From this article, even the animals (lab, pets) are getting fatter:
Consider, for example, this troublesome fact, reported in 2010 by the biostatistician David B Allison and his co-authors at the University of Alabama in Birmingham: over the past 20 years or more, as the American people were getting fatter, so were America’s marmosets. As were laboratory macaques, chimpanzees, vervet monkeys and mice, as well as domestic dogs, domestic cats, and domestic and feral rats from both rural and urban areas. In fact, the researchers examined records on those eight species and found that average weight for every one had increased. The marmosets gained an average of nine per cent per decade. Lab mice gained about 11 per cent per decade. Chimps, for some reason, are doing especially badly: their average body weight had risen 35 per cent per decade. Allison, who had been hearing about an unexplained rise in the average weight of lab animals, was nonetheless surprised by the consistency across so many species. ‘Virtually in every population of animals we looked at, that met our criteria, there was the same upward trend,’ he told me.
Something is happening that isn’t just genetics, or willpower, it’s environmental.
Anecdotally, I agree with you. I was thin and fit until my late 20’s. I gained about 40 pounds over a span of a few years. I got fed up with it. I began applying myself just a little bit, and in the span of about the same number of years the fat just slowly and steadily melted away. Now I’m in my late 30’s and have the same weight and general fitness as when I was 20 (aside from some lingering sports injuries.)
I think my experience is the inverse of what you’re talking about. By being thin into early adulthood, my body established that as its normal state. When I deviated from it, my body naturally returned to it with only minor lifestyle changes.
I look at photos from the twenties through the forties and it is striking how lean most of the people are and how many of them have cigarettes in their mouths or hands. I have never smoked, but all of the 6 other members of my family smoked and stayed leaner during their smoking years. I guess instead of reaching for a candy bar to relieve stress/boredom eating, the previous generation reached for smokes.
They didn’t have the sheer amounts of fast/comfort food available to them and what food they did have was more work intensive and much more expensive. I’m just guessing here, but I think that might account for our grandparents leanness.
You’re ignoring the “when we control for known factors” in the part you quote. Yes, scientists have considered smoking… it doesn’t explain it.
See above.
I remember the last time the study, which the Aeon piece linked above is derived from, I think, came up, people came up with reason after reason even though…get this…the scientists had controlled for known factors, like quality of food, exercise, sedentariness, etc. It’s like people are just unwilling to believe “Nope, they accounted for that and we’re still left with an inexplicable weight gain.”
Autophagy, “self-eating” is definitely a keyword to most aspects of this subject. (not the cannibalism)
I would write something enlightening about it, but my brain is soo tired.
Right, I eat largely the same as my great-grandpa did, but there’s at least one big difference: right now, I’m skimming these comments before I get busy writing. What he would have done is eat breakfast after doing several chores, then go back out and do more chores, and would probably have put in a very long day of physically demanding labor. Me, I’ll get exercise later when I walk to the mailbox.
I still have my grandma’s cookbooks from the early 1950s. I eat better than my grandparents, that’s for damn sure. The stuff in those cookbooks seems dangerously unhealthy by today’s standards.
I can’t speak for my great-grandparents, whom I had never met, but I had one great-grandfather who only ate once per day. His one meal of the day was rumored to be 5000 calories, but I doubt that.
Throughout most of my life, I have been thin to average. However, I don’t ever think I could get back to my college weight, nor would I want to. I was a little too thin back then.
That doesn’t mean I can’t gain weight. If I stop exercising, I gain weight like crazy, but if I exercise, I lose weight again.
If I don’t get any strenuous sport or hard labor, I lose weight and gain diameter. Remarkably quickly! When I was exercising at least 3-4 nights a week I weighed 30 pounds more than I do now, and had a waistline 2 inches smaller.
Sounds pretty much like my diet, only more so. I have a cup of coffee in the morning, but then I get occupied with things and forget to eat anything else until nightfall most days. But 5K calories is probably about 40 or 50 tacos, or a couple real big steaks, a potato and a six-pack of good stout. I can only do that meal comfortably if I forget to eat for 36-48 hours.
Apparently my type of metabolism is not common, but not spectacularly unusual either. Your ancestor probably had similar genetics; something northwestern European perhaps? Frog-English or Breton or some similar Scandinavian/Celtic mishmash?
I do that as well. Sometimes I eat one meal a day because I just get caught up in stuff. I never eat more than two meals per day.
I went nearly a year eating one meal a day intentionally just to be healthy and principled and whatever. I don’t think I’d do that again.
5000 calories is what a top male college athlete eats while in training, plus a little extra. It’s what Michael Phelps actually ate per day, the rumors of his crazy diet notwithstanding. Or, it’s what two sedentary middle-aged men consume daily. This is the equivalent of 83 soft tacos, or, because tacos weren’t that popular in his country, about 40 gołąbki. I don’t believe the exact number of 5000 calories per day, but I do believe he ate more than the average man and ate it all at once.
My personal record is 60 but I was a lot younger.