Since the average moderately active adult male needs about 3,000 calories a day, and the average moderately active woman needs about 2,000 calories a day, and the average caloric intake of Americans is now nearly 4,000 calories per day, it is simple enough to see the obesity epidemic as a natural consequence. Averages are only averages, and there are many Americans who do not eat 4,000 calories per day, meaning that many eat more.
Another shocking figure is that pop (soda, soft drinks) are now responsible for 10% of the daily caloric intake on average and that most Americans drink 4 times as much soda as milk.
Everything’s a gamble, but some lifestyles are less of a gamble than others: as a teacher with years of experience, it’s almost impossible for me to lose my job as long as I avoid any sort of gross negligence. My life is infinitely more secure than my grandparents, who farmed and hunted and fished in equal proportions. That lack of security is unsettling to a lot of people, which is why they are more than happy to sell the farm to agribusiness and head to law school. Agribusinesses can leverage themselves against a whole series of disasters in a way Mom and Pop can’t. It may be worth the gamble to you, but I think it’s logical that it isn’t worth the gamble to very many, once there are better alternatives.
Do you by chance have the numbers that go back before cereal became a breakfast staple? I do suspect that our total fat intake was higher back then then today even though the total calories consumed daily have increased. That was really the time I was referring to, when we started eating oats directly instead of feeding them to animals and eating the animals.
I don’t think the information was that old! It wasn’t so much the age, as the form of it. I recall that it was a USDA abstract from 2002, but I don’t have time to look it up right now, sorry.
The way we eat breakfast now is a very modern way, as these things go, and we have people like Kellogg and Post to thank, but that’s not what I was driving at.
While it is true that fat, expressed as a percentage of our daily calorie intake, has decreased in our diet, it is also true that the absolute amount of fat we eat now has increased. The time frame I refer to is from 1970 until now. Whatever form the figure takes, we eat too much fat. We eat too much sugar. We take too little exercise.
Since the discussion is of so-called sustainable farming vs factory farming it is, at least partially, about how to feed the billions across the world with substandard diets, not how to feed middleclass Americans. I read your post as a 21st century “let them eat cake,” so no, I will not apologize.