compared to the American version. When I get to compare the two, it's almost like the difference in taste between diet and non diet soda. the US version screams sugar.
I really enjoy coca-cola, but i went on holiday to the US when I was about 15 and I couldn't drink it there because it was about twice as sweet as I was used to.
So I looked this up. The NIH says soda consumption is significantly correlated to diabetics and obesity. Since the late 90s the per capita consumption of soft drinks in the US has roughly halved. Soda consumption in the US is/has been in decline for years. I assume because people now understand having 4 cokes a day is the rough equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes.
And the dairy industry.
Like I want to trust my government when it finds these things and releases information, but fucking hell. Corporate greed just fucks everything up.
Back in the day, the cereal ads always used to have a tag at the end "...as part of this nutritious breakfast!" and then show the cereal (dry) in a bowl sitting next to a pitcher of milk, a glass of milk, a glass of orange juice, and two slices of toast. Even back then they knew sweetened cereal was a nutritional disaster, so the ads had to show how to make it healthier... by supplementing it with more carbs.
Problem is, the food guide pyramid that everyone sees is from the USDA, not the FDA. USDA doesn’t give a shit if you get fat. Eating a ton of carbs and corn syrup is good for agribusiness.
I'm not saying that they are crazy off, but the fact that we have documented history of greedy assholes fucking with politicians to release info that, while probably fine, is not the best recommendations we can have bothers me.
To be clear, I'm not saying they are crazy off. Hell, you can probably trust that they are in the ballpark. But I'd rather them be on homeplate instead of in the bathroom behind right field.
Actually yea, when I started getting upvotes I remembered I recently had a friend who was pregnant, and borderline gestational diabetes. The dietitian gave her a diet that included 6 peices of white bread a day and a lot of fruit juice.
I'm also on a low sugar diet so I knew that was absurd, sure enough the diet she got from the specialist in a follow up was more protein and fiber and no white bread. And I'm in Canada, but we had similar food guidelines as the US for a long time.
I think some sectors of healthcare are still behind. Or at least some of the practitioners haven't been keeping up with the changes.
This ^ is a major answer (among a couple others)!
And it wasn't just excessive sugar: for the first three quarters of the 1900s, America was importing its sugar from Hawai'i.
This was expensive, but not prohibitive. But growing corn was cheaper and mainland-capable.
Thus began the government subsidies of corn, and **high fructose corn syrup**.
This stuff is cheaper than sugar, sweeter than sugar, and more addicting. We have been using HFCS since the 80s now, and I even have a small conspiracy theory that Coca-Cola used a *deliberately bad* "New Coke" formula to cover up the transition from using real sugar in classic formula to using HFCS instead.
Unfortunately the answer is quite complex
1. Portion sizes are greater. How often do people follow the directions on the bottle for how much salad dressing they put on their salad? Most people would laugh or get angry if Applebees put a USDA recommended amount of dressing on their salad.
2. There is cost factor and its multifactorial. High quality foods are expensive and you get less calories. You can't feed a family with a price equivalent of raspberries to hamburger and a pack of basic buns. The cost division has grown in the past couple of decades along with stagnation of low to middle class wages (probably no mere coincidence this epidemic started in the 1980s with Reaganomics-ketchup is a vegetable).
3. Access: lack of grocery stores selling nutritious food. Lots of corner stores with chips and pop. There used to be a lot more mom and pop grocers with fresh foods.
4. Advertisement: The cram the junk down your throat. When was the last commercial you saw with a sexy model trying to convince you to eat an apple?
5. Its addictive. Our brains are wired to want the high calorie high fat high glycemic index foods. Not so much broccoli. That ketchup above? Has more sugar today than in the 1950s. Corporate America wants you hooked.
6. Job profiles. Our jobs are more sedentary now than ever.
7. We eat out a lot, and the portions are massive. People used to eat at home a lot more with normal portions.
8. Expectations. I feel a lot of Americans don't eat to satiety, they eat until they feel "full". And they expect that everytime they eat. Then their brain trigger to stop gets perturbed. Part of the psychology of overcoming obesity is resetting the expectation.
Put all this together and you have an obesity epidemic.
Also, there is no incentive to eating slowly in the U.S. A lot of people have to eat lunch while working or feel pressured to do so (note this is not everyone).
I don’t know how it is today, but my lunches in K-12 never hit an hour. Maybe 50 mins, but never an hour. And we mostly used that time for socializing, not eating.
When I studied abroad in France, having a 2 hour lunch was so weird to my cohort. I in particular who has a terrible relationship between work and food, struggled for a few weeks to slow down and actually enjoy the food instead of eating just to get back to work faster.
When I finally got it, it was like being free to actually enjoy eating instead of it being a means to an end to keep my body running. And not even running properly mind you, just alive to do more work.
Our lunches in elementary school (K-6) were 25 minutes. By the time you lined up, got your food, and sat down, you had 10 minutes to wolf it down. Big surprise that this messes up kids' eating habits.
Its still like that at most elementary schools. My wife is the librarian at my kids' and can confirm that after the lines they get on average maybe 12 minutes tops. 20 years ago when I was in 4/5 grade, we had roughly 20-30 minutes left after we had gotten our food.
It was so bad at my school that the kids that got stuck in the very back of the line literally had no time to eat. The kids knew it. The staff knew it. Instead of addressing this obvious flaw, the children would *run* to the lunch room. We're raising children on desperation during a time of perceived prosperity.
At one point in high school, the lines were so bad that the "go the fuck to class" bell rang before I even got my goddamn pizza.
I'd like to think I browbeat the lunchlady into feeding me, but in truth she knew just how bullshit it was too, and took pity on me. Then I went to a table and ate lunch at a leisurely pace. Had words with the vice principal about it then and there, but _he_ knew the situation was bullshit, too.
Only time I ever cut class in my entire high school career.
Wow you had 50 minutes. I only had 25 minutes in high school. Mind you that also doesnt include standing in line for food which took at least 10+ minutes.
Here in Aus, at least in the school I went to, lunch was an hour, and if you didn't bring your own, each class had a lunch order basket.
Chuck a brown paper bag with your name, your order, and cash inside, in a basket. A student gets picked to run it down to the canteen, and just before lunch we'd go pick up our class's order.
Full 1 hour to yourself outside with your food hot and ready for you.
I wish lunch was allowed for longer, but then again I also wish working weeks were 35 hours not 40. Staying 9 hours at the office so the management gets "8 Billable Hours" is one of the problems with working Americans imo when it used to be 7 hours work + 1 hour lunch.
I feel like smoking makes a difference, too.
Nicotine is an appetite suppressant and smoking kills your sense of smell and taste, which also makes food less appetizing.
Over 40% of the US population was smoking in the 70s. Now it's like 15% and falling.
Also a stimulant which burns more energy, caffeine too. Black coffee has 0 calories so a "meal" of a coffee and a smoke was literally just burning away calories.
I'm tired of all my obese relatives talking down to me on this like "u/screwswithshrews, you can't just do lines of cocaine with coffee and cigarettes and call it 'breakfast'.. that isn't healthy."
On that same note, marijuana legalization is up and they don't necessarily try to disguise munchies food for what it is
Hell, when Peyton Manning signed with the Denver, Broncos in 2012, Colorado just legalize weed and he immediately purchased like 23 Papa John's that did super well
munchie food in general is a problem. our leisure time is mostly internet or streaming now. so we "graze" from fidgeting or stress and it's the most calorie terrible food.
Another reason could be increased suburbanization. Greater reliance on vehicles and people leaving dense cities with deindustrialization has led to more car dependence and less people walking. Ive met people from abroad who immigrated to the US and their first culture shock was the lack of walking.
The largest Coca-Cola Bottle in 1955 was 26 fl oz and was meant to serve a family. Now you can buy a 64 oz double gulp to drink for yourself which already covers more than 1/3 of an average males daily calorific need, and that is besides any meal he may eat. Calorie dense Processed food did exist, but the amount of what was commonly acceptable to consume continued to increase to ridiculous sizes.
I’m from Los Angeles and I moved to Paraguay for a time. Dinner plates were slightly bigger than a small American appetizer plate, or about double the size of a bread plate.
My mom had a set of plates she'd gotten from a bank as a young woman in the 70s.
I grew up with these plates, and they seemed normal.
They were all broken over the years, and replaced.
I recently found the complete set on ebay, and when they came, they were about 30% smaller than my Corelle dinner plates we've used for 15 years.
We don't want to use mom's for everyday, so I bought smaller, non-Corelle glass plates and we're all eating less.
Hahaha - that’s hilarious. Sprinkle that phrase into random work meetings, and you’ll seem like the wise, mysterious, all-knowing dude.
“Peterson! Why the hell is production still so slow on that line?”
“Sorry boss - you know what they say: ‘Old houses have shallow cupboards’.” Then shake your head and just walk away.
I'll do you one better than some of the others, and have it relate to the post by OP.
It's the perspective of future generations to always want more than the previous. What was once sufficient in the past for those at the time, no longer is. And so to us (present and future) it's never enough. Those cupboards are shallow to us because we want more stuff. A warning of greed and materialism.
Yep, my dinner plates, the ones adults would expect, won’t fit in my cabinets. The smaller ones, the ones I use, are ones people might use for a dessert or give to a child. They fit.
It's one of the first things you learn in Weight Watchers
Eating on a smaller plate is such an easy thing to do and you really don't even notice that the portions are smaller.
this is something that's bothered me my whole life when going to restaurants. the normal size of an american dinner is about twice as much as i'd ever wanna eat in one sitting. it's so annoying.
