USA Obesity Epidemic - how fast it happened!!! 25 years!

[CaliforniaMan]

My study, sample size of one. Every time I spend some time in SE Asia, where my wife is from (now here for 3 months), I eat well, never hungry and loose weight. When I return back to California, even though I exercise more I gain the weight back. Have noticed this every time for many trips over a number of years.

Mostly we eat home cooked food, chicken, pork, fish, always with rice, always with MSG. The chickens are tiny compared with the U.S., even the breast meat, small as it is, is delicious. The meat, pork, chicken is served always cooked with the bone in. The spices and flavors are amazing. Even so I find i am satisfied eating less, and I am less hungry in between.

Somehow, for me anyway, the multitude of flavors in the food, vs. the relatively simple flavors sweet and fat that I eat in the U.S. seem to satisfy me more.

The food is also fresh. Most of the food is bought at the local market, the meat and vegitables. You know it is fresh, (vs. the plastic wrapped you can get in the supermarkets here) because there is no refregeration where it is sold. The meat, fish and vegitables are sold in an outdoor market, fresh from the farm. The fish are alive.

I contrast the satisfied feeling I get eating this well flavored food with the feeling I have after eating at a fast food burger place. I can eat a burger and fries and coke, and walking out I don't feel satisified, not really hungry but feeling I want to eat more. Why it is I don't know.

Some come to SE Asia if you want to loose weight? Well, ten years ago nobody I talked to here had ever tasted a pizza or had a burger. Fast forward to today, there are burger and pizza places all over the place, packed with young locals. If you were to ask me what the favorite food of young people here is today when they can afford it, I would probably guess, pizza and coke.

Even my wife's family, who had never eaten either before want to go to get a pizza, soft drink or burger and fries.

And now it is popular, if you have enough money, to have fat kids, not look skinny like the poor kids. You have higher status if your kids are fat, like the western kids. And people in general are getting fatter here too.

Progress.

 

[NW-Bound]

In another thread, Gumby shared a link to a 2016 letter from JP Morgan's CEO to its shareholders. I spotted the following statistics.

"Fully 71% of today’s youth(ages 17–24) are ineligible for the military due to a lack of proper education (basic reading or writing skills) or health issues (often obesity or diabetes)."

There is no breakout of the health limitation vs. the education one, but the statement caught my eyes.

 

[Amethyst]

What restaurants are these with the huge portions? We have eaten at several good restaurants recently and felt cheated by the small amounts of food. We never eat fast food because I don't like it.

 

[audreyh1]

My study, sample size of one. Every time I spend some time in SE Asia, where my wife is from (now here for 3 months), I eat well, never hungry and loose weight. When I return back to California, even though I exercise more I gain the weight back. Have noticed this every time for many trips over a number of years.

Mostly we eat home cooked food, chicken, pork, fish, always with rice, always with MSG. The chickens are tiny compared with the U.S., even the breast meat, small as it is, is delicious. The meat, pork, chicken is served always cooked with the bone in. The spices and flavors are amazing. Even so I find i am satisfied eating less, and I am less hungry in between.

Somehow, for me anyway, the multitude of flavors in the food, vs. the relatively simple flavors sweet and fat that I eat in the U.S. seem to satisfy me more.

The food is also fresh. Most of the food is bought at the local market, the meat and vegitables. You know it is fresh, (vs. the plastic wrapped you can get in the supermarkets here) because there is no refregeration where it is sold. The meat, fish and vegitables are sold in an outdoor market, fresh from the farm. The fish are alive.

I contrast the satisfied feeling I get eating this well flavored food with the feeling I have after eating at a fast food burger place. I can eat a burger and fries and coke, and walking out I don't feel satisified, not really hungry but feeling I want to eat more. Why it is I don't know.

Some come to SE Asia if you want to loose weight? Well, ten years ago nobody I talked to here had ever tasted a pizza or had a burger. Fast forward to today, there are burger and pizza places all over the place, packed with young locals. If you were to ask me what the favorite food of young people here is today when they can afford it, I would probably guess, pizza and coke.

