Weight gain in the American population 1960-2000
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad347.pdfThe definitive data are in the above paper. I used the Excel chart function to see how the numbers came out visually. What really jumped out at me was that the crucial dividing year was 1980. Any discussion of possible causes must use this year as a reference. The internet was not in widespread use until the late 90s, so that isn't it. What about HCFS? Was 1980 a turning point of some sort nutritionally? One obvious point to make is that that year is the start of the destruction of the American middle class.
The NHANES studiess are by decade--1960, 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000. Do a linear regression on 1960, 1970 and 1980, and then on 1980, 1990, and 2000. You get pretty straight lines as indicated by the correlation coefficients. The slopes are an indication of the rate of increase in average weight gain.
Men 1960-1980
Slope = 3.75
R2 = 0.7899
Women 1960-1980
Slope = 2.56
R2 = 0.9204
Men 1980-2000
Slope = 8.6
R2 = 1.000
Women 1980-2000
Slope = 9.4
R2 = 0.9976
For men, after 1980 the rate of increase increased by a factor of 2.3 times.
For women, after 1980 the rate of increase increased by a factor of 3.6 times.
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and with us moving from state to state ..Our towns until then did not have fast food joints..
I still remember how excited our boys were when we got a Mc Donalds... It was around 1984.. Our town has grown, but we now have a fast food place on practically every corner 
... and a shortage of "real
restaurants
Stress causes increased levels of cortisol. Cortisol causes the body to store fat.
As life gets harder and harder in the United States (as it has since 1981), and as Americans become more stressed, it is not difficult to imagine that our bodies are dealing with this stress by jacking-up our cortisol levels ... thereby making us all fatter.
I am neither a doctor, nor a scientist, but that's my operative theory.
-Laelth
I have to agree.
-Laelth
age to that, along with mobility issues (leading to not being to exercise) and you've got the perfect recipe for weight gain.
I actually eat LESS now (and healthier) than I did in my 20s and 30s, but various things have come together to make me the Goodyear blimp I am today.
sucks big time
The argument put forth in The Spirit Level is that inequality drives the stress, which in turn drives many ills including weight gain (and they point to animal models where monkeys with lower social status not only have elevated cortisol but tend to gain abdominal weight).
have not one positive correlation in society-wide terms. Gee, I wonder why...
Apparently Piketty has a nice chart that pegs 1980 or so as crucial (this is share of income for the top 1%).
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities seems to use 1979 as a key year for when income inequality started to surge.
Emmanuel Saez also notices a similar timeline
A standard measure of inequality is the Gini coefficient. It looks a bit different from the share taken by the top 1% but the basic trend is similar:
The obesity epidemic was created by our agriculture policy. We subsidize the very things that make us fat.
I have always wondered what caused this huge explosion in my lifetime. We blame it on eating too much and exercising too little, but that can't be the only issue. When I was going to school, there was *the* fat kid. Now, when I go to the pool, most of the children are fatter than the fat kid. I travel quite a bit and there is no where I have been where I have seen the same amount of morbidly obese people than I have seen in an American mall. I know the rest of the world is catching up to us because they are adopting our food. I have friends who are overweight that I am shocked how little they can eat and work out like mad women and still lose very little weight. Obviously, something is very wrong.
So I started reading a lot to find the answer. Gary Taubes in Why We Get Fat is a good primer because he lays the story out out in the scientific history. Before WW2, scientists specifically related obesity to consumption of carbohydrate. But since many of the scientists were killed in the war (Germany was a leader in studying obesity), they started over with the law of thermodynamics. But that has never been clinically proven and has led to today's state of affairs.
The best guess is that the obesity epidemic is caused by fear of fat, too much added sugar, HFCS, and our grains that have been hybridized to have even more of the qualities that make us fat. Many of these foods were added because farmers were growing so much due to subsidies, they didn't know what to do with it. So they dressed it up and stuck it in our food, claiming it was so "healthy." We were told to stop eating meat and fat (the diet that humans had evolved upon) and consume loads of carbohydrates: "heart-healthy" wheat, phyto estrogens in soy, and fat-free foods. Industrial oils replaced shelf-stable saturated fats in baked goods such as lard and coconut oil; McDonalds fries used to be fried in tallow but are now fried in "vegetable oil" which is most likely soy and cotton seed.
Dwarf wheat is nothing like original diploid wheat and has far more starch and gluten. Our house has switched to Einkorn wheat whenever we eat wheat, which is very rarely, and you can tell the difference just by digestion. It does not rise very well for high-rising cakes, but it has a golden color and an actual flavor.
The amber waves of grain? They're gone in favor of dwarf wheat. In this photo, from left to right shows the changes. Crossing it with goat grass made it had heavy bulbs of grain at the top so they made it short so it wouldn't fall over. It was meant to feed a starving world but it also changed it's properties. It took over world wide about 1990.
Soy, which is in everything, especially processed food, has been altered to be far more estrogenic than the original soy you imagine slim Asians eating. It is estimated that an infant drinking soy formula gets the equivalent of five birth control pills a day. Soy milk is like mainlining estrogen and soy is a known goitrogen (thyroid disruptor) yet we are exposed to it at a shocking level never seen before. Men should run from it and women should watch out as well as it can lead to estrogen dominance. Soy is also extremely allergenic, so if you have digestion issues, it could be soy.
And then there is corn in everything, making up most of what fast food joints call meat. It too is changed from the original corn to contain far more sugar. So when a person thinks they are eating a balanced meal from processed foods, they are not getting much protein, mostly corn, wheat, sugar (as a preservative) and industrial vegetable oils.