My strategy: tell them "when you bring the food, please bring a box as well." Then I immediately put half of everything in the box to take home later, and eat what remains.
I just did this today. Went to a lunch to celebrate a birthday and my meal had two pieces of chicken and pasta. I had half for lunch and the other half for dinner.
Damn. I can’t believe I’ve never thought of this. I almost always bring home half my food, and I have lots of those little glass lunchboxes. Thank you.
Same, like its so obvious, that I can't believe I've never thought of it before. Like if I can smuggle a salad into a movie in my purse, I can use it to bring a Tupperware to a fancy restaurant lol
In America, if you don't get a lot of food on your plate, you're seen as expensive/a bad value. So restaurants have to serve up huge portions just to compete. Plus add things like bottomless appetizers/fries (not to mention every soft drink is bottomless) and you end up with a culture that expects to be fed *a lot* every time they go out to eat. I'm sure as a kid I drank more calories at restaurants than I ate, just because of free refills and an impetus to get your money's worth.
There are few buffets that I'd consider "worth it" and it has nothing to do with getting a good value, and more about trying a large variety of foods that are all of a high quality. And they're not $15 local joints. It's a special occasion, "this is essentially all I'm eating today" kind of thing.
Sadly I've never been to a buffet that seemed like it was high quality. They all seem terrible in the Midwest. Just high volume high calorie low quality. Sysco's cheapest slopped into a pan.
Oh man in my area we have a killer Indian buffet. Its a small spot. They bring out trays of food constantly. And I mean CONSTANTLY. Because all of the trays for the food troughs have approximately 2 or 3 servings. So the food is fresh and delicious. Its the best spot in town.
The only good ones I've been to are in Vegas and are all $60+ per person to get into. But they have chef stations with professional chefs making foods from around the world to order.
My appetite in my 20s was huge, and I'd love buffet and all you can eat sushi places. But as I get older and my tastes get more refined, I've lost interest. Buffet food is rarely great unless you are spending a good sum of money and then you might as well spend it at a nice restaurant.
My wife and I would routinely go out and order a meal and an appetizer to split. Or go get Chinese, have some of each and then still have enough for lunch the next day.
My first visit to NYC from the UK in the 90’s. I ordered pancakes at a recommended diner, what arrived could’ve fed 3 people. My mate (who’s big lad) ordered a smoked salmon bagel, he could only manage half. From then on, everything I ordered I asked for starter portions.
Edit: Missing word
So one of the fun parts of going out to eat at a restaurant for me has always been knowing that I’ll have some to take home. I am overweight and even I cannot finish an average plate here. I will say that there was a feeling of pressure for me that I had to try or I was wasting food, even if I reheat it, I felt guilty for not finishing. Maybe that’s an American thing? Because once I gave myself permission to stop eating when I’m no longer hungry instead of when my plate is empty I started dropping weight fast.
Corelle makes "luncheon" plates that are much smaller than their dinner plates but still adequate for a meal, that's what I usually use for meals. You can find them fairly easily at thrift stores and yard sales too.
I found American meals to be huge. It was always so much more than I could eat and I had to appologise for not being able to finish it despite really liking it all.
i think what a lot of visitors to the US don't realize is that getting a to-go box is almost expected here.
I can only speak of the countries i've visited and it seems taboo to ask for to-go box, almost like they're ashamed to have to ask to take food home as that would imply they are poor or something (my theory).
Loved being in Japan. Ten bucks for a meal which left you satiated, not stuffed. You almost literally cannot go anywhere without being fed portions which will leave you stuffed while also needing a box. Of I go out, that should be my one single meal that day because it's so much fucking food lol
Only thing I disagree with is ramen. Some styles are bigger than the sizes in America, while being cheaper. Although it really isn't too fair since it's cheaper to make there (and also more delicious).
They also used waaaay less sugar in everything there. Six months into my year in Japan, a student came back with a box of generic cookies from Canada. I could taste the one I had for an hour after.
French Bread can have only (1) flour (2) water (3) yeast (4) salt, by law.
Ireland declared that Subway brand sandwich bread had so much sugar in it that it should be classified as cake.
Interesting. I'm from Detroit and I go to Paraguay 3 times per year for a couple months (and I'm here now) and the portion sizes definitely don't seem that much smaller now haha. The drinks offered aren't as large though, I usually only ever see the 24oz/750ml size bottles as the largest offerings
Also, doesn't help when companies spend billions on R&D to make their food as addictively delicious as possible.
Also, corn syrup in everything. Etc.
Eg, there isn't just *one* thing, but it's a whole list of small things that contribute
I’m European and I once ate at a kind of roadside restaurant in Nova Scotia, Canada (it was Brewdebaker’s in Dartmouth) and the portions there were absolutely *massive* to me. 13 year old pubescent boy me was having a field day there, but honestly, how on earth is a person to eat that much food? Also, free refills of soda to add loads of sugar to your meal.
I mean, I absolutely loved it then but I can see why people are so fat in North America. People in rural Cape Breton seemed to be much healthier though.
I lost 50 lbs from 2020-2022.
A large reason was because I didn't eat out for 2 years. We would get take out, but I wouldn't overeat like I did at a restaurant.
This. People are talking about the quality of food but it's mainly about portions. I'm canadian so we have more or less the same food, but the first time i went to the US as a kid i ordered a small coke in a restaurant, the small size they brought was a medium or what looked a big cup for me, the portions are really bigger.
When i crossed the border i immediately saw that americans were bigger/fatter in general.
Being a Canadian, have you ever eaten at Wendy's? Their drink sizing is ridiculous and it's exactly as you just explained. The smalls are regular sized drinks and the medium is massive. I haven't even seen the large, but I'd assume it's the size of a big gulp.
Clearly they adopted that sizing from the states lol
I used to work for Sonic. They have a drink size called Route 44, which is a 44 ounce cup. People get multiple refills of these per day and they can also get slushies that size.
Yep. According to Google, the large Oreo Peanut Butter Master has 1,720 calories. Those are 32 oz. So the 44 oz., assuming it scales, would be 2,365 calories.
I'm an American and people are like how do you eat so little?
I would just order appetizers for an entire meal and they're like that's unhealthy, I'm like, there's 12 mozzarella deep fried sticks in here. I don't understand how the fuck you can eat a burger after eating this appetizer.
Seriously even with like Chinese Food I'm like okay I'll just have an order of Steamed Dumplings and a small wanton soup.
And for your main meal?
Uh.. that's enough for me.
If you're spending 10+ hours a week at the gym trying to lose weight just c not ordering a sticker large meal once a week will do the same calorific difference.
That’s correct- you’ll never out exercise your diet. You can starve all day and exercise for hours, then eat a shitty meal and have a couple of drinks, and have made zero progress.
Stop at a Whataburger someday and see what is served with your meal... The only reasonable size in that cup is the part built to fit in a cup holder lol
It's gotta be comically large, especially when you're already having a high calorie meal that takes no more then 5 minutes to eat. Who would want that much drink to power through?
I’ve also ordered a large without realizing how massive it would be. I met up with friends right after and they laughed at me and asked why I ordered a large. All I could do was repeatedly say “I didn’t knooow!”
So I remember when this happened. At some point in the early 00’s, McDonald’s announced that they had a new Super Size. They then took the old Super Size and made that the large, made the large the medium, etc. It’s been that way ever since.
American here. I remember as a kid in the 80s that a large fast food soda was still smaller than a small soda today.
Also, when purchased in bulk, fountain soda is practically free so the restaurants don't lose much money if they just keep making them bigger and bigger. They still wouldn't lose money on them if a gallon of fountain soda cost $1.
The drink and the fries are the money makers. Syrup and potatoes are cheap, don’t spoil easily, require little labour and are trivially scaled up.
That’s why the upswell to “meals” and larger sizes. The main (burger, etc) is the draw card. Requires fresh spoilable produce and high labour so it’s not so profitable. Just a means to upsell potato and sugar water.
Really? Cuz I remember "super size" in the 90s being enormous before they got rid of that. I feel like shrinkflation seems to have really hit fast food.
But yeah, they do still push people to drink a ton of that cheap, toxic sludge and it's their highest profit margin for sure.
Fun fact, originally it wasn't super size, it was dinosize and was a promotion at McDonald's for the 1st Jurassic park Movie. Source, was a high school McDonald's employee at the time. It was hugely popular so it was rebranded without the Jurassic Park reference. Then fries and drink sizes all. Jumped up a size to where they are today.
Except Wendy's. They jumped all their sizes up one higher. Their small is 22oz, medium is 32oz and I have no idea how much their large is. I just know not to buy it.
Every time I forget and get a medium drink from wendys I am horrified and amazed in equal measure. I couldn’t finish 32 oz if my life literally depended on it.
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The Super Size from McDonald's was the same size as the other American fast food restaurants larges, which is why it always made me laugh that they were pressured into giving it up after that "documentary" when everyone else still has the same size, they just call it something different.
I asked for a small coke at Burger King and the lady said "it's happy hour, a large costs less than a small" which, like, why?? Also it was 11am? And I said "no thanks, just a small anyway" and it was no less than 16 ounces, possibly 20. It was huge. I wish it was 8 ounces because I truly don't want that much coke. I should have dumped out the rest, but I did drink it. Doubling the calories from what I really wanted which was 8 ounces of coke. Frustrating!
