Most of the obese people are like that not because they choose, but because they cannot do better.
People were cooking with lard for 1000s of years until the US decided fat is bad and people started substituting fat with sugar because when you remove fat, you remove flavour.
There is a great deal wrong with very high fat diets, the issue is there’s also a lot wrong with very high carb diets.
Funnily enough not from obesity or heart disease.
They died from violence, starvation, infections, plagues, travel, etc.
Fats were not a cause.
The history of coronary syndromes and sudden death, and apoplexy or stroke, goes back to antiquity and has been thoroughly treated by historians and experts from many disciplines. By the beginning of the twentieth century, a heart attack with myocardial infarction was well known to cause death, but comprehension of it as a syndrome that one might survive was much delayed.
…
Part of the historical delay and confusion in recognizing heart attacks apparently lay in the Greek word, kardialgia, which could mean either abdominal or precordial pain. Biblical and Talmudic references abound, however, about chest pain of a life-threatening nature, and Hippocrates mentions sudden death related to an episode of chest distress (Leibowitz 1970).
Leibowitz points out that the great Italian anatomist Morgagni failed to tie it all together, but nevertheless clearly described in 1761 the late pathology found in survivors of myocardial infarction in his well-known dictum: “The force of the heart decreases so much more in proportion as the greater number of its parts becomes tendonous instead of being fleshy” (ibid., 4). http://www.epi.umn.edu/cvdepi/essay/history-of-heart-attack-...
Saying it was or wasn’t a leading cause of death overall is quite arbitrary, though it was at a minimum a common cause of death back then.
Not sure where the comment I’m replying to, and onwards, ever mentions cancer.
Lol
Given a large enough population you would still see very very rare cases of extreme age but you are something like 1,000 times more likely to live to 115 today than you where back in 1,000 AD. Combined with a smaller population and it’s likely nobody live to 115 until quite recently.
Anecdotally, I know people with the same wealth as me or even wealthier who eat copious amounts of sweets in all forms and are also obese. Some people just don't have control.
But yes, proper education regarding nutrition is something that is sorely needed as most people are unaware of the dangers of eating sugar rich and calorie rich foods in large amounts.