People are heavier than in the 1980s, but we have no idea why
Here’s an article that’s a couple of years old, but still interesting:
A 2016 study published in the journal Obesity Research & Clinical Practice found that it’s harder for adults today to maintain the same weight as those 20 to 30 years ago did, even at the same levels of food intake and exercise.
The authors examined the dietary data of 36,400 Americans between 1971 and 2008 and the physical activity data of 14,419 people between 1988 and 2006. They grouped the data sets together by the amount of food and activity, age, and BMI.
They found a very surprising correlation: A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher. In other words, people today are about 10 percent heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans.
So, what gives?
The first possibility is that the study is flawed and no such change exists.
But assuming it’s describing a real phenomenon, some of the suggestions in the article – for example, more people take prescription drugs that foster weight gain – hold some water IMHO.
One thing that’s unmentioned, though (at least in the linked article; I haven’t read the study itself), is smoking. Didn’t more people smoke back in the 80s? Indeed they did. Doesn’t that cause weight loss? Couldn’t that account for quite a bit of the average gain over the years?
We don’t know why, but then we don’t need to know why. All we need is nannystating Mike Bloomberg to tax everyone into emaciation. Just ask him.
https://mobile.twitter.com/odonnell_r/status/1200074757196132354
Maybe people just got taller.
BMI is biased against tall people, since the calculation method assumes that weight should increase as the square of height. However, human beings don’t proportionally scale up in size in all directions as they get taller, and they have a third dimension. The real exponent should be more like 2.5.
So I’m 5’10” 205 lbs., and my BMI says I’m borderline obese. Right, sure, whatever. I’m a little middle-age-thick, but nowhere near even “fat” much less “obese”.
It’s also biased against muscular people, and probably has other hidden biases as well. It’s such a terrible measurement that I’m surprised that anybody in science uses it at all anymore.
I thought smoking caused weight loss because it was an appetite suppressant. In that case it wouldn’t apply, because the study compares people who eat similar amount of calories.
Perhaps it matter what we eat, not just the total calories. Another possibility is that we don’t spend as much energy outside exercise. Even if the two people do the same amount of exercise, maybe the 1980s moved more in their daily routine.
I imagine there’s more than one cause. I like neo’s smoking suggestion and RohanV’s pointer to exercise.
I also j’accuse the official food pyramid, maxing out bread, fruits and vegetables, while diminishing meat, dairy and beans to a sparing level.
I’m curious about the biome theory that changes in one’s gut bacteria effect weight.
It is amazing to look at an old Life magazine showing people at the beach and how just about everyone is close to their fighting weight.
Going to the beach these last couple of years and observing the people around me–and looking back and comparing–I couldn’t help but notice that when I was a child in the late 1940s and 1950s, it was very rare, indeed, to see an overweight–much less a very fat person–on the beach.
You just didn’t see ’em.
Now, maybe that was because, being fat in those days was not acceptable, nor something that someone wanted everyone else to observe, by them showing up on a beach in revealing clothing. Or, perhaps some of this phenomenon could be attributed to people in those days generally being a lot more active.
Whatever factor or factors were involved, you just didn’t see that many fat people around then, one the beach, or anywhere else for that matter; from my observation they were the rare exception.
Nowadays, they’re increasingly the norm, and bulges are poking out everywhere.
P.S.–Not excepting myself, since I’ve put on a lot more weight than is healthy.
The government has been relentlessly pushing a low-fat diet for the past forty years. This makes people heavier, not thinner.
Thanks, Bryan Lovely, for that information about BMI and height. BMI seems to be a lousy measurement for several reasons.
I gained 10 lbs in the two months after I quit smoking. Not sure why, although I was tired all the time and didn’t get much exercise, but the gain has persisted.
Smoking increases metabolism, as far as I know.
its flawed…
while they measure exercise, which is formal
they dont measure, and would have a hard time measuring, average activity
that is, in the 80s, when you had nothing to do, you would not go to a video game, even though they just started… you might play touch footbal or tackle with friends… go fishing rowing a boat… hiking the woods just to see what was there… you would spend whole days walking around in a mall…
the activity level in general was higher, and paranoia of the dangers of life were not so large… the movement had not destroyed families to the point of moms leaving kids in front of tv, and other things instead of engagement in life and learning stuff…
and dont get me started on chores… something that seems to only exist on farms
you got dressed, not wandered around in your pajamas to the night
and heck… just take a look at dancing… while dancing efford declined from the swing and jitter bug era, it was still a lot of effort…
ah. but i hear women fixed that all… no working on cars with dad, or doing other such things… and a tv, cellphone, etc… is a great way to get kids to shut up and be ignored… etc.
