Americans have been gaining weight for as long as records exist | Hacker News Reader

Americans have been gaining weight for as long as records exist

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20 pointspaulpauper10 comments

I agree. I think a good chunk of the obesity epidemic can be explained by obesity being underdiagnosed in the past. Doctors simply were not tracking it and BMI standards did not exist like today. Second candidate, increased food palatability and calories density.

Even some of the Founding Fathers appeared obese or overweight, and this long predates the invention of processed foods https://greyenlightenment.com/2022/12/26/why-people-are-gett...

It's evident obesity existed well before it became recognized as a major public health problem.

As Mr. Yglesias notes, rising obesity rates correlate with increased national wealth. Wealthier countries tend to have bigger, heavier people due to better nutrition, cheaper food, increased food production, etc. This is a welcome development, up to a point. We've crossed that point, obviously. It's time to find solutions. Having half the country obese is a travesty.

So, we need to half half the country? :)

> Even some of the Founding Fathers appeared obese or overweight

That's a tiny privileged group of people living in an era where you flaunted your status and wealth by being chubby. You are talking about the 1% of the 1%. They are not representative of the population as a whole. The average height of an american revolutionary soldier was 5'3". A more representative sample of the population as a whole. And they certainly weren't obese. You can go to museums and see the guns they carried and the clothes (tiny) they wore.

I don't think there was an obesity issue before industrialization, especially industrial farming which led to abundance of food.

he average height of an american revolutionary soldier was 5'3". A more representative sample of the population as a whole. And they certainly weren't obese. You can go to museums and see the guns they carried and the clothes (tiny) they wore.

of course they are not obese, they are soldiers

Look at pictures of any World’s Fattest Man/Woman from 100 years ago. They aren’t even an uncommon size today.

Is it possible that people have been getting taller also?

This would influence weight, but probably wouldn't influence BMI much. There are slight discontinuities with BMI in relation to height, but I don't think people have grown THAT much.

But yea, for sure they've gotten taller.

Germany, India, Britain, Australia

Brazil, India, China, Singapore

> One that’s gotten very popular on the internet right (though there is prior art from Mother Jones on the left) points the finger at “seed oils.”

What? The right? This idea is so old that I remember it from when I first started reading about dieting. Has this guy never heard of Paleo? This is not a successor to "trans fats theory." Author clearly has no clue what he's talking about.

> Population aging has a mechanical impact on average obesity that is unrelated to changes in diet and nutrition.

He apparently hasn't read the very articles he's quoting. The Slime Mold Time Mold series quoted earlier in the article explicitly explains how this is in fact a new phenomenon - people actually used to get lighter and thinner as they got older, because they lost muscle.

Overall, typical useless punditry by someone who doesn't know a thing about the subject.

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