to consider my grandma’s theory on why we’re all fatter?

[bagelbreath]

My grandma swears up and down that although food and movement are obviously big factors to the massive weight gain of the country, heating is also very important.

While she lived in a cold house, wore stockings and dresses year round, and spent a lot of time outside, we all sit toasty in our well heated and insulated houses. Her theory is that it took lots of energy to stay warm then vs now.

Is it crazy? I kind of think it makes sense

Animals bred for food are fed growth hormones perhaps they are still active in the meat we eat.

Grandma's generation probably were burning a few more calories in ordinary life.
The winters were colder. Newspapers talked of mini ice-age in late 1950sor early 1960s I think.
They also moved around more at home, no remote controller for radio or tv. Walked to bus, carried shopping home if small items. Walked to more shops, butcher, baker, grocer all along the High Street.

They were eating a different balance of food in their diet more meat and vegetables, more stews. Little that was highly refined. apart from breakfast cereal. They might have had porridge for breakfast.
Google the rations for WW2 and the recommendations for a healthy diet. It will surprise you.

Makes perfect sense. Horse owners use temperature as a weight control mechanism - eg if they’re a bit porky in winter, leave unrugged to shiver the weight off. If they’re on the skinny side, keep them as toasty as you can.

I've seen it on lists as a factor - as well as less sleep/poor sleep as well as some medication and not one always expected.

There are other things food,. quality, quantity consumed, less manual jobs/more sedimentary lifestyles.

I don't think it's the biggest factor but it is usually considered one - plus there are some studies linking air conditioning in hotter climates to obesity as well.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2006/jul/31/healthandwellbeing.features11
www.reuters.com/article/us-temperature-obesity-idUSTRE71M5DU20110223

@Alleycat1 not in the UK, it's banned. In the US maybe!

I grew up in the 50's and 60's, no car, tiny flat, coal fires. We were out all the time we were not at school, running, climbing, skipping, roller skating. I was always starving at meal times and would eat the most horrible food - boiled sheep hearts anyone? Thin as a rake until the menopause - much harder now to keep the fat off.

I think that is a factor, yes.

But a minor one compared to the availability of cheap, fattening food. Snacking also. Older generations tended not to snack.

more sedimentary lifestyles.

Sorry but 😂 Sure it’s autocorrect!

When I'm cold I eat more. I tend to lose weight during summer, without dieting.

People were just generally more active, they even had to get up to change the channel on the tv 🤷🏻‍♀️

I didnt even notice. Yes, I meant sedentary. Sorry!

No. People are fatter now because there isn’t strong enough social pressure for them to be thin and healthy. There’s too much “body positivity” bullshit flying around.

Also people are lazy and unmotivated and lack self control. They’re too willing to blame X, Y and Z on their weight gain instead of taking responsibility for it.

My mam walked me to the bus-stop every morning to get the bus to primary school setting off at 7.30am. 1.5 miles to the bus-stop and walked herself home. At 11am she walked to work and back 5 days a week - 6 miles a day. So every day she walked at least 9 miles a day.
She would also often walk into the village shopping and get the bus back .- 3 miles.
At weekends there was no bus to my grandma's so we walked a mile to a bus-stop and got a bus that dropped us 2 miles from her house. 3 miles each way every Sunday.
She hoovered with a really heavy hoover, washed with a twin tub, hauling clothes from one side to the other then out to the line. Cleaned all the windows every fortnight inside and out- sitting on the window ledge with the sash on her legs so she didn't fall.
When she retired at 65 she walked even further walking the dog 8-10 miles a day.
She went to dancing groups 3 x a week.
She was really active and I don't think ever had takeaway food in her life.

My grandma was the same- walked miles, worked until she was 74 as a painter and decorator.