AS to seeing fat people in the past..
the fat lady was an attraction at the circus, not a guest…
My grandfather, who was tall and always thin, in my experience, quit smoking in the early 60s, and started putting on weight, so his doctor recommended he start back up.
Study “measured” BMIs, as Lovely notes above, and his criticisms are entirely valid.
Americans have been getting taller each generation for the last 200 years. So BMIs go up accordingly.
The New Orleans Saints have a superb running back named Edwards-Hilaire who is 5′ 8″ and 205 lb. He is a tremendous runner, gaining yards while 2-3 defenders are hanging onto him. You think he’s fat?
It certainly is the case that when I was a child and then a young teenager in the late 1940s though the 1950s, kids were just a lot more active, and one reason was that it was a safer time–or, at least, that was what we perceived.
Things like serial killers, short-fuse low lives who just wanted someone to take their frustrations out on, someone, picked at random, to hurt, the retreat of the cops on the beat, and seemingly increasing numbers of maniacal, sadistic nutjobs–high on something and cruising around–looking for kids to abduct, enslave, torture, or kill were not yet a daily possibility you needed to be on the lookout for, and to take precautions against.
Maybe we were naive but, we just weren’t looking over our shoulders that much, and wariness and suspicion were not our constant companions.
You might walk miles to and from school each day, go out to play outside for hours until dark–stick ball, baseball, skating, riding around on your bike, going to the park, and generally running around–you were just more active.
Came more and more TV, more and more crime and perceived danger, more and more video games, and–between the two (and, I’m sure, several other factors)–kids were increasingly spending a lot more time indoors, and not outdoors being active.
sssssshhh
that’s an open secret the gubment and the anti-smoking nazis don’t want to let out
It certainly is the case that when I was a child and then a young teenager in the late 1940s though the 1950s, kids were just a lot more active, and one reason was that it was a safer time–or, at least, that was what we perceived. –Snow on Pine
A lot more kids then, at least in the places I grew up, had woods or beaches or fields or hills nearby to go roam around in and run wild. Grownups were fast on the draw to say, “Go outside and play,” then they ignored you until dinner.
I remember whole Saturdays spent that way until it was too dark to see.
Also there was recess in elementary school and PE thereafter. I was not a jock, but I really needed some physical activity during the school day. I understand recess and PE have been reduced or curtailed.
Then there’s the whole schedule-your-kid-within-an-inch-of-his-life thing for parents worried about getting children into college.
If you ask me, it’s not as fun or healthy to be a kid these days.
Huxely said, “If you ask me, it’s not as fun or healthy to be a kid these days.”
I am the next generation after his, and for me what he said was still true. When I look at how the generation after mine was raised, I find it amazing amazing that they leave the house at all.
The field of genetics has changed a lot since most of us were in school. I read a book recently about it.
Apparently, we have many genes that have switches that can activate or deactivate it. Those switches can be changed by the changes in the environment or conditions we live in. Furthermore, the switch settings are inheritable.
The answer to the question above is probably more complicated than we would imagine. Turns out, we humans are pretty complex. Who knew?
On Tucker Carlson’s show tonight, instead of focusing (they’re really the only ones in the media who do so in a serious and sustained way) on the enormous number of opioid deaths in our country–now running at over 70,000 per year and rising–they were talking about another bad trend–the tremendous rise in the prescription of anti-depressants.
They had a guest, Johann Hari, talking about depression, and how we tend view depression as a problem that has a bio-chemical cause–imbalances in brain chemicals—and, therefore try to ameliorate or cure this depression by loading patients up with a lot of drugs, to “fix” these brain chemicals which have gone awry.
The guest, who does admit that some depressions (he estimates around 2 out of every 10) are caused by such brain chemistry imbalances and can–at least temporarily–be helped by drugs, believes that the great majority of such depressions are caused by a reaction to actual things, to external factors in our daily lives, that depression is a reaction to something in our social & cultural environment, in our relationships, or the lack thereof.
Something actual happened or is happening to us; we are miserable doing the work we do, or living where we live or the conditions there, or we lost a job or promotion, we’re constantly being belittled where we work, we loved someone and they didn’t love us back, or left us, we went bankrupt, we feel lost, didn’t get into the college we wanted or any college at all, or we have tremendous student debt–and can’t afford to move out of our parent’s house, to get our own apartment or house, to buy a car, marry, or to start a family, we became homeless, someone we loved just died, we were diagnosed with a crippling disease, etc.