Even my wife's family, who had never eaten either before want to go to get a pizza, soft drink or burger and fries.

And now it is popular, if you have enough money, to have fat kids, not look skinny like the poor kids. You have higher status if your kids are fat, like the western kids. And people in general are getting fatter here too.

Progress.

What if you don't eat fast food in the US? Avoid the burgers and pizzas and soft drinks?

 

[audreyh1]

What restaurants are these with the huge portions? We have eaten at several good restaurants recently and felt cheated by the small amounts of food. We never eat fast food because I don't like it.

Most of the medium price range chain restaurants seem to serve huge portions. Several Italian places comes to mind with massive bowls of pasta and they're not the only ones.

We also never eat at fast food places.

In fact we've pretty much stopped eating out at all when at home in the US. Save it for Europe. We used to eat out 4 to 6 times a week at home, so this is a big change for us.

Around here we've only gone to Pappadeaux occasionally (once a month), for their excellent, although expensive seafood. Many of their portions are quite large, especially the "dinner" portions. We see huge plates carried to tables around us. We have certain favorites - a few not so large but still always bringing home leftovers.

When traveling we are have little choice but to eat out often and I have to deal with weight gain. I'm getting smarter about it, but it's a work in progress.

Last year I thought if I ate properly at home, I could let down my guard while traveling as long as I stayed very active (which I do), but the 2 or 3 pounds I gained after a multi-week trip were very hard to get back off. Admittedly I had a couple of sudden high stress trips (family/elder issues) that didn't help matters.

At my advanced age (57) I am finally going through "the change" so recent weight creep and having to get stricter to have it come back off is probably due to that. My BMI is 26, so I am only slightly overweight, but I had gotten down to 25 early last year. I probably wouldn't have worried about it that much except that my triglycerides were slightly elevated last year and I want that to come down. I don't know if I had consumed alcohol within 24 hours of my blood test that could account for the rise, so I'm going to be careful to avoid it before the next lipid profile.

 

[Music Lover]

So what happened 30 years ago that made people change their choices so drastically?

It doesn't take much...a combination of a couple lifestyle changes is all it takes for many to be set on the road to obesity.

- people trained their kids to be inactive from an early age by driving them everywhere.

- safety concerns mean that letting them just run around and play on their own is no longer an option.

- then they give them money which is spent on fast food at restaurants which are conveniently located right next to the schools instead of making them a healthy lunch.

- then they give them a smart phone and they sit around all day only exercising their thumbs.

 

[Amethyst]

Oh OK, yeah, that makes sense. We've been going to higher-end places, where they drizzle colored sauce on the plate to make the plate look fuller (I guess).

I ordered a crab cake with "fresh young green beans and fingerling potato." The modest-sized crab cake was served on a small plate with a sort of frizzle of wilted lettuce and - one - tiny potato, smaller than my thumbnail, cut in four pieces. It was laughable. I couldn't find the green beans, so the waitress pointed them out. There were 3 of them hiding in the wilted lettuce. Each bean was about 3/4" long. Oh- the charge for this "plate" was $31.00.

Most of the medium price range chain restaurants seem to serve huge portions. Several Italian places comes to mind with massive bowls of pasta and they're not the only ones.

We also never eat at fast food places.

In fact we've pretty much stopped eating out at all when at home in the US. Save it for Europe. We used to eat out 4 to 6 times a week at home, so this is a big change for us.

Around here we've only gone to Pappadeaux occasionally (once a month), for their excellent, although expensive seafood. Many of their portions are quite large, especially the "dinner" portions. We see huge plates carried to tables around us. We have certain favorites - a few not so large but still always bringing home leftovers.

When traveling we are have little choice but to eat out often and I have to deal with weight gain. I'm getting smarter about it, but it's a work in progress.

Last year I thought if I ate properly at home, I could let down my guard while traveling as long as I stayed very active (which I do), but the 2 or 3 pounds I gained after a multi-week trip were very hard to get back off. Admittedly I had a couple of sudden high stress trips (family/elder issues) that didn't help matters.

