When I was a kid, Cokes came in two sizes: the traditional 6.5 ounce bottles, and the newer “King Size” bottles, which were a whopping 10 ounces! Holy cow, ten whole ounces!
When I was a teenager, we got a new restaurant in town called McDonalds. They served burgers, fries, etc. A “hamburger” was slightly larger around than a coffee cup, but they had this new giant one called the Big Mac, which was still about the same diameter, but taller. French fries came in this little envelope that would fit in your shirt pocket.
People’s expectations of how much they get to eat have gone way up over the years.
One thing I noticed in cleaning out my grandparent’s houses after they died were that things were just–heavier. Clothes weren’t synthetic, phones were bakelite, furniture was solid, everything needed more maintenance, and more housekeeping, you just shopped more often and carried things from the store, etc.
You know, I do see a lot of fatter people from the outer boroughs (looks guiltily down at 5’4", size 8 frame) since we take the subway and bus into the city, sit at a desk for eight hours, and then go home. We CAN’T walk home either; it’s twelve miles each way for me, although I do often take long walks at lunch and in the city.
Other than that, I agree it’s junk food and portion sizes. My Dad’s amazed at how easy it is to get snacks today–when I was a kid I saved up my allowance and got a Hostess cupcake on Friday, it was a treat.
The whole Marilyn Monroe dress size thing is a myth. Check out this for an interesting article showing an actual size 12 woman trying on a couple of Marilyn’s dresses. What’s changed is the sizing. There’s been rampant size infaltion to make the now larger American woman feel better about herself. This is really obvious is you sew because pattern sizes haven’t changed. In patterns, I wear a 10 or 12, in the stores a 4 or 6.
I also coach teenage girls in rowing and even these very fit young women who work out a lot tend to be somewhat overweight. I think the ready availability of food and portion sizes is a huge factor. You can get snacks EVERYWHERE nowdays. Every gas station has a huge conveince store attached with a whole array of fattening foods.
I would agree that we’ve changed what our ideal woman looks like from Marilyn’s time. She is much thinner and more plastic. And I would argue that having such an unobtainable ideal actually contributes to the rise in obesity. Youg women see that it would be impossible to be “perfect” so they “give up” and stop worrying about their weight at all. But this is just a pet theory of mine…
-Fast Foods / poor diet.
-Sedentary lifestyles (computer surfing, TV, driving everywhere).
-Lack of excercise (in schools primarily; kids just aren’t learning to excercise themselves).
-Too much soda (people have this stuff for breakfast now).
-Portion sizes (‘King Size’ this, and ‘Hungry Man’ that…)
-Eating for reasons other than being hungry. (see ‘Comfort Food’).
It’s a little bit of each of these. Recently, I cut out Soda*, adjusted what foods I am eating, decreased my portion sizes, and make an effort to take the stairs or walk more places, and have lost 47 pounds so far.
*I actually drink Diet Soda now, and FAR less than I did of the regular stuff.
Bingo. “All you can eat.” “Would you like to supersize that?” We’ve been somewhat conditioned to believe that a 12oz steak is a normal portion size, that vegetables and fruits are garnishes and that a basket of french fries is the normal food to consume with almost everything from eggs to meatloaf.
Any diabetic can tell you that if you reduce portion sizes, and eat balanced meals, you can eat whatever you want and lose weight while doing it. I’ve lost 25 pounds since April by doing just that. And I don’t do a lot of vigorous exercise.
There are far more fat kids than was ever the case–it’s not an aging population that’s the cause.
I was about to weigh in on portion size, marketing, and character when I took a minute to read the NYT post, from above. Especially marketing. But:
"It’s no coincidence that Big Food has suddenly ‘‘discovered’’ how to turn milk into junk food: the government recently made deep cuts in the dairy-farm program, and as a result milk is nearly as cheap a raw material as water. "
a variety of things i’d say. This is all gained from multiple documentaries and articles on obesity ive read over the years so i can’t cite them.
increased portion sizes
less blue collar work and more white collar work (blue collar/manufacturing work can burn 3000 or so more calories a week)
video games have overtaken physical activity for kids
less household upkeep? i dont know if this one is true (i made it up) but putting something in a microwave requires fewer calories than cooking a meal over a stove. And houses probably require/get less cleaning and upkeep now than 50 years ago. Cleaning can burn calories.