This guest’s solution is to change your life situation, rather then to swallow pills.
It strikes me that the rapid and revolutionary changes in our social/cultural structure over the last several decades could also be a major factor in the rising number of people who are overweight.
Many decades ago, say, around WWI or so, the people in this country were much more closely knit in terms of physical location and in terms of social interactions; you were much more likely to be a part of a neighborhood and/or community, a social structure in which you were noticed, and had many connections with other individuals—with family, with neighbors, with friends.
Moreover, family usually lived close by, and you very likely also knew who your neighbors were, and frequently interacted with them.
Back then, as well, lots of people also belonged to a myriad of social organizations—the Scouts, the Elks, Shriners, 4-H, the Eastern Star, Rotary, the Masons, or Ruritan, and a thousand other less well known and now gone fraternal and social organizations that bound everyone together in a web of associations—you were noticed as an individual, and to some extent at least—you mattered.
Your were also more likely–back then, as compared to today–to be a member of a Church or Temple, and to be somewhat, if not deeply involved in that organization and its works. Not so, in general, today.
In other words, there was much more face to face interaction, and a great web of multiple associations that tended to tie everyone together.
But, given the changes in our economy, and the rise of two parent working families, given more efficient and wide-spread transportation leading to the the geographic dispersal of families, given the increasing anonymity of city life, given the rising divorce rate, given the withering away of those fraternal organizations, the rise of the post-Christian era, and the rise of mass media, the Internet, and the cultural norms they have promoted–all these relatively swift, radical and disruptive developments–well, things haven’t gone so well for the individual, and I can certainly see how factors in your social or cultural situation could bring on depression, and also a lot of compensatory eating.
In addition, more recently it appears that the rise of computer-based “Social Media” has only accelerated the occurrence and spread all of these disruptive trends/pathologies.
P.S.–I can’t help noting—along with all of the other radical and disruptive changes I have noted above—how men are portrayed—their overall image—and how radically is had been “transformed” during this same time period.
In my lifetime men have gone from generally being portrayed as honorable, chivalrous, strong, courageous, adventurous, and competent adults—as normally and naturally having “agency”–to being portrayed as either crude and violent savages, or incompetent boobs—petulant children—as usually without any actual “agency,” with women always being the smart, level headed, with it ones—the real adults with”agency,” and the actual problem solvers.
What I wrote above is not to be interpreted as me saying that I think that our less complicated past of several decades ago was some sort of perfect, “Golden Age,” for obviously it was not—just one less than satisfactory aspect among many—“medical care”–should assure you that it wasn’t.
But what is was, I suspect, was a time when people in general were more satisfied with life and living it, and the general level of anxiety, depression, and dissatisfaction was a lot lower than it is today.
The guest, who does admit that some depressions (he estimates around 2 out of every 10) are caused by such brain chemistry imbalances and can–at least temporarily–be helped by drugs, believes that the great majority of such depressions are caused by a reaction to actual things, to external factors in our daily lives, that depression is a reaction to something in our social & cultural environment, in our relationships, or the lack thereof. –Snow on Pine
Quite a large number of people are taking antidepressants — 16.5% of women and 8.6% of men. (https://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/11/numbers)
Furthermore, up to 25% of those taking antidepressants will gain 10 lbs. or more. (https://www.webmd.com/depression/features/antidepressants-weight-gain) Which is one direct answer to the question in neo’s post.
While some depressives have brain chemistry problems, most IMO are reacting to things in their lives, as Snow on Pine says.
That’s a complicated business. I have my thoughts on the matter, but suffice it to say I think we could be doing better. There is a lot of suffering in a society which is the most prosperous in human history.
TEF, thermal effect of food or SDA, specific dynamic action of food (more sucrose and rapidly absorbed CHO’s today)..maybe this and neuroleptics and SSRI’s are doing it? We should check France however. Just a guess, but they take as many drugs, probably more, but stay thinner. We also gave much more thyroxin in those early days too because the PBI was such a lousy lab test and docs erred on giving desiccated thyroid.
Another explanation is the Dietary Guidelines adopted in the late 1970s that advocated high carb and low fat. For analysis of the consequences, see the books by Gary Taubes and Nina Teicholz, plus an avalanche of recent material by doctors who have reversed the conventional advice.
