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.

Easy access to ultra processed food
Eating what is convenient rather than what is optimal
Eating for emotional reasons rather than for fuel
And the reason for that is lack of time and stress. A lettuce may not cost much more than a packet of biscuits but it doesn’t have the satisfying emotional kick. And the biscuits are ready to eat and much more palatable.

I are much better during the initial lockdown period because I was semi-furloughed and had time to cook everything from scratch every day. It fell apart in the winter because I became depressed and miserable and could not find the motivation any more.

Yes, I was obese in the 90s and I was very much an anomaly. In our school there was no more than 1 or 2 others and compared to nowadays we weren't as big as some. Our perception is skewed but it's not about aesthetics it's about health. I dread to think of the impact on a body from being obese since childhood, most older adults who are obese wouldn't have been at children so the burden throughout life less. I know I had a plethora of health problems rearing their head.

I went to school in the 90s and pretty much one overweight child per class. It’s about half now (from experience, your experience might be different so don’t come at me).

An iceberg lettuce has pretty much zero nutrional value, it is all water. If you want healthier salad you need to go for the darker green and red leaves which will be more expensive.

Most of us are addicted to sugar and carbs.
Also women in the 80’s didn’t drink as much alcohol as they do now.
When my dc were small we only drank in company. Never occurred to us to open wine at home for just us two.

Also as dc we had a main meal and a piece of bread to mop up the gravy.
Dessert was for visitors and parties.
No yoghurts or cheesecake.

Plus in the 90s kids ate crisps sweets turkey twizzlers etc, not an issue. Now we have the lunchbox police and can only bring fruit, yet kids are much larger. It can’t be an access thing surely? I blame the internet and Netflix, no needs to get off your arse to be entertained anymore.

Massive bag of spinach 1 pound, lasts me 4 meals. Price of a chocolate bar?

People want the instant gratification.

^this! It’s underrated but all that movement adds up. It’s why I walk as much as possible

That changing map is mesmerising 😯 Led me to look up rates by country, I'd never realised that it was such a problem in the Middle East.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate

It's not moving but it's also the food. The amount of shite they eat at high school is shocking. My kids are all in high school and college. Lots of their friends are overweight or fat. They eat so much shite. UPF are made to be addictive. Nestle did research projects into making their shite food more addictive. And then increasing their "diet" range, again of UPF.

UPF are thought to change liver function and that may have an affect too.

I think it will eventually reverse but people will be using pharmacology or surgical means to control their weight like ozempic, pifzer have just developed a new pill which in clinical trials is just as effective. It won't just be diet and lifestyle education and changes, the human palate prefers fatty and sugary foods. That is never going to change as evolutionary our bodies havent caught up they are designed as hunter gatherers with feast/famine mentality who wouldnt know where the next meal was coming from and have to expend physical energy to get the nutriton. Hunter gathers would gorge on meat after making a kill.

Being fat is seen as a moral issue from many , laziness and lack of self control when medicine is moving towards viewing it as a disease.

Our bodies are designed to hold onto fat and love fatty foods. I think weight control will turn less about moral thing and more into prevention in a medical context.

Even if a lettuce became as cheap as biscuits obesity rates would probably still stay stable as people want to eat biscuits over lettuce they taste better!

It's very easy to just say: go to a gym, walk, jog, lift weights etc when you have a comfortable income and very little stress.

Try actually being affected by the cost of living crisis, worrying about rent and energy bills and being mentally and physically exhausted every day. Would you have the energy to go for a jog then? I doubt it. What if you are worrying about energy bills so need something quick to heat up but don't want to exist on salad? Plus there's use by dates, a ready meal will last longer than fresh produce which is useful when you don't have the luxury to go shopping every day.

It's celebrated more in women I think. You just have to look at every post showing plus sized models to see the praise she gets for being so brave and being a "real woman". Then photos of slim models get shamed with "eat a burger" "she looks I'll" "why don't you use real women as models?".

I haven't noticed the same trend for guys. It still seems to be fit looking men who are used as models. The "dad bod" was trendy for a while but the dad bod was just a guy without a six-pack, not necessarily an obese dude.

Therein lies the problem. People go on about the costs to detract from the facts.

A bag of carrots is about 60p. Potatoes £1. People will still go to McDonalds cause humans are programmed to prefer calorie dense food.

Cost is a red herring. You can make a healthy meal for the price of a chocolate bar.

I have lots of photos of my grandfather during the war, and also of my dad in the 1950s. Both they, and all the people in the photos, look half-starved by modern standards.

Well people during the war and post-war didn't generally get enough to eat because of rationing!

There has been a trend towards people getting bigger and taller for a long long time as food has become more plentiful. However, I think the availability and price of processed foods certainly contributes to growing obesity. Being time-poor certainly must contribute too. The majority of families for example have both parents working now and that makes it very challenging to cook everything from scratch. I try very hard to feed healthy meals to my family but I just don't have the time working full-time to prepare every meal from scratch. I did a lot more when I was working part-time. People in the UK generally work long hours.

Not everyone who is fat is on the breadline come on. Also moderate or even gentle exercise ie a job has many benefits for body and mind. It's this dismissing everything else and making excuses when it's okay to say I don't want to rather than I can't.

Apparently the Vegan trend is dwindling too. Whether that's because 1) meat and veggies are cheaper than fake meat or 2) people are realising how vegan alternatives are ultra processed and full of dodgy ingredients.

Interesting thread and fascinating map.
Grew up in coastal town where people were all skinny by today's standards. When I go back now it is shocking Howe many youngish people are obese and onmobility scooters. I live in in an affluent London suburb and people are much more health conscious and look younger as well as slimmer ( tho I am a TA and my colleagues seem for some reason reason fatter than my friends and neighbours generally) . In the coastal town fat is normalised as is the feeder mentality ('go on love, have a donut, you deserve a treat')
There is a lot of user of the word'big' on here - we should be referring to it as fat.
And yes it is ignorance and laziness, not poverty.

Junk food is literally made in a factory to taste good and to appeal to our inner human, its no wonder people prefer it- most have no self discipline though to eat other things as part of a balanced diet.

Good luck with even finding a bag of spinich in many poorer areas. How many have you seen in convenience stores in deprived areas? I can guarantee they will be full of sweets, crisps and chocolate though.

I agree that people move less than they used to, but I also think that people tend to believe that exercise matters more than what they put in their mouths. The processed food industry encourages this belief because it suits them very well, and it is pretty soul destroying to find that working out isn’t shifting weight. But food is more than calories and it is largely about satiety - a lot of what people eat these days is designed to make you hungrier, sending your body searching for nutrients that just aren’t there. I think the book “The Dorito Effect” is the one that explains this phenomenon. Also, I don’t think people are good at recognising ultra processed food - a packaged sandwich with some kind of spooky mayo-type substance on it will qualify, for example.

No supermarkets anywhere then? Right. If you do your food shopping in a convenience store of course it’s expensive shite. How many people live too far from a supermarket? I expect a tiny proportion of people. If you have legs you can walk 15-20 minutes (unless you’re disabled obviously).

And @Bubbles254 I grew up in the most deprived area of the UK. Poverty isn’t an excuse. Supermarkets everywhere. So are McDonalds. It’s about choosing which one to go into…