Obesity Rates in the USA Have Quadrupled Since the 1950s
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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The real reason so many americans are fat is a combination of 3 things.
– Sedentary lifestyles are the norm in the US vs other nations.
– People point fingers at mcdonalds and fast food as the main culprit but the real killer is liquid calories. Things like alcohol, iced tea, cooking oils, lemonade, soda, juice and genuinely anything thats not water.
– Lastly is the sheer volume of additives in literally everything. The FDA is fucking horrible and it allows and promotes the consumption of high processed, calorie dense, low volume food.
and the quality of food has **dropped** more than 4 times of what it was. high fructose corn syrup and other poisonous shit nowhere else in the world allows. people are poor and stupid and eat what they’re told. very gross and sad.
73% is insane!!!
Yeah I noticed this when at Disney world recently. The number of people who were overweight is shocking
Nobody wants to admit it, but part of the reason people were thinner back then is because of cigarettes.
Government subsidzation of HFCS working as designed
Interesting fact: there’s a correlation between obesity and smoking where smokers tend to be less obese than non-smokers, and especially former smokers.
So on top of the decline in food quality that may be another factor.
It is the car centric lifestyle that turns people fat. US cities were just like European up to 50s, with walkable distances, public transit etc. Starting with the 50s a dystopian car centric experiment was implemented nationwide which made it impossible to survive without a car and gradually turned people unmovable and obese.
I was watching this old movie, “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” the other day, I think it’s supposed to be set in the early 90s in a fictional small town in America. There is a character in it who is supposed to be morbidly obese, to the point where when the town’s people see her outside they all stop and stare at her, some even taking pictures, all of them just shocked at her size. And I’m sitting there thinking…ok sure she’s big but I’ve seen bigger people at Disney World than her. How times have changed.
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Processed foods.
Our health is certainly on the decline. Buuuuut – we should be wary of statistics which rely on BMI. I’m 6’3″ 215lbs – which is well into the “overweight” category according to BMI. That’s to say – anyone who is decently athletic usually runs afoul of BMI due to muscle mass…and I’m a pretty skinny dude.
Wait!!! Soda! soda forsure.
With our “foodie” culture getting more popular year after year it’ll probably just get worse. We know what we should and shouldn’t eat but social media makes constant indulgences a “necessity” for a happy life.
74% of US adults are either overweight or obese??
Either my town is much fitter than I thought, or maybe I just don’t understand the overweight threshold, because that doesn’t seem right to me.
(And no, I just looked mine up, I’m not in those categories.)
edit: Maybe I’m self selecting for active people, by having mostly activity friends who get out and do physical stuff together. I probably don’t pay as much attention while walking around town. But it’s still hard to believe.
It’s the microplastics. They mimic hormones and reduce testosterone. Plus all the other bullshit they put in anything affordable. Obesity hits the poorest communities the hardest. Why? Cheaply made, cheaply packaged, and under nutritional foods. Selling out the souls of the poor to further line their already overflowing pockets. Think about it. Check Obesity rates near any McDonald’s. Other countries didn’t have issue until those gray meat flinging fat mongers muscled their way in.
Eat more of your cheap eggs (laughing in European)
I get that food quality is much lower in America compared to say, Europe, but people need to take some accountability. Eat less trash. Eat more whole fruits and veggies. People asked me how I lost 20 lbs last year. Guess what? What doctors have said for decades is true. Less calories. More moving.
Any comparisons on intellectual decline?
Holy shit, I’m a minority finally!
Don’t let anyone tell you that cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs are as addicting as sugar. Sugar has probably killed more people than cigarettes yet people don’t care.
That KFC sandwich where the bread has been replaced with chicken fillets
Do y’all eat 5 meals and a bottle of soda a day over there? The american diet is a mystery
Healthy options can be very cheap, chicken and rice and vegetables are not expensive. For a myriad of reasons, which are not all their fault, people make poor choices and companies capitalize on their poor decision making. This is an issue of too many calories in, and not enough out at the end of the day. Move more, consume less nutrient dense foods.
Following world war 2 becuase they expected world war 3 at any minute and had to turn away so many fighting aged men for diseases as a result of being malnourished during the great depression, they introduced farm subsidies to make high calorie foods like grains and dairy basically free to anyone.
I think this directly caused the obesity crisis, and we cant stop it becuase when you subsidize an industry for decades, that industry turns around as much of that money as it takes to hire lobbyists to keep the reliable money firehose coming.
Think about that before you want to make healthcare and college tution free. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
You butter believe it.