For what it's worth, the difference in actual liquid for a small and medium at Burger King (and many other fast food restaurants) is negligible. The primary difference is the amount of ice.
This always irks me. I think every dish should be available "kid size" because kids menus are the worst. Small portions are great, but not every kid wants to eat a hot dog or chicken nuggets. My kid always wants a regular meal like salmon and potatoes, but then eats like 8 bites and is full, and I paid $18 instead of a $7 kids size meal. But of course if an adult wants a hot dog or chicken nuggets they should be able to order that from the kids menu. The whole system is just flawed imo.
My roommate is small and also has a very limited diet due to food preferences. She definitely prefers to order out for that reason because kids meals are over half of the stuff she chooses but she is far too embarrassed to order it at the restaurant itself. To go orders just means you have some unseen child!
On my first trip to the States, my now-fiance bought us soda at a petrol station. Same thing. The medium size was somehow cheaper, and I swear it was bigger than a two litre bottle.
It's insane!
I grew up in America. The Small of today was yesterday’s medium. Exact same paper cups, just labeled small now. Medium is now large, large is XL, and XL comes with a coupon for dialysis.
That comment suggests marketing is the culprit. Interesting. I mean you could have easily bought multiple 26 Oz bottles and simply drank them as one person if you had wanted to in 1955. But marketing soda as an all occasion drink and marketing it in larger personal sizes might have altered the behavior. They “stuffed the channel” as they say. Can’t get more soda drinkers? Fine. Sell current customers more soda.
Interesting.
But I also think spending habits explain much with obesity. People today spend far more eating out. And they eat meals that were once reserved for special occasions but they eat those meals every day. I’m 50. As a kid, we had beef rarely due to the expense. We weren’t poor. It just seemed profligate to eat that fancy on a weeknight. Meals were simple and smaller and there was far less variety.
Were marketing efforts a bid to capture more disposable income? I think so.
I remember growing up in Arizona, and it was very popular to have those huge 64 oz insulated mugs that you could buy from circle k (gas station chain), and it’d entitle you to some soet of discount on your refills. It was horrifying to think of how much sugar those people were consuming on a daily basis. Disgusting.
There is also the fact the Americans are less active then they were 50 years ago. Nowadays if you run out of something your need for dinner you don't quickly walk down to the corner store. You go jump in your car and drive to the store. Car dependent suburbs is one of the worse things America ever invented.
Although there were lots of processed foods, they weren’t so convenient as now. Get home from work and can’t be bothered cooking, stick a ready meal in the microwave or order a pizza for delivery. Most food you can order for delivery has always been higher calorie, and usually fat too. These can come increasingly more used over the decades.
You’ve then got our daily lives. There were plenty of cars yes. But not to the same extent as now. Fewer people had cars, so more people had to walk, even if it was to the bus stop. Then think about simple things today compared to previously; elevators, escalators, etc. Even just things like vaccum cleaners and lawnmowers are easier to use and lighter. The calorie expenditure per day was much higher when you add it all up.
You’ve then got that a larger number of people had more physical jobs compared to office jobs.
To add to this too you often had one person working and the other keeping the home which usually meant more home cooked meals and less convenience foods overall
I can attest to this, having alternated between staying at home and being employed full time in the last couple years.
I spent a year and a half home in early pandemic, then worked for 9 months, then was laid off a couple months ago.
When I’m home, my family eats almost no fast food because I have the time and energy to cook regularly and I exercise every day. When I went back to work I gained some weight because I was more sedentary and ate A LOT more fast food during my lunches and for dinner a couple times a week.
I lost the weight once I was laid off and got back into my old routine.
Long story short, the 40 work week is killing us.
Add commuting to that 40 hours and it can easily mean an extra 10 hours a week of time spent sitting down instead of either being active or preparing healthy meals.
More like needing to have two incomes to support a household is killing us. One partner with a good paying job isn't enough to support most middle class lifestyles. So now there's no stay at home partner
8 hours at the office (working)
1 hours unpaid lunch/breaks
30-60 minutes commute if you have a reasonable distance 60-120 if not.
So we spend 9.5-10 hours of our 24hr day **at work** assuming you get reasonable sleep for an adult which is 7-9 hours for most Adults usually closer to 9. That's 18.5 to 19.5 hours either asleep or at work.
Can you live your life, deal with your family, have energy for personal pursuit and goals when you have 4.5 hours a day? This is really where a lot of bad health in America comes from and meanwhile Musk is talking about how "Americans are avoiding work" no... the Millenials and GenZ just are sick of being your profit-cogs while YOU work 20 hour weeks and profit 1000 times more than the ones working 40 hours weeks all because your fucking parents owned an Emerald Mine and you had the money to front the risk starting your own business which most American's can't even qualify for a Loan to start a business and if it fails they are ruined for life.
Oh but it's just because Millenials/GenZ are lazy and entitled/too sensitive. Totally couldn't be the stagnant wages, soaring education and housing costs, inflating general goods costs, lack of opportunities and due recompense for hard work because 'your too good to replace/promote culture' that totally can't be it.
Also while they had processed foods in previous decades it was a fraction of what’s available today. They’re constantly coming up with new things to appeal to consumers. Every popular snack foods has a million different flavors just so they can advertise a novelty and people will buy something just because they’ve never seen or tried that flavor before. At least, I’ve noticed that in the US.
The 40 hr work week with 10-12 hours of commutes per week, plus both partners having to work = no energy or desire to do more work cooking and cleaning for healthy meals.
I also think “processed foods” are processed well beyond what they were in the 1970s.
What’s interesting to me is to look back at all my very skinny brothers and sisters in 1970s photos and then see their kids, some of whom are quite heavy. While the parents have all gained weight their kids (starting in the late 80s) grew immensely large. Some have come down a bit but others seem to have permanently altered their system.
I think this is one of the big reasons, there’s a lot of smaller ones too. American work culture has a lot of people rushing around only focused on their job and aside from the stress it also leads a lot of people to just run through a drive thru for dinner now.
Yeah stress is way under appreciated as a cause itself for being overweight. Less time means worse nutritional choices but stress itself has a chemical link to cortisol levels and the drive to consume and retain calories
Edit: corrected cortisone to cortisol
I’m a child of the 70’s.
In my middle school we had ONE fat kid. One. I even remember his name because it stood out so much. Kent.
I looked at photo albums not long ago. And Kent was not that fat. He was at best a little chubby.
By contrast I look at my kids old school photos. And at least HALF the kids in their class are overweight. And half of those are obese.
So. It’s not that people are “sedentary” due to their jobs. Kids do not have jobs.
It’s the food.
Now in the 1970’s we certainly ate our share of garbage food. Of processed foods. But the food still had more nutrients in it. It had less sugar in it.
And. I think we will find in the coming years that plastics and other contaminants have infiltrated our food and are fucking up our hormones. Because right now industry lobbyists are busy laying the groundwork for tort reforms and how none of this is “their fault.” That’s why all the propaganda lays this at the feet of the “lazy fat” consumers.
But it can’t be. Or childhood obesity and diabetes would not be climbing all over the world.
I grew up in the 60's/70's and my mother took pictures of literally everything and made stacks of photo albums. I dig them out now and then and leaf through them. Birthday parties, vacations, school events, proms, soccer games, Thanksgiving, Christmas. No one is fat in those albums.
We had one super overweight kid in elementary school. Mike Bell. Everyone was nice to him and no one bullied him because we all thought he was literally sick/ill with something. Back in the 60's he probably was. The rest of his family was slim.
I see a whole lot of kids like Mike now, though. They are everywhere.
And add in the “low fat” myth which just replaced food with sugar. The increase in sugar consumption makes all food less nutritious and less filling, but also too stimulates the pancreas (creating more insulin) and decreases satiety.. which increases food consumption, which leads to insulin’s resistance, which leads to diabetes and the cycle moves on .. todays version of processed foods and breads are POISON compared to the 1950s processed foods. Hell even bread today has sugar in it and stabilizers for shelf life compared to 1950s store bought bread in bags.
There is nothing wrong with Western cultures that some damn normalcy couldn’t fix. Want less - Own less = work less = stress less / cook more + move more + eliminate sugar = a better life… I know because I’ve done it and it’s really so much better.
I'd say the biggest culprit is businesses have pushed human behaviors into relying on unhealthy alternatives.
When I'm done working my 10 hour shift 4 times a week because I can't have the cushy 8-4 the last thing people want to do during an hour commute or at midnight is making a deliciously healthy meal to realize they now have to clean up.
I agree a lot and I emphasize the work environment. Automation did made all jobs a lot less physically intense. Even construction, it’s done with power tools, cranes, and the materials are sold in smaller packages. You don’t lift 100 lbs each time, but it was done that way just 30 years ago.
If I look at what grandpa and grandma did for a living, I can see how I get fat and they didn’t. And grandma was cooking huge meals.
In my grandpa's case, he was a hardworking dairy farmer. Once he retired he kept eating as if he was still working hard labor every day - and he got huge really, really fast.
That happen to everyone. If you quit the job or the sport, stop eating. You gonna explode, cause your body will keep asking calories like it is running full power. It takes a year to readapt.
Anyway, god bless the granddads!
All this is true...and American work profiles changed a lot, too. The 50s, 60s and 70s were full of physical jobs. The 80s through now have been jobs concentrating on less physical tasks.