They both ate much more healthily than people do now- no fast or takeaway food, proper home-cooked meals - potatoes, meat or fish and two veg. Rarely a pudding unless it was a treat on a Sunday. Breakfast at 7am, 'dinner-time' at 12.30am, tea at 5pm and if they ate anything before bed ut was a digestive or rich tea or cracker biscuit.
Occasional fish and chips, liked a bar of chocolate . As they got older they liked M and S puddings but had never eaten ready meals before that. My dad was the same. He came home from work every night to a cooked meal of meat or fish and veg, shepherd's pie, cottage pie, fish pie, hearty soup or stew that my mam made.
Pizza and pasta had no place in my mam's store cupboards or fridge. They ate nothing that had spices in or could be considered 'foreign'. Ruce was for a ruce pudding. They did bake every week which wasn't very healthy probably but nothing as over the top as you see now.

My Nan didn’t have enough food to feed her family and eat herself so she’d often go without for a few days. She had 2 jobs.

She was very thin

People eating absolute crap and too much of it is the reason people are fat .That and no other.

Unlikely. Being cold encourages hunger and the amount extra you burn would be offset by about half a cookie.

Would love to think so but the cheapest food to buy and then cook probably isn’t the healthy choice.

Maybe you are right snd a silver lining of sorts.

No. People are fat because we eat too much. Too much crap processed food. And we're lazy.

I come from a family of fat women, born in the 1900's, who lived into their 90's.

Google the rations for WW2 and the recommendations for a healthy diet. It will surprise you.

Beware poverty porn especially that indulged in by people who never experienced it or the rosy days of rationing. You know that fabulous rationing diet where everyone was so slim? You still had to pay for it. If you couldn't afford your two eggs a week or whatever, you didn't get them. There was no welfare state until 1948 so if you couldn't afford medical care, and most people couldn't, you either got better or died.

My own parents, who were born in 1918 and 1923 ate fairly nutritious food when they were growing up. Do you want to know how they did it? Neither of them had a back garden to grow lovely fruit and veg but they both had a yard in which they kept rabbits and chickens to kill for meat. And a duck that kicked up a racket whenever thieves came by. He ended up in the pot too.

The other key thing was that both of them came from families of just four children when other families had 10 or more. Both my maternal and paternal grandmothers died shortly after giving birth to my parents which combined with an extended family and both my grandfathers' willingness to work themselves into an early grave - neither of them reached 70 - meant my parents, who lived relatively nearby but didn't know each other when growing up, were considered to be quite posh.

Rationing ended officially in 1954 - nearly 70 years ago - but in reality ended before then. My mum, who died nine years ago aged 90, told me. But if she hadn't I'd still know all about it because people who never lived it keep banging on about it.

Yes, she and my dad who would be 104 now, did grow up in unheated houses and not have as many biscuits and fizzy drinks as children do now. There was a lot of built-in exercise like walking to physical jobs, if there were any and sometimes men could burn off calories by fighting in the queue for a day's pay.

I did not have central heating until I was 10 and do not blame my parents. Given their background they were careful with their money. But when they had it they spent it. They would never understand people competing to deny themselves in an attempt to feel superior.

I'm wearing a t-shirt and tracky bottoms with bare feet in an unheated house now. We have not turned the radiators on since a cold snap in January 2021. That's because we live mid-terrace and don't really feel the cold. But if we did we'd turn the radiators on because luckily we can afford it.

I can also afford to indulge in fantasies about my excellent diet and activity regime but I don't really because that would make me look ignorant.

I haven't read the whole thread but wanted to say exactly this. Fat ponies get a few weeks with no rug outside to slim them down, and over-rugging is seen as a significant health risk to ponies who gain weight easily.

I can see an idea for a new diet book…The Pony Diet.

It might be a small factor, but I'm putting ultra processed foods, normalisation of monster portions and more sedentary lives way ahead of it. I'm pretty sure scientists are now saying UHP foods cause obesity.

Is this the silver lining to the energy crisis?!

We're not ponies though, are we? For instance I imagine you two have a blanket for when it gets cold at night.

It's wet as well, tough - you probably suck it in like sponges through your pores.

Do you make sloshing noises when you walk?

A new perspective to the expression "I could eat a horse".