See also a recent Grand Rounds podcast by psychiatrist Christopher Palmer, “Ketogenic Diet in Medicine and Psychiatry”(Nov 18). It includes the observation (at 39:50): “Higher-fat diets led to more weight loss than low fat diets. . . . This is what our evidence base says. We can continue to ignore it. But if we are going to practice evidence-based medicine, at some point we need to pay attention to the evidence.”
The invocation of brain chemistry “imbalances”, most often invoked by people who know next to zilch about biochemistry, neurochemistry, neuroanatomy and neurologic illness has always amused me. But it also shows how a baseless idea can be pushed by psychologists, yes, those people, who style themselves as “neuroscientists”. No other neurologic discipline cloaks itself in that mantle. I believe them to be as fraudulent as their “father”, Sigmund Freud, who lives on though his cocaine-laced notions were proven falsehoods long ago.
Placebos help the depressed about 40 % of the time; current 3rd gen anti-depressants, 60%. So these drugs are modestly better than placebo! Nice!
Subjectively, I believe it’s mainly inactivity (at all ages) but I have considered for a while the effect of smoking. When I was a kid, close to half of the population smoked. I never smoked but most of my friends and family did, and so did my in-laws. Almost all of them have since quit smoking and I can’t think of a single person who didn’t gain significant amounts of weight after quitting and very few ever lost that weight they gained. If you think about it, there are not many times in the history of humankind that cheap food – including empty calories like sugar – has been widely available. It’s only in the last couple of decades or so that we’ve seen all the cheap food you can eat, in combination with fewer and fewer people smoking.
Just a thought.
Inactivity is certainly a factor. We all remember that kids in past generations – at least as late as we GenXers – walked and biked to school, had recess, and played outside after school and on weekends. As a kindergartener, I walked four blocks to school by myself – something unthinkable today. By fifth grade, I came home alone with a key around my neck, a classic “latchkey” generation kid; it was perfectly normal. I hear people my age who have kids of their own talking about not leaving teens almost old enough to drive unattended for an hour or two. “It’s so much more dangerous than it used to be,” they say in chorus, disregarding actual facts about crime in the neighborhoods where we live, obviously not considering that they are creating overweight larvae who can’t think through the most simple dilemma that we shrugged off as kids.
But it’s not just that. Over the course of a couple of generations, a lot of the workforce went from jobs that involved physical labor to jobs that involved sitting at a desk all day.
All of that combined has to have an effect.
I’ve noticed that pampered young people are now throwing around, what to me is the abhorrent phrase “living your best life,” which, from the context within which it is used, seems to mean doing whatever it is that makes you happy at the moment, apparently regardless of any moral considerations, effects of others, or long term consequences.
However, this phrase does raise the question of whether there is, indeed, a “best life” (actually I should think that aiming for a “good and satisfactory life” might be a lot more worthy goal)–that we should be, that public policy should be–aiming at, trying to bring about, and just what should that “good” and “satisfactory” life consist of.
Traditionally, one way of defining what such a good life was the “Greek Ideal” (Paideia) of “a sound mind in a sound body” as later informed by Judeo-Christian moral values.
But after the Leftist mercenary troops of Foucault and Derrida laid waste to the intellectual battlefield of ideas, destroyed the notion of any Ideals and Standards, and left the battlefield in shambles, I don’t know if that “old fashioned” Greek Ideal is viewed with approbation, and followed by very many people these days.
Still, I wonder, what might be the “ideal”pace of life?
Is there is a pace that makes for a good and satisfactory life—a “sweet spot,” and another, faster pace that is just too fast, a rate of change that is so overwhelming that it is detrimental to living a satisfactory life, to good mental and physical health?
And since our earliest, formative, most primitive beginnings emerged from the primate pack, just how many and how close and direct a connection with others do we need to have a life that feels satisfactory?
Is there a certain amount of time outside, in the natural environment, that is necessary for good physical and mental health?
Is relative isolation good for us? Is a small town best, or does living in a teeming, crowded magalopolis also make for a good and satisfactory life?
Or, is there so much individual human variation that no rel ideal can be formulated?
that public policy should be–aiming at, trying to bring about, and just what should that “good” and “satisfactory” life consist of.