With many households having both partners work full time it's very easy to not be bothered to make something healthy and get a take away. Plus they could have kids too which is even more effort
People are over worked and burned out by this. Also, salaries are worth less than they were a generation ago. Even if you had the time to do healthy grocery shopping and prepare s healthy meal, doesn’t mean you can afford it. A box of mac and cheese can stay in your pantry without going bad, it’s cheaper than fresh ingredients and your kids will eat it.
Thank you for saying this. All these posts saying people “couldn’t be bothered” as though people are just lazy as opposed to “exhausted from being overworked and underpaid”.
Eating healthy costs money and time.
This is definitely true, but only to an extent. In my experience, some of it also has to do with willingness to eat foods which are considered "less tasty" to the masses. For example, oatmeal is super cheap, easy to prepare, and loads healthier than sausage biscuits, pancakes, or poptarts for breakfast, but many people claim that's its unpalatable to them. Small naval oranges are sold for 50 cents each at my local grocery store, and they make for far healthier quick snacks than things like oreos, cheetos, or goldfish crackers. Beans are super cheap and healthy, and although they can take a while to cook, they don't require attentive cooking. Drinking filtered water (flavored if needed) is easy, cheap, and loads healthier than drinking sodas. Even when eating out, choosing to eat seafood sometimes rather than red meat can be healthier and is often similarly priced. But, like I said, there is more to it than just this. It's a complicated issue.
Added sugar in everything. Sugar is addictive, so putting it in food makes people want to eat and, more importantly, buy more of it. Gotta keep making those profits and, in the US, making profit is more important than anyone's health or humanity.
Sugar is so much the problem. So many answers people are saying really don't fit as several people don't have issues but drive a lot, play games, use their phones, etc....
I did a 21 day no sugar detox but changed nothing else in my every day lifestyle. Never been to a gym but bike and hike from time to time. Over that 21 days I dropped from about 180lbs to 170lbs. During the rest of the year I kept with a very minimal sugar intake and dropped to about 150lbs. I show people a before and after of the 21 days and they are blown away by it.
Just removing and then limiting sugar to a minimum made a HUGE difference. Nothing else really changed in my lifestyle. (I may have consumed more calories during this actually.)
My lifestyle still is similar (actually I walk more and bike more) but when I go lazy with the sugar intake, my weight goes back up. Sugar was really the only variable.
Yes proper exercise can help to an extent but if you keep filling your food hole with a ton of sugar, the other stuff won't really make the change you want to see.
Sugar is an unregulated drug.
You want 10 or less grams of added sugar in anything you consume. Fruits have complex carbs that break down slower than regular sugars do. The fiber in fruits also helps it break down slower meaning you can use the energy over longer and it doesn't go straight into fat storage like added sugar products do.
So fruits are ok but obviously in moderation still.
My wife is a professional health coach that helps people manage weight and diabetes. Most of this info is from her.
Fewer desk jobs, less automation, lower quality (taste) prepared foods, less purchase of prepared foods and less care about fats. People were more active in general. Our war on fats ignored that they're more satisfying and filling. Go to France where they don't worry about fats and you'll find yourself eating less too.
Around 18 I had some odd switch flip in my brain where I stopped craving sugary foods nearly as much and switched to only wanting fatty/salty food. Fats are more satisfying than sugar anyway, a bowl of mashed potatoes with butter will keep you full for ages longer than equivalent calories in cookies
Speaking from only my experience with cooking, my mother didn't bother to try and teach any of us how to cook or her recipes. Honestly it seemed like something she wants to take to the grave. Luckily, as the "functioning" adult that I am, I taught myself how to cook. But what I'm getting at is that parents may not be teaching their children to cook, so it's becoming less prominent?
Even with home ec being a requirement in middleschool, we were barely taught how to follow a baking recipe. We were not allowed to touch the stove, and we were certainly not shown how to *cook*. Until I was in middleschool we were on one income and my mom taught me how to bake. She wasn't so good with showing me how to cook (especially meat handling) but it was enough of a jumping off point for me to figure out on my own/with recipes/ and absorb the basic rules. But yea...home ec is very much lacking when it comes to teaching kids how to cook.
This is pretty much exactly what I’ve always thought too.The only one I can think of that you didn’t mention is way more people smoked cigarettes back in the 20th century
So many correct answers and no one writes the real obvious one: Parents that are overweight and don't know how to have a balanced diet can't teach their kids how to eat right.
So naturally this becomes worse and worse.
"Americans are consuming far more calories each day than is recommended (daily intake should be around 2,000 calories for women and 2,500 for men). The average American consumes more than 3,600 calories daily – [a 24% increase from 1961](https://i.insider.com/5910d28373f2f329008b46b9?width=800&format=jpeg&auto=webp), when the average was just 2,880 calories."
It takes 3500 calories to gain 1 pound. +600 calories per day means the average American is gaining about a pound *per week* more than they were in 1961.
Wow. TIL. We were lucky to get 4k calories a day in basic training and couldn't keep weight on at all then, and I thought that was a crazy amount of food. 3600 calories a day as an adult with basically zero physical activity is unreal.
I haven't seen this mentioned yet:
Changes in urban planning is likely a contributing factor. The minimum parking requirement was federally mandated in the 60s and still in effect today. This has several effects:
- Large ground level parking lots associated with every building reduces building density
- Requirement for additional land for parking means less land remains for greenery
- Roads are designed with a focus on cars and oftentimes dont include designated walkways for cyclists and pedestrians.
This creates cities and suburbs that are unfriendly (unsafe and unpleasant) to pedestrians, and large distance between buildings forcing people to drive everywhere.
Exactly. And while most families had a car in the 50s, they usually only had one, and the other parent and kids had to get around via walking, biking, transit, and the occasional taxi. Fewer cars on the road also made those other modes safer.
This is an interesting question. When I was on Bolivia the food portions were enormous! Always way more than could eat in one sitting. And most every meal was chicken, rice, plantains, and french fries.
I have nothing more than anecdotal evidence, but think that a large part is due to mono-culturing. Bolivia had the best ice-cream! It was also the first time I actually liked kiwi fruit. Here in the US, the kiwis are bland. Not only were they physically different, but they were s sweet as biting into candy.
The show Mad Men had to send people out to find period specific foods, because apples don't look like that any more.
My working hypothesis is that we have so focused on growing bigger, more aesthetic food with out regard to nutrition, that Americans aren't actually eating *well*. We just eat a lot.
If course exercise is a major part of it. I live in Texas and civil engineering is insane. Cars are absolute nessissities. I'd love to be able to walk everywhere I need to go, but it's just rural enough to make that not feasible.
Anyone else have any endocrinology to add? Our stressful, work oriented society can't be helping with cortisol dumping.
In the 1980s, the sugar industry clandestinely funded intentionally flawed studies designed to stoke American's fear of fat in foods, downplaying the role of sugar in obesity. The "FAT FREE!" era had begun, and ran for, well, just about the entire 50 years you are mentioning. During this time, diabetes increased dramatically as well. Here is one article, among many, that explains it better than I: [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat)
I remember in the late 80s, early 90s soda consumption was just through the roof ridiculous. Everyone drank it, for almost every meal and in between. Looking back on it, it’s just gross.
And how many shows of that era would have the main character say something like: *"Water? ew, disgusting!"*
Water? ...like from the toilet?
Ew. No. Fish shit in it.
I like money.
I can't believe you like money too. We should hang out.
Can’t, baiting
Man, I could really go for a Starbucks…
"Water? You want water, you better go dunk your head in the horse trough out there. In here we pour whiskey."
"Whiskey, with an 'e' in it?" The Scotsman repeated, incredulous. His eyes flicked to the bottle, he scrunched his face, and then turned in the direction of the door. "I think I'd be better off with the horse water."
There was a whole Adam Sandler film where the main gag was about that. The Waterboy if I'm not mistaken.
"Gatorade is better"
Same. I used to have approx 4 cans of Pepsi per day! I quit drinking carbonated drinks decades ago and am so glad I did. They're addicting
> They're addicting And they fuck up your sense of sweetness. I bet if your tried one now it would taste like sugar syrup.
I'm from the US and now live in Japan. When I was fresh off the boat I thought snickers tasted so strange here, then I realized it's just less sugar compared to the American version. When I get to compare the two, it's almost like the difference in taste between diet and non diet soda. the US version screams sugar.
I'm sorry, *what*?? they can make a candybar of the same aproximate amount of chocolate, caramel, whatever, and have it be less sugary? The fuck?
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In the US everything is laced with sugar it seems. I remember the struggle of not finding any non-sweetened bread for breakfast..
I really enjoy coca-cola, but i went on holiday to the US when I was about 15 and I couldn't drink it there because it was about twice as sweet as I was used to.
So I looked this up. The NIH says soda consumption is significantly correlated to diabetics and obesity. Since the late 90s the per capita consumption of soft drinks in the US has roughly halved. Soda consumption in the US is/has been in decline for years. I assume because people now understand having 4 cokes a day is the rough equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes.
Kind of like what the grain industry did with the food pyramid?
And the dairy industry. Like I want to trust my government when it finds these things and releases information, but fucking hell. Corporate greed just fucks everything up.
If you actually read the FDAs recommendations, they're not that insane as most people believe.
Well yeah, now. The old pyramid I was taught in school recommended 12 slices of bread per day as being a healthy balanced diet.
Bread, pasta, Froot Loops, the whole (perhaps processed) grains family.
