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.

@Damnspot haha! Obviously not but my point was about healthy food not costing proportionately more than unhealthy food.

With carbs/proteins the cost goes up, but the cost of vegetables is not prohibitive.

I’d also rather each chocolate, but if I gave in to that every time I’d be obese.

@DuesToTheDirt in the past, I expect a lot of poorer people would have been doing physical work eg farming, labouring. Even housework would have been more physically demanding than it is now. This would burn calories. And they wouldn't have access to junk food as it didn't exist

I was morbidly obese I have lost half my body weight and have a bmi of 20 which is has been stable for years.I read studies that said dieting doesnt work. In the end i had weight loss surgery . I still eat shit food on occasion it's just much less quantities. I make better choices in a way because I am severely punished if I dont. Stodgy food makes me feel sick so if I have a pizza it has to be ultra thin crust which has half the calories.

Turning obesity into a moral issue doesn't work in the long run 95 percent of diets fail.

I certainly think being overweight has become normalised. I'm a healthy weight and get comments about how thin I am. Nope, I'm a healthy weight because I eat right and exercise.

Anecdotally, I live in an affluent area in the south, I'm from a poorer area in the north. The lifestyle where I live now is just so different. Parents are out on weekends cycling and running with children. There are health shops everywhere and hardly anyone is overweight. Even if I go a mile down the road the make up of shops changes to be chicken shops, more newsagents, gambling shops etc. The average size increases by about 4 dress sizes.

I think making time to exercise and eat well is something that affluent people do.

Haven’t lots of people from Jamie Oliver onwards already tried this?

People like ideas like UPF because it's a simple answer

The reality is, move more, eat less

You're really comparing iceberg lettuce to a packet of biscuits in terms of calorific content?

There are regional differences, I find. Walking around London most people are slim with quite a few skinny/toned. You also can’t move for gyms and exercise studios in some areas.
When I visit family up North people are noticeably bigger.

Yes I agree. Unfashionable but true.

Putting class aside there is a definite trend of richer=thinner. A friend of mine despairs about her overweight child but won’t take her to the park to run around for an hour or two a day which is a shame because the child loves exercise and socialising and would lose the weight very quickly if she were given this choice. Yes, it can be boring for the parent to go to the park for an hour or two a day. It is worth doing though for the long term health benefits to the child.
The richer you are, the more you can afford out of school activities or even mobile data so you don’t get too bored in the park.

Interested to see the number of posts assuming that fat shaming on a societal level would be effective - posts lamenting body positivity and advocating for the social unacceptability of being fat. As many of us were I expect, I was a teenager in the 90s in the 'heroin chic'/superwaif era of extreme toxic body negativity. It might have kept my weight down then - though of course I couldn't see that and hated myself passionately and intensely for not conforming to the desired proportions - but the amount of dangerous diets I and my friends did, the amount of shame we internalised, the circling of cellulite on beautiful models in magazines to laugh and express disgust at, all of this contributed to the wrecked metabolism and terrible relationship with food and disconnection from my body that led me to gain weight and set my course for a yo-yoing disaster for what feels like forever. I'm trying to reset it now and undo the damage of those years. I certainly can't get on board with a movement to bring that back. Body positivity has pros and cons but please let's not bring back that level of shame again.

Taken from Henry Dimbleby's book Ravenous. Shows the BMI distribution from the 1950s, 80s and now.

@orangegato I didn't want to spell it out but it seems like I have to - at our foodbank, many people who come to us (Central, deprived area) have a learning disability and are unable to fill in forms without assistance. Those same people may not be able to manage an online shop.

I'm not disagreeing with you. I get what you're saying but humans aren't created equal or receive equal education or opportunity to thrive.

I never did any of that and nor do my dds.

Shaming doesn't work obesity is a medical issue.

MNHQ allowing these threads where people delight in pointing out 'fat people' and their superiority is the shameful thing here.

In the 70s, a lot of kids were out running around all the school holidays, no kids clubs, childcare, etc. Kids were far more active. There were fewer extracurricular activities, but more outside play. A fat child was unusual. Watch old Grange Hill, Roland was the fat kid with a medical issue. Now, he wouldn't even be noticeable.
As a child, a Mars bar might be bought on a Saturday and carefully cut into chunks, with the ensuing argument over biggest/ end pieces. Now, a child has a whole bar from multipacks.

Yes, poorer people now have lower quality and processed foods, but the reality is they can still afford too much of it. A small burger only and a apple and a day of running, cycling, kicking a ball, imaginary games running around would burn it off, a skinny child would still be seen not obese, it's the large burger, large fries, giant coke, cakes, biscuits, crisps that are the problem and sat inside on screens. Inappropriate portions of junk foods.
I'm not sure we have seen news articles of emaciated, skeletal, starving children in the UK.
I hear about 'starving UK families' it's certainly not borne out as literal.
We need to sort out housing so all families have access to cooking facilities too.

Oh fgs. Admittedly I haven't read every post but this shutting down discussion is stupid.

You don't need to be doing endless cardio and starving yourself to maintain a healthy weight, its this hyperbolic language that's as bad as saying fat people are all lazy and eat too much as they're greedy; neither and true and both equally as harmful in different ways. Carrying excess weight in itself puts the body under additional strain regardless of how otherwise fit someone is, you might not be unhealthy as such now but you'd be healthier if you weren't 'large'.

Humans are literally designed to source the most calorific dense meals because evolutionary we wouldn't know where the next meal was coming from. Our bodies are designed to love the taste of calorie dense foods because previously it would keep us alive.

I know, that's what I said. They manufacture these foods in labs and factories to appeal and pander to this. Many people do manage to not eat tonnes of ultraprocessed and calorie dense foods though, it takes will power sure but they're also human.

My dad and most of his friends are slim, he's seventy he is still a size 30 waist. They all always worked in manual labour jobs, 10-12 hours of hard physical graft. He used to have a very big appetite but big dinners, (liver, bacon veg etc) lunch would be two sandwiches with cheese/ham salad, fruit, yoghurt, yes he's eat crisps, the occasional snickers, often liked a pudding but they were all for their whole lives expending as many calories as consuming. He still cycles and runs now.
He now eats breakfast usually porridge or toast and a boiled egg or two with fruit, doesn't eat much at lunchtime maybe yoghurt or he does like a salad in summer or someone's soup in winter and then has his dinner early ish. Smaller portions than before.
He isn't dieting, when asked what happened to your appetite, he just says since giving up work (retired) I'm just not as hungry any more.

People now often eat for pleasure rather than fuel and a lot more have very sedentary jobs. It's just a different mindset, he grew up in a family with one full time working parent and 8 siblings. Food was always nutrition.

I remember that about the Mars Bar! Also we only ever had sweets on a Friday night, dad used to buy a box of smarties from the off licence and that was it, shared between five of us 😅

I don't agree with fat shaming but if you look at east Asian countries like Japan, aren't people saying that culturally it's unacceptable and I remember reading another thread that said people would openly shame you for putting on weight. Clearly it does work in that context as they are a very slim nation (with high smoking rates as I understand it)

The obesity crisis is very real, I'm not sure why people aren't allowed to discuss it- it won't be solved by people shouting about fat shaming, taking biological and scientific fact personally and getting offended by it though.

My French SIL also thinks nothing of using the word fat and shaming people for being fat. She also loves food and is a great cook. My nieces seem very grounded, slim and healthy with no sign of eating disorders! Not saying she's right but it's a different culture there.