To live the good and satisfactory life, one ought to have what Christopher Lasch called ‘a competence’ (which, he maintained, was the concern of early 19th century social critics, not ‘upward mobility), to avoid as much as possible the use of consumer debt, to avoid as much as possible repair to the services of divorce lawyers, to avoid domestic disruption driven by a search for sexual thrills or emotional thrills, to be (as much as you can manage) grateful for and forgiving of the person to whom you are married, to produce as many children as you can feed and govern and to see to it that they acquire a competence, and to aspire not to be clingy or abrasive in one’s old age. Public policy can promote on the margin certain salutary decisions, but that’s all. The problem is the toxic culture.
We aren’t even the same Americans as we were 30 years ago. Another side affect of diversity.
“The New Orleans Saints have a superb running back named Edwards-Hilaire.”
Remember when they had William Perry, AKA the refrigerator? He was big.
Who wants to tell LSU they’ve not only moved from Baton Rouge but advanced to a professional rank?
Re Kate, on “relentlessly pushing a low-fat diet for the past forty years”.
No sh*t!
See Ian Leslie, at http://www.theGuardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-Sugar-Conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin .
Moreover, TPTB have been pushing BS in virtually every major aspect of life, for at least 40 years.
On money, see https://FreegoldSpeakeasy.com/2019/11/23/Hyperinflationll-fix-that/ , where blogger FOFOA argues that the Volcker 1980 reshuffle of the int’l money system only bought some time, before more profound changes must emerge, esp. to the moribund $-dominated IMF system:
“… I say the $IMFS caused “Ponzi Capitalism,” which ultimately resulted in global stagnation, which is not “the end” of growth, but more of a pause. But let me be clear that, what he (commenter Marion) is characterizing as “Capitalism” is not real capitalism, and it is not the end result of capitalism, as the term “Late Capitalism” implies. What it is, is “late stage $IMFS”, which is quite different from the concept of capitalism….”
On money, see
Yeah, I’m sure we have much to learn from goldbuggerers who maintain that it’s beneath them to consult actual production and employment statistics.
“actual production and employment statistics.”
From whom? Our ever-so trusted gov’t?
To say the very least, some emphatically anti-goldbuggers (e.g. Nouriel Roubini) express suspicion, that whatever “growth” we’ve had in recent decades has been completely bought with utterly unpayable debt, which will in due course bring (at very best) a repeat of the ’08 crisis (which only very few, incl. Roubini, foresaw).
So many of your comments here (e.g. on SJWs) are quite worth seeing.
I must urge you to stay w/ in your wheelhouses.
aNanyMouse–There is always incompetence as an excuse.
But yeah, once you see the evidence that high level members of our government are doing all sorts of unethical and illegal things–using all the tools and force of government and law to persecute and harass their opponents, doing things like altering documents, spying on and trying to entrap their enemies, and laying false prosecutions against them well, then, its no too far a leap to start wondering what other kinds of things might also have been altered, and whether some of the statistics that that same government is publishing are not really reflecting reality, but have also been altered to give a false impression.
Spot on, Snow. Esp. after Carter got smoked by double-digit inflation and unemployment.
Not just the gov’t, but the gov’t-supported outfits (esp. Wall St.), which gov’t allows to cook books.
SarbOx was supposed to cure that problem, but it didn’t stop Bear, Lehmann, etc. from going belly.
So instead, the Obama gov’t (thru House wheel Kanjorski) stopped the FASB from enforcing mark-to-market accounting, long enough for the markets to recover “stability” (probably mostly thru bailout $$).
For a list of folks who’ve written well about such stuff, see
https://monoki.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/Ten-killer-Financial-Bloggers/ .
Agree on the antidepressants/low fat/high carbs as insulin triggers (would also add more sugar and soy even in foods of comparable calories), but don’t ignore the birth control pills either. I believe, anecdotally, that not only do they trigger weight gain, but being on them for years also resets your receptors, which is why bra sizes have also been markedly increasing as well. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4443166/Average-breast-size-increases-three-cup-sizes-50-years.html.
In addition to cigarettes, I believe people also took more stimulant drugs — amphetamines, methamphetamines and cocaine — in the past. Which are classic drugs for losing weight among other things. Until the 1970s it was fairly easy to get speed in the form of diet pills.
I suspect those would be secondary causes, but factors worth putting in the spreadsheet.
‘more people take prescription drugs that foster weight gain’
Most prescription drugs (and other drugs) have no calories.
‘In other words, people today are about 10 percent heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans.’
This should state:
In other words, people today are about 10 percent heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they say they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans.
Most prescription drugs (and other drugs) have no calories.
Steve D: Well, you made me laugh. Although I expect you’re serious.