On one documentary a researcher said something like ‘compared to 30 years ago, the average individual eats 100-200 more calories a day and burns 600 less in physical activity’, so its lack of physical activity that is doing it i guess.
Another major point of the article is that U.S. government’s agripolicy directly leads to a mega-super-duper surplus of corn, which makes it subsidizedly cheap.
Cheap corn means cheap cattle feed, which means cheap meat, which means more meat consumption. And meat (fat) has lots of calories.
Cheap corn means cheap corn sweetener (cheaper than sugar cane), and thus, cheaper and more plentiful fast food snacks.
Money and food are now available whenever you want them.
The food that is available is fast food, and in larger portions than before. At least one major mag did a piece about calorie content in typical meals, and they are way up.
People eat more processed foods (back to corn syrup, sodium and fat).
I just rummaged through almost all the different brands of WHOLE WHEAT BREAD and couldn’t find one brand without **'high fructose corn syrup"**in it! We’re talking about slices of wheat bread! Corn syrup in wheat bread…slices that should have something like 40-60 calories, but have as much as 100 per slice thanks to the ingredients.
Naw. You’re right about cooking, but when it comes to cleaning, houses actually need more upkeep in modern times than they did 50 or 100 years ago.
Instead of beating the rugs twice a year, now we’re supposed to vaccuum them every day. Instead of laundry day consisting of washing the two or three garments that each family member owned, now we have huge, overflowing baskets. (And we think it’s nasty to wear clothes again and again without washing them.) We think our floors shoud sparkle as if never besmirched by human footsteps, and our counter tops should be as sterile as an operating-room table.
We expect things to be cleaner in a modern home, and the modern home is larger, with more stuff to keep clean. We may have appliances which makes each chore easier, but there are more chores that need to be done.
It’s hard to eat too much if you stick to fruit and veg’. There’s an emerging consensus that it is low-grade carbs (think white bread, potatoes and sugar) are the principle cause of weight gain not fat.(The Atkins diet takes this to an extreme but I think it’s a bit nuts, more like a flipping religion than an eating regime.) These foods are also cheap which is why they’re the principle ingredients in fast food.
I’d have to go with portion sizes increasing. Restaurants can only turn so many tables so they’ve learned that you make more money selling a higher-priced large portion than a lower-priced regular portion. We’ve all gotten used to the larger portions so now we think of those as regular.
Yes, it’s true, individuals gain weight because of their own issues. But you don’t have to be a genius to figure out that when 30+% of the population has a weight problem due to societal factors, not individual factors. No one asked you to solve thier individual diet problem, OR made excuses for their extra pounds.
I think everyone’s suggestions of lack of exercise, easy access to HUGE portions of fast food, which is heavily marketed at young people are all factors. I’d also like to add that it could be:
More eating for entertainment purposes. Eating is supposed to be to nourish your body…it wasn’t originally intended as masturbation the way we use it. The prevalence of the Food Network, hundreds of cooking shows, dozens of food related magazines (since when is EATING a HOBBY?) is relatively new, isn’t it?
More coccooning. I think others have touched on this by mentioning computers and tv used for entertainment. But also important is what’s left OUT when you add these things IN. I think we are tending to be less social in general. Now you don’t even have to leave your sofa to rent a movie. I don’t mean to suggest that going to the video rental place is the equivalent of exercise by any means, but it does point to a lifestyle where “easy and convenient” are being defined more and more…well…ridiculously.
You can have groceries delivered, work from home, shop from your computer. When inventors even have the audacity to think they can market and sell a 4-mile-an-hour anti-walking machine (the Segue), what’s next, catheters and feeding tubes?
Cheap carbs (in price and quality) pack a 1-2 punch. Not only can you eat more of a calorie-dense food before becoming satiated, but the flood of blood sugar spikes insulin levels much higher than necessary (because your body didn’t evolve expecting such glycemic foods). Even worse than causing your body to store the excess glucose as fat, the “overdose” of insulin completely crashes your blood sugar, leaving you hungrier sooner. Since the blood sugar crash is so precipitous your body craves foods that will raise it the fastest which of course is cheap carbs. I would speculate that at least a quarter of the gain in caloric intake over the years can be attributed to the feedback consequences of insulin spikes on hunger.