Are people still getting 'fatter'?

[NiceSausage]

Or has it plateaued?
I've done a bit of mooching for studies but only find conflicting articles. I am used to hearing people say we are all getting fatter as time goes by, but wonder what the real stats are for this.

I then thought, since we are all more aware of nutrition that we used to be, with so much info available online, etc, it seems strange that we would be getting fatter if more and more of us are cutting out carbs, bread, sugars, sat fats and so on. If knee jerk articles are to be believed It seems as if the more we exclude the worse it gets?
Simple dietary moderation rarely creates a buzz, unlike exclusion diets and fads (at least in the popular media), but if any of these contemporary/popular diets work, surely we would all be getting thinner?

Or is it something else? I understand that there are obviously strong connections between unhealthy diets and poverty, but taking a good look around me both online and in real life, people across all social strata appear to be as concerned with dieting as ever.

Are there any good sources for info on this? The tabloids and media will always over hype such issues so I would appreciate some unbiased, up to date news, if possible.

I wonder why women are more likely to become obese than men. Is it because we already tend to store more fat?

Obesity rates are still increasing but I don't think they've plateaued yet. We need a sweeping societal change in attitude before we'll see that.

We also haven't yet started to see the dive in life expectancy which will be the inevitable consequence of current trends.

Not true - an iceberg lettuce is much cheaper than a pack of biscuits, for example. A banana is cheaper than a bag of crisps.

Calorific foods are often more convenient.

I think perception of weight has definitely changed. I have a friend who told me a few years ago that her doctor told her that she was obese. I knew that she was a bit overweight, but I wouldn't have thought that she was obese. 'Obese' definitely isn't as big as I thought it was.

She's since put on more weight during the pandemic and I worry about her health, but don't want to say anything in case it upsets her.

@anonymous98

I think that it's much harder for women to lose weight than it is for men. Women naturally have a higher percentage of body fat, whereas men have more muscle. Muscle burns calories.

Yes but you're not about to sit and bite into a lettuce like it's an apple are you?

Yes - when you say obese the image it conjures in lots of peoples minds will be the stereotype of someone who is visibly extremely overweight with less mobility, laboured breathing etc. It's not so. A quarter of the adult population in the UK is obese.

The next time you're out and about waiting for a bus or having a coffee just watch the people walking past and notice how many of them are carrying excess weight to some degree. A good number of those will be obese, and you'll count far more people carrying excess weight than otherwise.

I thought it was supposed to be flatlining (fatlining?), in the UK

Yes, that's my point.

Calorific foods are more convenient. You can open a pack of biscuits and start eating. Salad and vegetables often require preparation (although an apple or banana doesn't).

They are not not usually cheaper.

I am, if that helps your survey 😭

Yes, you can buy - say one banana for the same price as a penguin or similar biscuit, but the thing with fresh fruit is they tend to go off quickly and get thrown out. You can buy a multipack of crisps or biscuits in your weekly shop, and they are always just there, ready to eat. You can take them to work or school or wherever you go, and they don't get battered and bruised like fruit does. So, if you take into account food waste, then fruit tends to be more expensive.

yes, we are getting larger, more of us and at a younger age too.
multiple reasons, V High proportion of ultra processed food in our diet, woefully insufficient amounts of exercise, ignorance about the health impact of obesity, price and ease of junk food, reduced time or expertise for home cooking, plus factor in things like poverty/difficult circumstances at home/ parents working and being time poor and various other social economic factors.
We need to be able to be forthright about the impact of obesity and the need to reduce it, in a non shaming way.

A nana has similar calories to a penguin.

Iceberg lettuce 70p https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/fruit-vegetables-build-a-salad/sainsburys-iceberg-lettuce
biscuits 55p https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/sainsburys-oaty-rounds-300g

If you are poor and hungry, you go for the biscuits.

..."an it's normal to go to the gym 3 - 5 times per week"

er.... not for the population as a whole, it isn't.
I don't know the figures, but that will be a tiny, tiny, tiny % of the population.

I apologise. I came over like a two year old.

BANANA. Forgive me.

I also think women comfort eat a lot more than men do.

I was in Japan just before lockdown and I saw quite a few women with concave stomachs visible through winter office skirts - not everyone by any means but a good few. I realised that when I was a child there were a few lightly build women shaped like that but I hadn’t seen one here in decades.

Literally nobody was fat.

It isn't just one item compared with another item though.

Look at bread, or pasta - wholemeal is healthier, white is cheaper
Look at cuts of meat - or even mince (one of the cheaper things you can buy) - 5% fat is quite a bit more expensive than 10% fat or 20% fat in your pack of mince.
A filet of salmon is lovely, healthy and expensive, but you can eat 3x as many meals by buying "beige" deep fried stuff such as nuggets.

It’s the cost / satiety index that matters though.

If you are skint there is no point spending money on a lettuce because it won’t fill you to or give you immediate energy.

A GP I interviewed once told me custard creams gave max calories to the pound.

I think the search term you need is obesogenic environment.
It's very well known amongst science communication scholars that just telling people that something is bad for them does not stop them doing it.

@Lockheart A lettuce is in no way cheaper than biscuits! An iceberg lettuce is 70p (and bloody MINISCULE nowadays) and a packet of bourbons is about 30p

I can't answer your question, but like other people I've noticed the difference over the years, I have a photo from primary school, and there were a few kids I thought of at the time as fat. When I look at that photo now, there is nobody who you would call fat today - the fattest ones are just a little bigger than the rest, who you'd now call slim or skinny.

Interestingly, re poverty, this was not an affluent area. There is a well-known link between poverty and weight, but why was it not the case previously? Poor people were generally underweight - why has this changed? There certainly wasn't as much fast food available in the 1970s. What about biscuits etc., did they use to be relatively expensive? Or was it about quantity? People could only afford one biscuit, now they can afford to eat a packet of th?em

@Lockheart

I'm definitely carrying excess weight, despite technically being in the healthy weight range! It likes to collect around my stomach and bum 😭. I have a small frame though, despite being average height, so I don't carry weight as well as some larger boned ladies can.

These are 38p for 946 calories, two packs and you are fed for the day.

I'm not saying it is sensible but for some needs must.

Yeah we are getting fatter in western nations. When visiting Japan we did not see a single fat person. Maybe one or two plump middle aged women. Our hosts told us it was totally socially unacceptable to be fat there.

it is socially accepted here with body positivity