It's sort of scary how the set of circumstances in the USA surrounding the food supply are causing approximately an entire nation to be robbed of good health and years of lifespan.
"We have to recalculate weight on airplanes" is just a proxy, a code smell. There's an iceberg of catastrophe here.
It's more widespread than the USA. People have gotten noticeably heavier in the last ~50 years pretty much everywhere that isn't Asia or the middle latitudes of Africa [1].
(And actually, they have also gotten noticeably heavier in Asia and Africa, too, but because they started with much lower obesity rates, it just isn't as noticeable. For example in 1975 14% of Japanese were overweight, compared to 47% US. By 2013 that was 28% Japan, 72% US).
There's a nice interactive graph on the linked page around 2/3 or so down that lets you look at the growth over time for assorted countries.
This should be pretty alarming, because it indicates that whatever is leading to soaring obesity in the US quite possibly is not something specifically that we in the US are doing wrong in our eating or exercise choices and habits.
Well, it's definitely correlated with the time we've decided that "fat is bad, eat low fat for better health" that we've gone from obesity being a rare metabolic syndrome to a widespread epidemic. And the increased reliance on processed food, which is not only the very maligned ultra palatable junk food, but processed food in general.
Of course it's more complicated than that, studies are moving in that direction but it's going to be 50 more years since updated dietary guidelines become common (grandma's) knowledge.
There are some things like urban planning (for walkability/bikes) that I think adds to the problem in the US but isn’t such a problem elsewhere. It’s by no means unique to the US but it’s one thing that adds to it.
Well, entire generations were brainwashed not to eat good foods, and to substitute more harmful foods in their place. Remember the food pyramid? Many of my schoolmates are obese and well on their way to an early death due to diabetes, from being told to avoid fat and to eat plenty of cereals and grains.
Yea the food pyramid is pretty bad, its basically a how to guide on getting diabetes. Cereals and grains have the word glycemic loads while fats and meats are the healthiest things to combat insulin resistance and diabetes but the pyramid tells you to never eat them. If the pyramid was inverted (except for sweets) it would be healthier.
Yet neither of those are the problem. The problem is carbs and lack of exercise.
American bread is basically cake. We serve fries with everything. Ketchup, which is basically red sugar paste, is a go-to condiment. People drink fruit juice “to be healthy”, etc etc.
Even in big tech companies, nearly all of the snacks are carb dense potato chips, sugar glazed nuts, candy, instant noodles, and more.
Everyone eats like they work 10 hours of calorie-intensive labor while barely moving at all. It would be a wonderful if the only thing Americans ate was chicken and steroid milk exports.
The Dutch serve fries with everything. We use ketchup and sugar like you do. We eat and drink fruits like you do as well. Also, we deep fry like everything. Seriously, Google search for Dutch fast food. It’s literally all deep fried from cheese to noodles to meats.
The difference is your portion sizes are gigantic compared to ours. If you go to a McDonald’s in Holland and buy a meal, our fries are what you’d call small size, and our cola are what you’d call child’s size. At restaurants we don’t have unlimited refill of cola like you do, we pay for each bottle so we don’t typically drink an entire days worth of kcal in cola with each meal like you do. Our breakfast is smaller and cold, not big lavish feasts with cooked food. What you call breakfast we’d probably call lunch, and what we call breakfast you’d probably call a snack.
We also collectively exercise more than you do just by living. It’s not a secret that bicycling around is a huge thing and the primary transport we think of when we want to go somewhere unless we have a reason not to.
I’m sure the types of food you have are a big contributor, but at the end of the day you’re the ones stuffing all of that into your mouths instead of properly portioning out sizes.
Honestly, even those with high intensity jobs often can’t burn the excess calories from the typical diet. How many overweight construction workers have you seen?
I don't think either of those are in any way contributing to the problem I am describing.
Portion sizes, excessive fat and simple sugars, loading everything (even savory foods) with huge amounts of federally-subsidized cheap corn syrup, all sorts of things. It's not as simple as (or related to) livestock practices.
There are no more normal size candy bars for sale in the gas station by my winter home; only "king size" which are approximately 2x the size of a normal candy bar. This is just one of a million little examples.
I've actually seen the opposite where I live. A lot of stores have moved to smaller candy bars than in the past. But i suspect that's to increase profits as they still cost the same.
I strongly suspect that incredibly cheap lean protein (aka chlorinated / acid bath / steroid chicken) is net positive for American health by offsetting the low-quality processed carbs that would replace it.
"We have to recalculate weight on airplanes" is just a proxy, a code smell. There's an iceberg of catastrophe here.