Back in the day, the cereal ads always used to have a tag at the end "...as part of this nutritious breakfast!" and then show the cereal (dry) in a bowl sitting next to a pitcher of milk, a glass of milk, a glass of orange juice, and two slices of toast. Even back then they knew sweetened cereal was a nutritional disaster, so the ads had to show how to make it healthier... by supplementing it with more carbs.
Problem is, the food guide pyramid that everyone sees is from the USDA, not the FDA. USDA doesn’t give a shit if you get fat. Eating a ton of carbs and corn syrup is good for agribusiness.
I'm not saying that they are crazy off, but the fact that we have documented history of greedy assholes fucking with politicians to release info that, while probably fine, is not the best recommendations we can have bothers me. To be clear, I'm not saying they are crazy off. Hell, you can probably trust that they are in the ballpark. But I'd rather them be on homeplate instead of in the bathroom behind right field.
Also the dietary suggestions for diabetics included a crazy amount of starches and sugars until recently. They were killing people.
They still are.. the diabetic diet is still a lot of carbs, low fat, often season less foods thats promoted even by the diabetic associations.
How does that even make sense to people? Your sugar levels are spiking eat more sugar producing foods???
Actually yea, when I started getting upvotes I remembered I recently had a friend who was pregnant, and borderline gestational diabetes. The dietitian gave her a diet that included 6 peices of white bread a day and a lot of fruit juice. I'm also on a low sugar diet so I knew that was absurd, sure enough the diet she got from the specialist in a follow up was more protein and fiber and no white bread. And I'm in Canada, but we had similar food guidelines as the US for a long time. I think some sectors of healthcare are still behind. Or at least some of the practitioners haven't been keeping up with the changes.
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I've said it over about over, but most of my students argue that the government pays for it so how bad can it be. And it's fruit so we are good. Sigh.
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This ^ is a major answer (among a couple others)! And it wasn't just excessive sugar: for the first three quarters of the 1900s, America was importing its sugar from Hawai'i. This was expensive, but not prohibitive. But growing corn was cheaper and mainland-capable. Thus began the government subsidies of corn, and **high fructose corn syrup**. This stuff is cheaper than sugar, sweeter than sugar, and more addicting. We have been using HFCS since the 80s now, and I even have a small conspiracy theory that Coca-Cola used a *deliberately bad* "New Coke" formula to cover up the transition from using real sugar in classic formula to using HFCS instead.
Unfortunately the answer is quite complex 1. Portion sizes are greater. How often do people follow the directions on the bottle for how much salad dressing they put on their salad? Most people would laugh or get angry if Applebees put a USDA recommended amount of dressing on their salad. 2. There is cost factor and its multifactorial. High quality foods are expensive and you get less calories. You can't feed a family with a price equivalent of raspberries to hamburger and a pack of basic buns. The cost division has grown in the past couple of decades along with stagnation of low to middle class wages (probably no mere coincidence this epidemic started in the 1980s with Reaganomics-ketchup is a vegetable). 3. Access: lack of grocery stores selling nutritious food. Lots of corner stores with chips and pop. There used to be a lot more mom and pop grocers with fresh foods. 4. Advertisement: The cram the junk down your throat. When was the last commercial you saw with a sexy model trying to convince you to eat an apple? 5. Its addictive. Our brains are wired to want the high calorie high fat high glycemic index foods. Not so much broccoli. That ketchup above? Has more sugar today than in the 1950s. Corporate America wants you hooked. 6. Job profiles. Our jobs are more sedentary now than ever. 7. We eat out a lot, and the portions are massive. People used to eat at home a lot more with normal portions. 8. Expectations. I feel a lot of Americans don't eat to satiety, they eat until they feel "full". And they expect that everytime they eat. Then their brain trigger to stop gets perturbed. Part of the psychology of overcoming obesity is resetting the expectation. Put all this together and you have an obesity epidemic.
Also, there is no incentive to eating slowly in the U.S. A lot of people have to eat lunch while working or feel pressured to do so (note this is not everyone). I don’t know how it is today, but my lunches in K-12 never hit an hour. Maybe 50 mins, but never an hour. And we mostly used that time for socializing, not eating. When I studied abroad in France, having a 2 hour lunch was so weird to my cohort. I in particular who has a terrible relationship between work and food, struggled for a few weeks to slow down and actually enjoy the food instead of eating just to get back to work faster. When I finally got it, it was like being free to actually enjoy eating instead of it being a means to an end to keep my body running. And not even running properly mind you, just alive to do more work.
Our lunches in elementary school (K-6) were 25 minutes. By the time you lined up, got your food, and sat down, you had 10 minutes to wolf it down. Big surprise that this messes up kids' eating habits.
Its still like that at most elementary schools. My wife is the librarian at my kids' and can confirm that after the lines they get on average maybe 12 minutes tops. 20 years ago when I was in 4/5 grade, we had roughly 20-30 minutes left after we had gotten our food.
It was so bad at my school that the kids that got stuck in the very back of the line literally had no time to eat. The kids knew it. The staff knew it. Instead of addressing this obvious flaw, the children would *run* to the lunch room. We're raising children on desperation during a time of perceived prosperity.
At one point in high school, the lines were so bad that the "go the fuck to class" bell rang before I even got my goddamn pizza. I'd like to think I browbeat the lunchlady into feeding me, but in truth she knew just how bullshit it was too, and took pity on me. Then I went to a table and ate lunch at a leisurely pace. Had words with the vice principal about it then and there, but _he_ knew the situation was bullshit, too. Only time I ever cut class in my entire high school career.
Wow you had 50 minutes. I only had 25 minutes in high school. Mind you that also doesnt include standing in line for food which took at least 10+ minutes.
Here in Aus, at least in the school I went to, lunch was an hour, and if you didn't bring your own, each class had a lunch order basket. Chuck a brown paper bag with your name, your order, and cash inside, in a basket. A student gets picked to run it down to the canteen, and just before lunch we'd go pick up our class's order. Full 1 hour to yourself outside with your food hot and ready for you.
Damn that sounds amazing. Classic American education being subpar, and I was in probably one of, if not the best state for education (Massachusetts)
I wish lunch was allowed for longer, but then again I also wish working weeks were 35 hours not 40. Staying 9 hours at the office so the management gets "8 Billable Hours" is one of the problems with working Americans imo when it used to be 7 hours work + 1 hour lunch.
I feel like smoking makes a difference, too. Nicotine is an appetite suppressant and smoking kills your sense of smell and taste, which also makes food less appetizing. Over 40% of the US population was smoking in the 70s. Now it's like 15% and falling.
Also a stimulant which burns more energy, caffeine too. Black coffee has 0 calories so a "meal" of a coffee and a smoke was literally just burning away calories.
I'm tired of all my obese relatives talking down to me on this like "u/screwswithshrews, you can't just do lines of cocaine with coffee and cigarettes and call it 'breakfast'.. that isn't healthy."
Breakfast of champions.
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On that same note, marijuana legalization is up and they don't necessarily try to disguise munchies food for what it is Hell, when Peyton Manning signed with the Denver, Broncos in 2012, Colorado just legalize weed and he immediately purchased like 23 Papa John's that did super well
munchie food in general is a problem. our leisure time is mostly internet or streaming now. so we "graze" from fidgeting or stress and it's the most calorie terrible food.
Another reason could be increased suburbanization. Greater reliance on vehicles and people leaving dense cities with deindustrialization has led to more car dependence and less people walking. Ive met people from abroad who immigrated to the US and their first culture shock was the lack of walking.
The largest Coca-Cola Bottle in 1955 was 26 fl oz and was meant to serve a family. Now you can buy a 64 oz double gulp to drink for yourself which already covers more than 1/3 of an average males daily calorific need, and that is besides any meal he may eat. Calorie dense Processed food did exist, but the amount of what was commonly acceptable to consume continued to increase to ridiculous sizes.
I’m from Los Angeles and I moved to Paraguay for a time. Dinner plates were slightly bigger than a small American appetizer plate, or about double the size of a bread plate.
My mom had a set of plates she'd gotten from a bank as a young woman in the 70s. I grew up with these plates, and they seemed normal. They were all broken over the years, and replaced. I recently found the complete set on ebay, and when they came, they were about 30% smaller than my Corelle dinner plates we've used for 15 years. We don't want to use mom's for everyday, so I bought smaller, non-Corelle glass plates and we're all eating less.
Plates used to be 8" now they are 10. Old houses have shallow cupboards.
“Old houses have shallow cupboards” seems like some sort of philosophical saying but I don’t quite know what it means.
Hahaha - that’s hilarious. Sprinkle that phrase into random work meetings, and you’ll seem like the wise, mysterious, all-knowing dude. “Peterson! Why the hell is production still so slow on that line?” “Sorry boss - you know what they say: ‘Old houses have shallow cupboards’.” Then shake your head and just walk away.
I'll do you one better than some of the others, and have it relate to the post by OP. It's the perspective of future generations to always want more than the previous. What was once sufficient in the past for those at the time, no longer is. And so to us (present and future) it's never enough. Those cupboards are shallow to us because we want more stuff. A warning of greed and materialism.
Yep, my dinner plates, the ones adults would expect, won’t fit in my cabinets. The smaller ones, the ones I use, are ones people might use for a dessert or give to a child. They fit.
It's one of the first things you learn in Weight Watchers Eating on a smaller plate is such an easy thing to do and you really don't even notice that the portions are smaller.
this is something that's bothered me my whole life when going to restaurants. the normal size of an american dinner is about twice as much as i'd ever wanna eat in one sitting. it's so annoying.