At my advanced age (57) I am finally going through "the change" so recent weight creep and having to get stricter to have it come back off is probably due to that. My BMI is 26, so I am only slightly overweight, but I had gotten down to 25 early last year. I probably wouldn't have worried about it that much except that my triglycerides were slightly elevated last year and I want that to come down. I don't know if I had consumed alcohol within 24 hours of my blood test that could account for the rise, so I'm going to be careful to avoid it before the next lipid profile.

 

[CaliforniaMan]

What if you don't eat fast food in the US? Avoid the burgers and pizzas and soft drinks?

Good question, you made me smile. Actually I almost never eat fast food or have soft drinks in the U.S., but have gone to Carls Jr, Burger King and some pizza places here more times in the past three months here than I have in the last three years in the U.S. It is a treat for them, something new, so we take them. And don't get me wrong, we don't only eat healthy food in SE Asia, sometimes we go out and have decadent western food, beer and a martini... or two...

 

[Nemo2]

Oh OK, yeah, that makes sense. We've been going to higher-end places, where they drizzle colored sauce on the plate to make the plate look fuller (I guess).

I ordered a crab cake with "fresh young green beans and fingerling potato." The modest-sized crab cake was served on a small plate with a sort of frizzle of wilted lettuce and - one - tiny potato, smaller than my thumbnail, cut in four pieces. It was laughable. I couldn't find the green beans, so the waitress pointed them out. There were 3 of them hiding in the wilted lettuce. Each bean was about 3/4" long. Oh- the charge for this "plate" was $31.00.

This, and a number of other comments, reinforces, (not that we need reinforcing), our MO of not eating in restaurants.

We don't appreciate being ripped off; we find the entire exercise of 'dining out' a total PITA; we can do better preparing meals for ourselves.......oh, and did I mention that it allows us to do more travel for less?

 

[brett]

I think two factors have come into play. The first is laziness. People no longer want to spend the time necessary to prepare a proper meal. They want things fast and they want them yesterday. As a result they are prepared to eat cardboard pizza or greasy deep fried chicken w/ fries.

The second could be the increase in homes with two working parents. No time, pick something fast up on the way home.

 

[athena53]

Mostly we eat home cooked food, chicken, pork, fish, always with rice, always with MSG. The chickens are tiny compared with the U.S., even the breast meat, small as it is, is delicious. The meat, pork, chicken is served always cooked with the bone in. The spices and flavors are amazing. Even so I find i am satisfied eating less, and I am less hungry in between.

<snip>
Some come to SE Asia if you want to loose weight? Well, ten years ago nobody I talked to here had ever tasted a pizza or had a burger. Fast forward to today, there are burger and pizza places all over the place, packed with young locals. If you were to ask me what the favorite food of young people here is today when they can afford it, I would probably guess, pizza and coke.

Even my wife's family, who had never eaten either before want to go to get a pizza, soft drink or burger and fries.

I found that when visiting India. I'd have a lovely, spicy breakfast and really wouldn't be hungry till lunch. I stayed vegetarian, too, after getting some advice to that effect- just reduces the number of unfamiliar bacteria your body might encounter. I've got a lot of Indian spices here at home- DH used to make Indian food from scratch till he got sick- and plan to take it up again. Even now my diet is mostly fruits and vegetables with a little meat- just not as nicely spiced as Indian food.

Coworkers who visited the offices in India said that the locals ordered in Pizza Hut and KFC for them. They never did that for me- probably because I enjoyed the local food so much!

 

[NW-Bound]

We rarely eat fast food, but are guilty of getting pizza from Costco maybe 3 times a year.

Oh OK, yeah, that makes sense. We've been going to higher-end places, where they drizzle colored sauce on the plate to make the plate look fuller (I guess).

I ordered a crab cake with "fresh young green beans and fingerling potato." The modest-sized crab cake was served on a small plate with a sort of frizzle of wilted lettuce and - one - tiny potato, smaller than my thumbnail, cut in four pieces. It was laughable. I couldn't find the green beans, so the waitress pointed them out. There were 3 of them hiding in the wilted lettuce. Each bean was about 3/4" long. Oh- the charge for this "plate" was $31.00.

