Hacker News Reader

Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Really don't have to go back a century. A mere 30 or 40 years ago will do.

The obesity boom began around the mid 1970s with high fructose corn syrup, desk jobs (as deadly as smoking perhaps), the saturation of fast food (convenient, cheap low quality food), and the pasta + pizza (carbs carbs carbs) takeover.

Supposedly ~60 years ago the average American would have walked five plus miles per day. That may be down to a mile or less today from what I've read.

Comparing high school year book photos from the 1980s or early 1990s, versus my nephews & nieces and what their classmates look like today, the change is dramatic in a mere 20 to 30 years.

View on HN

HFCS is basically unique to the US food supply.

Everyone else is getting fat without it.

The rise in net calories consumed per capita is pretty much entirely explains the observed variation.

It seems to me that it's not just the extra calories, it's where they come from (sugar and refined flour carbs).

A couple of years ago I stopped eating sugar and bread. I went on a vaguely paleo diet, eating mostly meats, veggies, eggs, some dairy, and nuts, i.e. everything I used to eat minus sugar and bread. I did did not go hard-core paleo by any means. I lost 50 lbs pretty easily though I was not that I could tell eating less or less often. I ate when I was hungry, and stopped when I was full (easier to do, by the way, if you're not eating bread, pasta, or sweet things).

I never counted calories, so maybe I did consume fewer.

Recently I started eating some bread again. I really am a fan of pizza so I thought I would try indulging that every once in a while again. I have the occasional sandwich. Since doing that I gained 10 lbs back. Again I don't feel like I am overall eating more, but in my personal experience those types of carb-heavy foods cause weight gain much more than anything else.

My personal experience jibes with this. For many years I struggled to stay around 200lbs on a low fat diet. A year ago I tried the whole 30 and since then have easily stayed on a no grains or sugar diet and my weight is rock steady at 175 with no effort. I have always exercised a lot (15-25 miles a week running plus other activities) so no changes there and my blood work (cholesterol etc.) are good on both diets. Wish I had discovered this 20 years ago but happy I figured it out.

> The rise in net calories consumed per capita is pretty much entirely explains the observed variation.

True but I would be more specific than that. Basically we have two major trends going on:

1. Calories in per capita are falling slower than calories out per capita. For traditional, hand-tool-based farming, it required a lot of calories. Even animal-powered farming required a lot more than is required today. It's a bloody lot of hard manual work as my British friends would say. When one talks about net calories, one has to recognize that a hundred years ago people had to eat a lot more than today.

2. More reliance on high tech foods (HCFS, hydrogenated oils, etc, but also see frozen dinners, often which are loaded by excess corn sugar and oil). These are far from ideal dietary-wise.

These combine to mean fewer micronutrients, and an excess of macronutrients. But the lack of hard physical labor as the normal way of life is a major part of things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com