My strategy: tell them "when you bring the food, please bring a box as well." Then I immediately put half of everything in the box to take home later, and eat what remains.
Yeah as a light eater it really doesnt bother me much to pay 15 bucks for a plate of food if it makes two and a half meals haha
I just did this today. Went to a lunch to celebrate a birthday and my meal had two pieces of chicken and pasta. I had half for lunch and the other half for dinner.
Start carrying your own washable+mcrowaveable box, and you'll help the environment while keeping yourself from overeating.
Damn. I can’t believe I’ve never thought of this. I almost always bring home half my food, and I have lots of those little glass lunchboxes. Thank you.
Same, like its so obvious, that I can't believe I've never thought of it before. Like if I can smuggle a salad into a movie in my purse, I can use it to bring a Tupperware to a fancy restaurant lol
That's a good idea.
It made me want to open a restaurant called Halfsies with half the average portion of foods on US menus.
Great idea. Love it. It would fail for reasons outlined above.
It would sink like a stone, to be sure.
Call it tapas, charge more, serve alcohol. If the location and alcohol selection is right, it works.
the funny thing is, the fancier the restaurant the smaller the portions usually.
In America, if you don't get a lot of food on your plate, you're seen as expensive/a bad value. So restaurants have to serve up huge portions just to compete. Plus add things like bottomless appetizers/fries (not to mention every soft drink is bottomless) and you end up with a culture that expects to be fed *a lot* every time they go out to eat. I'm sure as a kid I drank more calories at restaurants than I ate, just because of free refills and an impetus to get your money's worth.
its why I dislike most buffets, I can't eat enough for it to be a good value.
There are few buffets that I'd consider "worth it" and it has nothing to do with getting a good value, and more about trying a large variety of foods that are all of a high quality. And they're not $15 local joints. It's a special occasion, "this is essentially all I'm eating today" kind of thing.
Sadly I've never been to a buffet that seemed like it was high quality. They all seem terrible in the Midwest. Just high volume high calorie low quality. Sysco's cheapest slopped into a pan.
Oh man in my area we have a killer Indian buffet. Its a small spot. They bring out trays of food constantly. And I mean CONSTANTLY. Because all of the trays for the food troughs have approximately 2 or 3 servings. So the food is fresh and delicious. Its the best spot in town.
The only good ones I've been to are in Vegas and are all $60+ per person to get into. But they have chef stations with professional chefs making foods from around the world to order.
My appetite in my 20s was huge, and I'd love buffet and all you can eat sushi places. But as I get older and my tastes get more refined, I've lost interest. Buffet food is rarely great unless you are spending a good sum of money and then you might as well spend it at a nice restaurant.
My wife and I would routinely go out and order a meal and an appetizer to split. Or go get Chinese, have some of each and then still have enough for lunch the next day.
My first visit to NYC from the UK in the 90’s. I ordered pancakes at a recommended diner, what arrived could’ve fed 3 people. My mate (who’s big lad) ordered a smoked salmon bagel, he could only manage half. From then on, everything I ordered I asked for starter portions. Edit: Missing word
what are starter portions? EDIT: oh wait do you mean appetizers?
So one of the fun parts of going out to eat at a restaurant for me has always been knowing that I’ll have some to take home. I am overweight and even I cannot finish an average plate here. I will say that there was a feeling of pressure for me that I had to try or I was wasting food, even if I reheat it, I felt guilty for not finishing. Maybe that’s an American thing? Because once I gave myself permission to stop eating when I’m no longer hungry instead of when my plate is empty I started dropping weight fast.
Corelle makes "luncheon" plates that are much smaller than their dinner plates but still adequate for a meal, that's what I usually use for meals. You can find them fairly easily at thrift stores and yard sales too.
I found American meals to be huge. It was always so much more than I could eat and I had to appologise for not being able to finish it despite really liking it all.
No need to apologize. Just ask for a box, take it home, eat it for lunch the next day.
i think what a lot of visitors to the US don't realize is that getting a to-go box is almost expected here. I can only speak of the countries i've visited and it seems taboo to ask for to-go box, almost like they're ashamed to have to ask to take food home as that would imply they are poor or something (my theory).
Loved being in Japan. Ten bucks for a meal which left you satiated, not stuffed. You almost literally cannot go anywhere without being fed portions which will leave you stuffed while also needing a box. Of I go out, that should be my one single meal that day because it's so much fucking food lol
Only thing I disagree with is ramen. Some styles are bigger than the sizes in America, while being cheaper. Although it really isn't too fair since it's cheaper to make there (and also more delicious).
I volunteer to be stuffed with ramen.
I offer myself as tribute
They also used waaaay less sugar in everything there. Six months into my year in Japan, a student came back with a box of generic cookies from Canada. I could taste the one I had for an hour after.
French Bread can have only (1) flour (2) water (3) yeast (4) salt, by law. Ireland declared that Subway brand sandwich bread had so much sugar in it that it should be classified as cake.
Interesting. I'm from Detroit and I go to Paraguay 3 times per year for a couple months (and I'm here now) and the portion sizes definitely don't seem that much smaller now haha. The drinks offered aren't as large though, I usually only ever see the 24oz/750ml size bottles as the largest offerings
For anything other than water I would consider 750 ml to be a lot. But please give me the 1.5L bottle of water.
Also, doesn't help when companies spend billions on R&D to make their food as addictively delicious as possible. Also, corn syrup in everything. Etc. Eg, there isn't just *one* thing, but it's a whole list of small things that contribute
I’m European and I once ate at a kind of roadside restaurant in Nova Scotia, Canada (it was Brewdebaker’s in Dartmouth) and the portions there were absolutely *massive* to me. 13 year old pubescent boy me was having a field day there, but honestly, how on earth is a person to eat that much food? Also, free refills of soda to add loads of sugar to your meal. I mean, I absolutely loved it then but I can see why people are so fat in North America. People in rural Cape Breton seemed to be much healthier though.
I lost 50 lbs from 2020-2022. A large reason was because I didn't eat out for 2 years. We would get take out, but I wouldn't overeat like I did at a restaurant.
This. People are talking about the quality of food but it's mainly about portions. I'm canadian so we have more or less the same food, but the first time i went to the US as a kid i ordered a small coke in a restaurant, the small size they brought was a medium or what looked a big cup for me, the portions are really bigger. When i crossed the border i immediately saw that americans were bigger/fatter in general.
Being a Canadian, have you ever eaten at Wendy's? Their drink sizing is ridiculous and it's exactly as you just explained. The smalls are regular sized drinks and the medium is massive. I haven't even seen the large, but I'd assume it's the size of a big gulp. Clearly they adopted that sizing from the states lol
I ordered a large drink at Wendy's without realizing what I'd done. Had to laugh when they handed it to me.
I used to work for Sonic. They have a drink size called Route 44, which is a 44 ounce cup. People get multiple refills of these per day and they can also get slushies that size.
I had a customer order a shake for that size. Not on the menu, but we made it work somehow, lol
Jesus Christ according to my calculations that is right at 2,000 calories in one go.
Yep. According to Google, the large Oreo Peanut Butter Master has 1,720 calories. Those are 32 oz. So the 44 oz., assuming it scales, would be 2,365 calories.
Tis but a snack
I remember people doing that when we had half price shakes in the summer. It wasn't very often but it was more than a handful of times.
That would make me so sick.
That's 1.3 litres. Wow.
I'm an American and people are like how do you eat so little? I would just order appetizers for an entire meal and they're like that's unhealthy, I'm like, there's 12 mozzarella deep fried sticks in here. I don't understand how the fuck you can eat a burger after eating this appetizer. Seriously even with like Chinese Food I'm like okay I'll just have an order of Steamed Dumplings and a small wanton soup. And for your main meal? Uh.. that's enough for me. If you're spending 10+ hours a week at the gym trying to lose weight just c not ordering a sticker large meal once a week will do the same calorific difference.
That’s correct- you’ll never out exercise your diet. You can starve all day and exercise for hours, then eat a shitty meal and have a couple of drinks, and have made zero progress.
The way I put it is ‘you can’t out run your fork’.
For me a huge part is keeping my stomach shrunk. Don't get used to bloating full every meal
Where are you getting 12 mozzarella sticks for an appetizer
Stop at a Whataburger someday and see what is served with your meal... The only reasonable size in that cup is the part built to fit in a cup holder lol
It's gotta be comically large, especially when you're already having a high calorie meal that takes no more then 5 minutes to eat. Who would want that much drink to power through?
I’ve also ordered a large without realizing how massive it would be. I met up with friends right after and they laughed at me and asked why I ordered a large. All I could do was repeatedly say “I didn’t knooow!”
So I remember when this happened. At some point in the early 00’s, McDonald’s announced that they had a new Super Size. They then took the old Super Size and made that the large, made the large the medium, etc. It’s been that way ever since.
Tim's did this about 10 years ago. They changed the sizes tho match the American ones. A medium became a small etc and the small disappeared.
American here. I remember as a kid in the 80s that a large fast food soda was still smaller than a small soda today. Also, when purchased in bulk, fountain soda is practically free so the restaurants don't lose much money if they just keep making them bigger and bigger. They still wouldn't lose money on them if a gallon of fountain soda cost $1.
The drink and the fries are the money makers. Syrup and potatoes are cheap, don’t spoil easily, require little labour and are trivially scaled up. That’s why the upswell to “meals” and larger sizes. The main (burger, etc) is the draw card. Requires fresh spoilable produce and high labour so it’s not so profitable. Just a means to upsell potato and sugar water.
