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I feel like kids are definitely a lot chubbier than when I was a kid. There are more bigger kids, and they are bigger than the "big" kids when I was a kid.
I think it is accurate that kids are getting larger, and there are more.
I still don't see it among people I know. The younger generation in the family is just as slim as my generation was in our 20's (and as most of us still are), and my 20-something friends are very thin as well. Teens and college students look the same as those groups did in earlier generations. One thing about Colorado that's changed a lot since 1995 is that the Hispanic population has exploded, and the women are chubby.
This discussion also has me wondering if more people in the 60+ category are overweight than in past generations; could that account for some of the difference? Because other than that, I don't see overweight people as I go around town, day to day.
That is because modern wheat was introduced into the food supply in large-scale fashion around the mid 1980s. You saw a bit of a lag, but obesity has followed a nearly exponential growth ever since then in the US. I am 100% gluten intolerant, and a nice benefit to giving up more than 8 years ago was an immediate reduction in weight without changing the amount of food I was eating or other categories- other than excluding all wheat and reading every single label of every food that passed my direction. After awhile, it became no effort to quickly figure out what contained wheat and what didn't. The unfortunate result for many Americans is that they were feed the whole myth by the USDA to eat tons of "whole grains" every day, meaning more than six servings. That is utter nonsense, when combined with the "low fat" diets that were popular for quite a long time. Get rid of wheat entirely and weight is no issue, and causes appetite and snacking to go down to nearly nothing. I know this from my personal experiences as well as other people I know who also changed diets to one similar to mine.
For the vast majority of people, including myself, wheat consumption has no impact on weight. You're overall diet is what's important
I would argue that the introduction of modern wheat, high yield- semi-dwarf strains into the food supply was a deleterious turning point in our food supply system for the masses. Why? Modern wheat is in nearly all processed foods, fast foods, frozen foods, etc. Modern wheat as appetite stimulating properties which promotes more over-eating, thus yielding a positive feedback loop of increasing obesity levels overall. Once you completely remove all wheat, everything returns back to normal in short order for most people who have issues with losing weight.
I would argue that the introduction of modern wheat, high yield- semi-dwarf strains into the food supply was a deleterious turning point in our food supply system for the masses. Why? Modern wheat is in nearly all processed foods, fast foods, frozen foods, etc. Modern wheat as appetite stimulating properties which promotes more over-eating, thus yielding a positive feedback loop of increasing obesity levels overall. Once you completely remove all wheat, everything returns back to normal in short order for most people who have issues with losing weight.
Wherever you live, go to the library and look through magazines and photos of people in that area prior to 1970. Practically everywhere, people are heavier than they were in that area prior to the 70s. Americans began to "bloom" everywhere beginning in the 70s.
When I was traveling in Russia in the 1990's I overheard a couple of Russians talking about America. Both of them had been to the US on multiple trips.
Their comment...."America, the land of the wide people". The is an exact translation.
When I was traveling in Russia in the 1990's I overheard a couple of Russians talking about America. Both of them had been to the US on multiple trips.
Their comment...."America, the land of the wide people". The is an exact translation.
I used to live in Chicago, which has a huge Eastern European population. One day I was waiting for the train and struck up a conversation with a Russian guy. He asked where I was from originally. I said Boston, and he says, "no, no, what country?". I said "yes, I'm from the US." He responded "You can't be, you're too thin."
Regarding the original question, I live in Vegas and the population here tends to run the gamit. "industry girls" tend to be skinny gym rats with huge fake boobs, the lower income demographic is fat regardless of race and everyone else is in pretty decent shape.
1) NIH statistics show that blacks and Latinos tend to have higher rates of overweight and obesity than do whites. I don't know whether that disappears if you control for income or other factors. That may account for some of the anecdotes about whether we "see" a lot of overweight and obese people around us.
2) When I was in France years ago, I did notice how much slimmer people were. But, they generally did not exercise (other than walking somewhat more than people in the US tend to), e.g., you didn't see people out jogging and there weren't gyms everywhere as there are here. And too many of them smoked (which tends to be associated with being thinner). So slimmer does not necessarily equate to healthier in every case. However, my guess would be that they generally were healthier. They ate smaller portions at meals, and several French people told me that they did not eat between meals, as is common in the US. I also saw almost no one walking down the street eating snacks (that was considered rude).
3) People's metabolism and in some cases, activity levels, tend to change over time. So most people do gain some weight as they age, even if they maintain the same eating habits.
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