And don't forget the industrial oils which were discovered because they particularly fattened up livestock. Most processed foods contain cheap, rancid oils that they put flavoring/smell ingredients so you can't taste them (as your body reacts to spoiled food like smelling a carton of spoiled milk). Soy, cotton seed, and canola (rapeseed) are all created for industrial uses and are highly inflammatory in the body. When they figured out how to clean it up and sell it, they sold it to us as healthier than traditional fats. Cotton seed oil was originally tested as a form of male birth control as it effected the motility of sperm. It is still used as the number one way to fatten up cows and pigs for market.
There are lots of reasons, and I feel very bad for all the people who have been shamed into thinking they overeat and are lazy and that's the reason they are overweight. There are lots of cooking blogs all over than talk about cooking without these foods and how people have regained their health. I'm sure the armchair scientists will have a lot to say about how everything I wrote is woo. But if you are having health problems, do the research yourself.
We have a winner here folks! 
Be sure you can see the pictures, because that backs up his statement. I'm going to get it for myself.
My best friend, his family had to switch their diet because their son had Crohn's. The doctors wanted to take out part of his 8 year-old intestine and put him on antibiotics for the rest of his life. The did the SCD (Specific Carbohydrate) diet which allows for some less inflammatory starches and emphasizes homemade yogurt to build up the gut flora. The son went into remission so now Stanford is recommending the diet. But he also reported to me, no new cavities in their family for 12 years.
The most interesting thing about Price is he studies people from all over the world. They all have different diet, but they live on their native diet. No modern foods such as white flour and sugar. The minute those things are introduced, the children born in the same family show degeneration. Seems like lots of ocean foods are necessary. That's easy for me, but all the organ meats are a little tough.
Let me know what you think 
something WILL kill us all.. and we never know when our particular timer will run out..
All the fancy medicines in the world will probably not add all that much time to our clocks..and the side effects may take time away
I do use my cupholders, but always for water. It's funny, I can't seem to walk ten feet without carrying water with me ... What did I used to do?
A family of four could have 4.25 drinks going at one time. 
And don't give me 'woo'. I have celiac sprue. 
A scientist won a Nobel prize for his work to eradicate hunger and starvation by genetically modifying wheat. It went from 4' to 18" and the volume allowed for 10x the number of plants to grown in the same square footage. I can't recall the name off the top of my head - but he saved a LOT of lives.
For 90%+ of the population, this was/is a non issue. For those of us with leaky gut, crohns, celiac and others - it was toxic.
Funny thing happened though - a bunch of people found out that eliminating this new wheat allowed them to lose weight almost effortlessly, which led to the whole low carb, then paleo, now gluten-free diets. Not for health reasons, but because it allowed them to shed pounds they have been fighting for years.
HFCS, "low fat" (flavor replaced with carbs like HFCS), and modified wheat are all to blame IMO. Those beasts are insidious and practically in EVERYTHING we consume.
Oddly, while I will get incredibly ill for a few days after consuming a trace of gluten, about a year ago, I ate a homemade wheat bread made by a friend who had grown it from some heirloom seeds from the 1950s and it didn't bother me at all. Blew my mind. I only wish that these "safe" seeds were readily available.
that have rave reviews. celiac.com has an interesting concept that I am looking to try when I have time.
This one is "sourdough starter" and talks about keeping some of the batch to use in new batches, but doesn't include the bread making portion of the recipe. There are links in the comments to that process though.
If you still have your starter - check this technique out. Would love any comments if this is a concept you are familiar with!
http://www.celiac.com/articles/23146/1/Gluten-free-Sourdough-Starter/Page1.html
it may explain a thing or two.
I'd like to also say that there are studies that claim people who use street cars are less corpulent than folks who drive. There is a walk involved to get to it that's more than a walk to your car and it matters.
I'm visiting family in Germany at the moment. Studying the look of the people and how it relates to their methods of getting around and using their bodies has been illuminating on the subject.
It was approved by the FDA in 1981, and it has been shown to cause weight gain unrelated to caloric intake:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666312004138
It has been suggested that the use of nonnutritive sweeteners (NNSs) can lead to weight gain, but evidence regarding their real effect in body weight and satiety is still inconclusive. Using a rat model, the present study compares the effect of saccharin and aspartame to sucrose in body weight gain and in caloric intake. Twenty-nine male Wistar rats received plain yogurt sweetened with 20% sucrose, 0.3% sodium saccharin or 0.4% aspartame, in addition to chow and water ad libitum, while physical activity was restrained. Measurements of cumulative body weight gain, total caloric intake, caloric intake of chow and caloric intake of sweetened yogurt were performed weekly for 12 weeks. Results showed that addition of either saccharin or aspartame to yogurt resulted in increased weight gain compared to addition of sucrose, however total caloric intake was similar among groups. In conclusion, greater weight gain was promoted by the use of saccharin or aspartame, compared with sucrose, and this weight gain was unrelated to caloric intake. We speculate that a decrease in energy expenditure or increase in fluid retention might be involved.
However, it's probably not a single-factor change. A set of factors seem to have converged around 1980 that contributed to this change in the slopes of the curves that you describe. Likely candidates include the introduction of aspartame, the beginning of the FDA/AMA/NHLBI "War on Fat" (resulting in excessive refined carbs and gluten/gliadin in processed food, that in accelerated the spread of metabolic syndrome), and advertising-driven changes in dietary habits ("May we supersize you?"
IMO it's unlikely to have been changes in exercise habits among children, as the increase in obesity is seen across all age groups. While the overall reduction in physical activity probably plays a role in the overall increase in obesity, I can't imagine how a gradual trend like that would contribute to an abrupt kink in the curves in 1980.