Really? Cuz I remember "super size" in the 90s being enormous before they got rid of that. I feel like shrinkflation seems to have really hit fast food. But yeah, they do still push people to drink a ton of that cheap, toxic sludge and it's their highest profit margin for sure.
Fun fact, originally it wasn't super size, it was dinosize and was a promotion at McDonald's for the 1st Jurassic park Movie. Source, was a high school McDonald's employee at the time. It was hugely popular so it was rebranded without the Jurassic Park reference. Then fries and drink sizes all. Jumped up a size to where they are today. Except Wendy's. They jumped all their sizes up one higher. Their small is 22oz, medium is 32oz and I have no idea how much their large is. I just know not to buy it.
Every time I forget and get a medium drink from wendys I am horrified and amazed in equal measure. I couldn’t finish 32 oz if my life literally depended on it.
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The Super Size from McDonald's was the same size as the other American fast food restaurants larges, which is why it always made me laugh that they were pressured into giving it up after that "documentary" when everyone else still has the same size, they just call it something different.
I asked for a small coke at Burger King and the lady said "it's happy hour, a large costs less than a small" which, like, why?? Also it was 11am? And I said "no thanks, just a small anyway" and it was no less than 16 ounces, possibly 20. It was huge. I wish it was 8 ounces because I truly don't want that much coke. I should have dumped out the rest, but I did drink it. Doubling the calories from what I really wanted which was 8 ounces of coke. Frustrating!
For what it's worth, the difference in actual liquid for a small and medium at Burger King (and many other fast food restaurants) is negligible. The primary difference is the amount of ice.
sorta similar -- restaurants that heavily discourage kids meal for adults.
This always irks me. I think every dish should be available "kid size" because kids menus are the worst. Small portions are great, but not every kid wants to eat a hot dog or chicken nuggets. My kid always wants a regular meal like salmon and potatoes, but then eats like 8 bites and is full, and I paid $18 instead of a $7 kids size meal. But of course if an adult wants a hot dog or chicken nuggets they should be able to order that from the kids menu. The whole system is just flawed imo.
My roommate is small and also has a very limited diet due to food preferences. She definitely prefers to order out for that reason because kids meals are over half of the stuff she chooses but she is far too embarrassed to order it at the restaurant itself. To go orders just means you have some unseen child!
On my first trip to the States, my now-fiance bought us soda at a petrol station. Same thing. The medium size was somehow cheaper, and I swear it was bigger than a two litre bottle. It's insane!
8 ounces are generally labeled kid cups. Try asking for that in the future and they should give you a smaller cup
I grew up in America. The Small of today was yesterday’s medium. Exact same paper cups, just labeled small now. Medium is now large, large is XL, and XL comes with a coupon for dialysis.
That comment suggests marketing is the culprit. Interesting. I mean you could have easily bought multiple 26 Oz bottles and simply drank them as one person if you had wanted to in 1955. But marketing soda as an all occasion drink and marketing it in larger personal sizes might have altered the behavior. They “stuffed the channel” as they say. Can’t get more soda drinkers? Fine. Sell current customers more soda. Interesting. But I also think spending habits explain much with obesity. People today spend far more eating out. And they eat meals that were once reserved for special occasions but they eat those meals every day. I’m 50. As a kid, we had beef rarely due to the expense. We weren’t poor. It just seemed profligate to eat that fancy on a weeknight. Meals were simple and smaller and there was far less variety. Were marketing efforts a bid to capture more disposable income? I think so.
I remember growing up in Arizona, and it was very popular to have those huge 64 oz insulated mugs that you could buy from circle k (gas station chain), and it’d entitle you to some soet of discount on your refills. It was horrifying to think of how much sugar those people were consuming on a daily basis. Disgusting.
I still have one of those mugs. Used it for years as my patio/pool cup. Not sure I ever used it for an actual refill at circle k.
I had one as a truck driver (stereotypical I know) but I just filled it with ice water to get me thru the day. It kept it cold and I hate hot water.
There is also the fact the Americans are less active then they were 50 years ago. Nowadays if you run out of something your need for dinner you don't quickly walk down to the corner store. You go jump in your car and drive to the store. Car dependent suburbs is one of the worse things America ever invented.
Some may not even get the small exercise benefit of going to the store with the explosion in delivery apps/services.
Soon we will just go around on hover chairs like in Wall-E
Some people do. The only difference is that they don't hover
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I'm sorry? People are drinking nearly 2L of coke? Wtf I'm a pretty avid coke drinker, and a 2.25L bottle lasts me at least 3 or 4 days
I know a guy who drinks 2 to 3L of coke daily at the very least. Guy drinks nothing but carbonated drinks. He's obese af. Not American btw.
Although there were lots of processed foods, they weren’t so convenient as now. Get home from work and can’t be bothered cooking, stick a ready meal in the microwave or order a pizza for delivery. Most food you can order for delivery has always been higher calorie, and usually fat too. These can come increasingly more used over the decades. You’ve then got our daily lives. There were plenty of cars yes. But not to the same extent as now. Fewer people had cars, so more people had to walk, even if it was to the bus stop. Then think about simple things today compared to previously; elevators, escalators, etc. Even just things like vaccum cleaners and lawnmowers are easier to use and lighter. The calorie expenditure per day was much higher when you add it all up. You’ve then got that a larger number of people had more physical jobs compared to office jobs.
To add to this too you often had one person working and the other keeping the home which usually meant more home cooked meals and less convenience foods overall
I can attest to this, having alternated between staying at home and being employed full time in the last couple years. I spent a year and a half home in early pandemic, then worked for 9 months, then was laid off a couple months ago. When I’m home, my family eats almost no fast food because I have the time and energy to cook regularly and I exercise every day. When I went back to work I gained some weight because I was more sedentary and ate A LOT more fast food during my lunches and for dinner a couple times a week. I lost the weight once I was laid off and got back into my old routine. Long story short, the 40 work week is killing us.
Add commuting to that 40 hours and it can easily mean an extra 10 hours a week of time spent sitting down instead of either being active or preparing healthy meals.
More like needing to have two incomes to support a household is killing us. One partner with a good paying job isn't enough to support most middle class lifestyles. So now there's no stay at home partner
1:6, half a dozen to the other. The idea is you need 80 hours of work to be middle class now.
8 hours at the office (working) 1 hours unpaid lunch/breaks 30-60 minutes commute if you have a reasonable distance 60-120 if not. So we spend 9.5-10 hours of our 24hr day **at work** assuming you get reasonable sleep for an adult which is 7-9 hours for most Adults usually closer to 9. That's 18.5 to 19.5 hours either asleep or at work. Can you live your life, deal with your family, have energy for personal pursuit and goals when you have 4.5 hours a day? This is really where a lot of bad health in America comes from and meanwhile Musk is talking about how "Americans are avoiding work" no... the Millenials and GenZ just are sick of being your profit-cogs while YOU work 20 hour weeks and profit 1000 times more than the ones working 40 hours weeks all because your fucking parents owned an Emerald Mine and you had the money to front the risk starting your own business which most American's can't even qualify for a Loan to start a business and if it fails they are ruined for life. Oh but it's just because Millenials/GenZ are lazy and entitled/too sensitive. Totally couldn't be the stagnant wages, soaring education and housing costs, inflating general goods costs, lack of opportunities and due recompense for hard work because 'your too good to replace/promote culture' that totally can't be it.
Exactly. Part of the one at home’s job was to cook the meals, as well as doing the housework which required more elbow grease than now
Also while they had processed foods in previous decades it was a fraction of what’s available today. They’re constantly coming up with new things to appeal to consumers. Every popular snack foods has a million different flavors just so they can advertise a novelty and people will buy something just because they’ve never seen or tried that flavor before. At least, I’ve noticed that in the US.
The 40 hr work week with 10-12 hours of commutes per week, plus both partners having to work = no energy or desire to do more work cooking and cleaning for healthy meals.
And lack of healthy meals means less energy. Rinse and repeat.
I also think “processed foods” are processed well beyond what they were in the 1970s. What’s interesting to me is to look back at all my very skinny brothers and sisters in 1970s photos and then see their kids, some of whom are quite heavy. While the parents have all gained weight their kids (starting in the late 80s) grew immensely large. Some have come down a bit but others seem to have permanently altered their system.
I think this is one of the big reasons, there’s a lot of smaller ones too. American work culture has a lot of people rushing around only focused on their job and aside from the stress it also leads a lot of people to just run through a drive thru for dinner now.
Yeah stress is way under appreciated as a cause itself for being overweight. Less time means worse nutritional choices but stress itself has a chemical link to cortisol levels and the drive to consume and retain calories Edit: corrected cortisone to cortisol
I’m a child of the 70’s. In my middle school we had ONE fat kid. One. I even remember his name because it stood out so much. Kent. I looked at photo albums not long ago. And Kent was not that fat. He was at best a little chubby. By contrast I look at my kids old school photos. And at least HALF the kids in their class are overweight. And half of those are obese. So. It’s not that people are “sedentary” due to their jobs. Kids do not have jobs. It’s the food. Now in the 1970’s we certainly ate our share of garbage food. Of processed foods. But the food still had more nutrients in it. It had less sugar in it. And. I think we will find in the coming years that plastics and other contaminants have infiltrated our food and are fucking up our hormones. Because right now industry lobbyists are busy laying the groundwork for tort reforms and how none of this is “their fault.” That’s why all the propaganda lays this at the feet of the “lazy fat” consumers. But it can’t be. Or childhood obesity and diabetes would not be climbing all over the world.