Then, I wonder how we do not get fat. When I order lamb in a restaurant, they give me 4 ribs. At home, when I do lamb, I eat a rack of 8 ribs by myself because my wife does not eat lamb. BMI of less than 24 here. My wife's is 22 or something. She eats a lot less than I do.

We or rather I eat more than what they serve at higher restaurants, a lot more, And we do not eat at these restaurants that often, so why don't we gain weight? What saves us is that we do not eat fast food, I guess.

 

[MRG]

So what happened 30 years ago that made people change their choices so drastically?

Doesn't take much. The difference of 100 calories per day will cause a ten pound weight gain every year!

That's a extra coke, beer, handful of nuts or chips.

 

[NW-Bound]

Doesn't take much. The difference of 100 calories per day will cause a ten pound weight gain every year!

That's a extra coke, beer, handful of nuts or chips.

You mean one of the above items, not all of them, right?

Recently, I was looking at the label of a soda bottle. It said "80 calories per serving". So, what's a serving? I looked for it. It said 8 oz.

 

[MRG]

You mean one of the above items, not all of them, right?

Recently, I was looking at the label of a soda bottle. It said "80 calories per serving". So, what's a serving? I looked for it. It said 8 oz.

Yes they're each ~100 calories. Obviously just an average.

If someone ate all four they should expect to pack on 40 pounds every year!

 

[NW-Bound]

One should go eat often at the restaurant described by Amethyst above.

They not only serve a bitty portion, they also charge a lot so you are broke and cannot stop by a drive-through on the way home.

 

[athena53]

One should go eat often at the restaurant described by Amethyst above.

They not only serve a bitty portion, they also charge a lot so you are broke and cannot stop by a drive-through on the way home.

LOL! I think drive-throughs are a huge downfall for people who struggle with weight. I've been watching "My 600-lb. Life" and for someone who's extremely overweight but still able to drive they're perfect. No one has to see your entire body and you can pretend you're taking that giant sack of sandwiches and fries home to a large group. No need to get out of the car and walk, either.

I'm not big on restaurant eating. Mine has gone up somewhat since DH died as I take advantage of more socialization opportunities, but I avoid pub food (will eat dinner beforehand and just have wine) and on road trips I go to Subway and pick something with lean meat and lots of veggies, or even grab something at the salad bar of the grocery store.

Someone asked about which places have giant servings- two that come to mind are PF Chang's and Cheesecake Factory. How the heck can you have room for dessert, which is also gigantic? One thing I loved in India was that the buffets typically had small, exquisite desserts. When I took the guys on my team to the lunch buffet at my hotel they'd get 3 or 4 each, but I liked being able to have a small serving of just one.

 

[NW-Bound]

I am looking forward to my upcoming 6-week trip through Europe. Will I come back skinnier or heavier? I do plan to do a bit of cooking as we stay in Airbnb homes with a kitchen, but would not want to do too much of that to take time from sightseeing.

When we took a cruise recently, I was proud to come back with the same weight. I like to eat, and the food on Celebrity ships, while not Michelin-starred quality (not that I would know), is the same quality if not far better than many restaurants. It took a lot of discipline to not overeat, and we walked a lot when the ship came into ports.

 

[Chuckanut]

I
I just imagine how frustrating it must be for a physician to see an obese person time after time, give then advice and direction for eating properly, only to have them back next time at the same weight. And then have to work them through and treat them, for all the illnesses, complaints, and discomfort that comes from it.

Big food companies are very good at hitting our biological buttons, the ones that will power is most ineffective against.
Check out this book from your library:

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®

Emphasis mine.

brain’s so-called pleasure centers light up when the subjects are dosed with solutions of sugar or fat. He then describes how consultants and food scientists calibrate products — “optimize” them, in industry-speak — to maximize cravings.

