1971–1974: About 5% of children were obese
1980: 13.4% of adults were obese
2008: 34.3% of adults were obese
2009–2010: 36% of adults were obese
2014: 36.5% of adults were obese
2017–2018: 42.4% of adults were obese
A truly astonishing set of data. I assume this has never happened in human history at this scale.
People STILL to this day are afraid of eating butter, yet consume margarine, seed oils (vegetable oils are the worst type of food known to man) and hundreds of grams in sugar EVERY DAY. And in many places, I bet in here too, this is still controversial and the only mode of dieting people know is eating less fat and less meat, as if they ever were the problem.
Keto and low carb diets are still described as "fad diets" on Wikipedia, and I wonder whose silly agenda they are pushing. If it is the one of the official health dept of Western governments, it should be clear that what is claimed to be healthy it is obviously not, and made even more dubious due to major lobbying from Big Food.
The same Big Food that has just won with the popularity of GLP-1 agonists: why eat healthy when you can eat packaged crap and take a pill?
Of course, this is wrong.
Vegetable pulp oil (i.e. coconut, extra virgin olive oil, etc.) is alright, if not beneficial.
"Worst type of food known to man" is a very strong statement, and surely there's a long list of foods that come before vegetable seed oils.
There is no logical reason to expect that seeds, in general—carrying the energy for new life, containing the most valuable and precious resources—would constitute the "worst" food ingredient known to mankind.
actually, there is no evidence that the commonly consumed vegetable seed oils such as sunflower, corn, canola, soy, peanut, safflower, cottonseed, walnut, linseed, etc., are harmful at all, except when rancid, trans, or hydrogenated. there was a long period when they were believed to be harmful simply because they were fats, but we now know that was wrong
there's a lot of old research where they were conflated with high-trans-fat-content partially-hydrogenated versions of themselves, and we now know that the trans fats were the major problem there. there was a period when it was believed that low ω-3 fatty acid levels relative to ω-6 levels were causing inflammation, and some people do see improvements in health when they eat more ω-3, but both ω-3 and ω-6 fatty acids are unsaturated fatty acids of the kind you find predominantly in vegetable seed oils; that's not a question of eating more or less seed oils but of which ones you eat. (and the ω-3 effect turned out to be fairly small on a population level.)
finally, there's a certain fanatical contingent that is convinced that unsaturated fatty acids in general (seed oils, fish oil) are terrible, and saturated fat (coconut oil, beef) is what's good for you, but this is basically completely unsupported by the evidence. a and there's a mountain of evidence against it. see https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/10/for-then-against-high-... for a deeper dive
(also it's hilarious that the article's academic editor is named "meat hacker" in german)
the abstract says
> Overall, heating to temperatures <200 °C had no appreciable impact on different TFA levels. Between 200 and 240 °C, levels of C18:2 t (0.05% increase per 10 °C rise in temperature, 95% CI: 0.02 to 0.05%), C18:3t (0.18%, 95% CI: 0.14 to 0.21%), and total TFA (0.38%, 95% CI: 0.20 to 0.55%) increased with temperature. A further increase in total TFA was observed with prolonged heating between 200 and 240 °C. Our findings suggest that heating edible oils to common cooking temperatures (≤200 °C) has minimal effect on TFA generation whereas heating to higher temperatures can increase TFA level.
so i probably shouldn't worry too much about frying eggs in sunflower oil
We never had synthetic nitrogen fertilizers before. This is the first era where humanity does not have to experience widespread, frequent, deadly, hunger. This is also why there are eight billion people on the planet: we have enough calories to support that many. There were only 1.7 billion people when the Haber process was invented.
Currently, in the US, there an estimated 40M people and 13M children at risk or experiencing hunger: https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=1077...
Are these statistics world or US?
It’s not the most accurate thing, but it’s close enough for most people.
It's pretty shocking how little food the human body actually needs and how little weight you actually need to carry, and anything over that is just stressing the circulatory and muscle systems. (And providing more cells from which cancer can potentially start, and more energy to feed it if it does.)
Losing 40 pounds on my frame… I’d look like death. I think BMI as estimated by the simple formula is a useful guide for the median height and build person, but it’s used as a health designation whose meaning is frankly bunk. I lay higher insurance rates, for example because of supposed risk of diabetes.
My wife was even worse. She had big boobs, so was declared obese. She was a runner, cyclist, and was a competitive swimmer, but was labeled a fat girl by her doctor.
Stupid things like this turn people off from medicine and delay being treated for real problems.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/globa...
Many developed countries have much healthier people.
> As of December 2023, Finland's obesity rate is 27% for men and 30% for women, with a body mass index (BMI) above the obesity threshold of 30 kg/m2. This is higher than the EU average and has increased significantly in recent decades. Obesity is most prevalent among people aged 40–64, with one in three in this age group being obese. Abdominal obesity is also common, affecting almost half of adults.
It seems to be quite bad other places too.
A Finnish comedian has something to say about that)
Sweden and Switzerland are the lowest obesity of that list while being of the highest wealth. While Ukraine has been near the top with the lowest wealth. Greece and France are also outliers.
Probably due to changes in burden of time and stress and more refined taste in food and a focus on fitness when you reach true wealth.
My point stands. I’m saying it’s impossible to have high obesity, but that it’s a function of wealth.
But I think the US is leading some global fattening and we’re just first.