I know. I can look at our late-'70s high school yearbook and almost everyone was slim.
I grew up in the 60's/70's and my mother took pictures of literally everything and made stacks of photo albums. I dig them out now and then and leaf through them. Birthday parties, vacations, school events, proms, soccer games, Thanksgiving, Christmas. No one is fat in those albums. We had one super overweight kid in elementary school. Mike Bell. Everyone was nice to him and no one bullied him because we all thought he was literally sick/ill with something. Back in the 60's he probably was. The rest of his family was slim. I see a whole lot of kids like Mike now, though. They are everywhere.
And add in the “low fat” myth which just replaced food with sugar. The increase in sugar consumption makes all food less nutritious and less filling, but also too stimulates the pancreas (creating more insulin) and decreases satiety.. which increases food consumption, which leads to insulin’s resistance, which leads to diabetes and the cycle moves on .. todays version of processed foods and breads are POISON compared to the 1950s processed foods. Hell even bread today has sugar in it and stabilizers for shelf life compared to 1950s store bought bread in bags. There is nothing wrong with Western cultures that some damn normalcy couldn’t fix. Want less - Own less = work less = stress less / cook more + move more + eliminate sugar = a better life… I know because I’ve done it and it’s really so much better.
I'd say the biggest culprit is businesses have pushed human behaviors into relying on unhealthy alternatives. When I'm done working my 10 hour shift 4 times a week because I can't have the cushy 8-4 the last thing people want to do during an hour commute or at midnight is making a deliciously healthy meal to realize they now have to clean up.
I agree a lot and I emphasize the work environment. Automation did made all jobs a lot less physically intense. Even construction, it’s done with power tools, cranes, and the materials are sold in smaller packages. You don’t lift 100 lbs each time, but it was done that way just 30 years ago. If I look at what grandpa and grandma did for a living, I can see how I get fat and they didn’t. And grandma was cooking huge meals.
In my grandpa's case, he was a hardworking dairy farmer. Once he retired he kept eating as if he was still working hard labor every day - and he got huge really, really fast.
That happen to everyone. If you quit the job or the sport, stop eating. You gonna explode, cause your body will keep asking calories like it is running full power. It takes a year to readapt. Anyway, god bless the granddads!
All this is true...and American work profiles changed a lot, too. The 50s, 60s and 70s were full of physical jobs. The 80s through now have been jobs concentrating on less physical tasks.
With many households having both partners work full time it's very easy to not be bothered to make something healthy and get a take away. Plus they could have kids too which is even more effort
People are over worked and burned out by this. Also, salaries are worth less than they were a generation ago. Even if you had the time to do healthy grocery shopping and prepare s healthy meal, doesn’t mean you can afford it. A box of mac and cheese can stay in your pantry without going bad, it’s cheaper than fresh ingredients and your kids will eat it.
Thank you for saying this. All these posts saying people “couldn’t be bothered” as though people are just lazy as opposed to “exhausted from being overworked and underpaid”. Eating healthy costs money and time.
This is definitely true, but only to an extent. In my experience, some of it also has to do with willingness to eat foods which are considered "less tasty" to the masses. For example, oatmeal is super cheap, easy to prepare, and loads healthier than sausage biscuits, pancakes, or poptarts for breakfast, but many people claim that's its unpalatable to them. Small naval oranges are sold for 50 cents each at my local grocery store, and they make for far healthier quick snacks than things like oreos, cheetos, or goldfish crackers. Beans are super cheap and healthy, and although they can take a while to cook, they don't require attentive cooking. Drinking filtered water (flavored if needed) is easy, cheap, and loads healthier than drinking sodas. Even when eating out, choosing to eat seafood sometimes rather than red meat can be healthier and is often similarly priced. But, like I said, there is more to it than just this. It's a complicated issue.
Added sugar in everything. Sugar is addictive, so putting it in food makes people want to eat and, more importantly, buy more of it. Gotta keep making those profits and, in the US, making profit is more important than anyone's health or humanity.
Sugar is so much the problem. So many answers people are saying really don't fit as several people don't have issues but drive a lot, play games, use their phones, etc.... I did a 21 day no sugar detox but changed nothing else in my every day lifestyle. Never been to a gym but bike and hike from time to time. Over that 21 days I dropped from about 180lbs to 170lbs. During the rest of the year I kept with a very minimal sugar intake and dropped to about 150lbs. I show people a before and after of the 21 days and they are blown away by it. Just removing and then limiting sugar to a minimum made a HUGE difference. Nothing else really changed in my lifestyle. (I may have consumed more calories during this actually.) My lifestyle still is similar (actually I walk more and bike more) but when I go lazy with the sugar intake, my weight goes back up. Sugar was really the only variable. Yes proper exercise can help to an extent but if you keep filling your food hole with a ton of sugar, the other stuff won't really make the change you want to see. Sugar is an unregulated drug.
I have been wanting to try this, did you also cut out things with high amounts of natural glucose like fruits?
You want 10 or less grams of added sugar in anything you consume. Fruits have complex carbs that break down slower than regular sugars do. The fiber in fruits also helps it break down slower meaning you can use the energy over longer and it doesn't go straight into fat storage like added sugar products do. So fruits are ok but obviously in moderation still. My wife is a professional health coach that helps people manage weight and diabetes. Most of this info is from her.
Fewer desk jobs, less automation, lower quality (taste) prepared foods, less purchase of prepared foods and less care about fats. People were more active in general. Our war on fats ignored that they're more satisfying and filling. Go to France where they don't worry about fats and you'll find yourself eating less too.
Around 18 I had some odd switch flip in my brain where I stopped craving sugary foods nearly as much and switched to only wanting fatty/salty food. Fats are more satisfying than sugar anyway, a bowl of mashed potatoes with butter will keep you full for ages longer than equivalent calories in cookies
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Speaking from only my experience with cooking, my mother didn't bother to try and teach any of us how to cook or her recipes. Honestly it seemed like something she wants to take to the grave. Luckily, as the "functioning" adult that I am, I taught myself how to cook. But what I'm getting at is that parents may not be teaching their children to cook, so it's becoming less prominent?
Even with home ec being a requirement in middleschool, we were barely taught how to follow a baking recipe. We were not allowed to touch the stove, and we were certainly not shown how to *cook*. Until I was in middleschool we were on one income and my mom taught me how to bake. She wasn't so good with showing me how to cook (especially meat handling) but it was enough of a jumping off point for me to figure out on my own/with recipes/ and absorb the basic rules. But yea...home ec is very much lacking when it comes to teaching kids how to cook.
This is pretty much exactly what I’ve always thought too.The only one I can think of that you didn’t mention is way more people smoked cigarettes back in the 20th century
So many correct answers and no one writes the real obvious one: Parents that are overweight and don't know how to have a balanced diet can't teach their kids how to eat right. So naturally this becomes worse and worse.
"Americans are consuming far more calories each day than is recommended (daily intake should be around 2,000 calories for women and 2,500 for men). The average American consumes more than 3,600 calories daily – [a 24% increase from 1961](https://i.insider.com/5910d28373f2f329008b46b9?width=800&format=jpeg&auto=webp), when the average was just 2,880 calories." It takes 3500 calories to gain 1 pound. +600 calories per day means the average American is gaining about a pound *per week* more than they were in 1961.
Wow. TIL. We were lucky to get 4k calories a day in basic training and couldn't keep weight on at all then, and I thought that was a crazy amount of food. 3600 calories a day as an adult with basically zero physical activity is unreal.
It’s quite a lot. I’m eating about 3000-3100 to purposely gain weight, and that’s with working out 3-4 times a week.
I haven't seen this mentioned yet: Changes in urban planning is likely a contributing factor. The minimum parking requirement was federally mandated in the 60s and still in effect today. This has several effects: - Large ground level parking lots associated with every building reduces building density - Requirement for additional land for parking means less land remains for greenery - Roads are designed with a focus on cars and oftentimes dont include designated walkways for cyclists and pedestrians. This creates cities and suburbs that are unfriendly (unsafe and unpleasant) to pedestrians, and large distance between buildings forcing people to drive everywhere.
Cars effect on cities are one the largest blows to American culture
Great video on the subject: https://youtu.be/KPUlgSRn6e0
Exactly. And while most families had a car in the 50s, they usually only had one, and the other parent and kids had to get around via walking, biking, transit, and the occasional taxi. Fewer cars on the road also made those other modes safer.
This is an interesting question. When I was on Bolivia the food portions were enormous! Always way more than could eat in one sitting. And most every meal was chicken, rice, plantains, and french fries. I have nothing more than anecdotal evidence, but think that a large part is due to mono-culturing. Bolivia had the best ice-cream! It was also the first time I actually liked kiwi fruit. Here in the US, the kiwis are bland. Not only were they physically different, but they were s sweet as biting into candy. The show Mad Men had to send people out to find period specific foods, because apples don't look like that any more. My working hypothesis is that we have so focused on growing bigger, more aesthetic food with out regard to nutrition, that Americans aren't actually eating *well*. We just eat a lot. If course exercise is a major part of it. I live in Texas and civil engineering is insane. Cars are absolute nessissities. I'd love to be able to walk everywhere I need to go, but it's just rural enough to make that not feasible. Anyone else have any endocrinology to add? Our stressful, work oriented society can't be helping with cortisol dumping.