 

[jollystomper]

Have you also noticed how snack food is everywhere? It used to be only in grocery stores. Now it is in gas stations, department stores, hardware stores.... places where food is not sold. And of course vending machines popping up everywhere. It is cheap and profitable. In contrast, how place places can you find fresh fruit and vegetables to snack on?

Perhaps another factor is that we have too many snack/bad food choices, and folks feel they must consume every choice. It is like going to a buffet that has a large variety of options. Many lose their discipline and feel if they do not eat something of everything they are missing out.

 

[audreyh1]

Oh OK, yeah, that makes sense. We've been going to higher-end places, where they drizzle colored sauce on the plate to make the plate look fuller (I guess).

I ordered a crab cake with "fresh young green beans and fingerling potato." The modest-sized crab cake was served on a small plate with a sort of frizzle of wilted lettuce and - one - tiny potato, smaller than my thumbnail, cut in four pieces. It was laughable. I couldn't find the green beans, so the waitress pointed them out. There were 3 of them hiding in the wilted lettuce. Each bean was about 3/4" long. Oh- the charge for this "plate" was $31.00.

Medium and lower priced restaurants often serve large portions. That's one way they compete.

I remember going to an US Italian place near a hotel last year. DH was smart and ordered the cioppino - risky choice, but it was very good. I ordered some sautéed chicken and veggies over pasta. Well, there must have been a pound of pasta in that bowl! Fortunately the chicken and veggies were on top, so I could eat them off the top. I just couldn't believe it.

 

[audreyh1]

So what happened 30 years ago that made people change their choices so drastically?

Doesn't take much. The difference of 100 calories per day will cause a ten pound weight gain every year!

That's a extra coke, beer, handful of nuts or chips.

My question to Brett who was complaining about poor choices people make, was that somehow people were making OK choices 30 years ago because obesity wasn't a serious problem (although cardiovascular disease apparently was), but suddenly the US population started making poor choices?

I think you have to decide there were some external pressures acting on the US population.

Honestly, I don't think you can attribute it to folks suddenly having an extra beer or chips. Why weren't they having that extra beer or chips before?

 

[O2Bfree]

Honestly, I don't think you can attribute it to folks suddenly having an extra beer or chips. Why weren't they having that extra beer or chips before?

One driving force here is marketing. Food ads exaggerate and glamorize every aspect of the foods they push, from the size, texture, and colors of the food to all the emotional and social ramifications of its preparation, presentation, and consumption. Everyone and everything in the process is presented as fresh, clean, and happy, including the animals slaughtered to provide that burger or chicken breast. Food is associated with happy families, physical well-being, social acceptance, perceived wealth, sex, you name it. The way ads push things, a bag of chips or can of soda can change your life!

 

[Danmar]

Agree with most of what has been said. Sounds like most of the posters here are pretty good at making the right eating and other life choices and consequently we are not obese. So let's turn the discussion around a bit, does the obesity epidemic provide any advantages to those of us who are not obese? Only partly tongue-in-cheek.

Perhaps better annuity pricing? Better chance of attracting good looking mate? Easier to get jobs? Maybe easier to feel smug and superior? Must be others? If one views life as a competition(not saying you should) not being obese is a big advantage.

On the other hand we all pay more because of the health costs associated with obesity. Just another point of view.

 

[audreyh1]

Agree with most of what has been said. Sounds like most of the posters here are pretty good at making the right eating and other life choices and consequently we are not obese. So let's turn the discussion around a bit, does the obesity epidemic provide any advantages to those of us who are not obese? Only partly tongue-in-cheek.

Perhaps better annuity pricing? Better chance of attracting good looking mate? Easier to get jobs? Maybe easier to feel smug and superior? Must be others? If one views life as a competition(not saying you should) not being obese is a big advantage.

On the other hand we all pay more because of the health costs associated with obesity. Just another point of view.

People who buy annuities tend to be people that think they're going to live a long time, and people who are already older. This is already a known fact - self-selected population - and they tend to be right on average. So, I don't think you're going to see better annuity pricing.