The problem with all these sorts of theories is that they do an okay job explaining the latitudinal data–we’re fat, we’re subsidizing roads, we’re subsidizing corn, so that must be making us fat!–but they don’t explain the trend. I have not done an exhaustive survey, but I’ve been unable to find any study that even attempts to establish in any sort of rigorous way that Americans have become more sedentary in, say, the last twenty or thirty years.
The data is even less persuasive for other candidates. Corn, and simple starches more broadly, have been the cheapest part of the American diet for centuries. As a child, my mother didn’t get any fresh vegetables at all eight months out of the year, because they simply weren’t available. She got frozen or canned, but their two winter staples were sugared homemade applesauce and butternut sqaush, both of which are basically pure simple carbohydrate. Lean chicken was pricier than beef, but fatty pork was cheaper than either. Look in a cookbook from the thirties or fifties and you’ll find that recipes for some sort of mostly starch dish are at least 65% of the book. And those weren’t healthy whole grains, either. They were white flour, or rice, richly laced with fat and sugar.
With the possible exception of corn subsidies (I don’t have good data on the relative penetration of corn into the food supply chain), almost every alleged deficit that is “causing” our obesity epidemic, from highways to bad urban grocery stores, is either basically the same as it was fifteen years ago, or somewhat better. So I find them deeply unsatisfying as a causal explanation for the sudden uptick in overweight people now.
To me, government behavior is at best an incredibly incomplete explanation of what’s happening. A better fit is simply that food–all food–has gotten much cheaper. People spend less of their income on food than they did thirty years ago, despite consuming a lot more of it. Stopping them from doing so will require a great deal more than subsidizing tomatoes.
Fat people live longer:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/24/overweight_live_longer/
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article537571.ece
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.c7aaeb7940626693fa418a1eab2291f6.81&show_article=1
http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/06/05/10695.aspx
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/06/24/Study-Slightly-overweight-live-longer/UPI-64961245860812/
Japanese, Canadian, Danish, and U.S. long term studies all seem to agree…being overweight, even greatly overweight is better than being underweight or even “ideal” weight.
I for one ate a low fat diet, and ended up with insulin resistance and Type II diabetes (too many carbs, apparently). The government recommendations for diet are WRONG. Alot of what the ADA says is wrong, too. Our bodies have barely adapted to agriculture, let alone the modern grocery store (refined carbs everywhere).
Google the “paleolithic diet” — lots of good info about how our bodies actually work. Snack on fruits & nuts. Eat lean meat and green veggies without guilt, and refined carbs only sparingly. and for God’s sake, EXERCISE.
18 months after diagnosis, I’ve been med free for 9 months. My blood sugars are normal for a non-diabetic, but I can never let up — exercise, careful food selection, and constantly staying informed.
I slogged through that (somewhat defensive) article, and would comment that some points are made, but more important ones are buried in the back-and-forth comparison of McArdle’s case makes to Ambinder’s. One could wonder if either of them has much life experience of the influence of nutrition on their own health and well-being to recognize how obesity, diabetes, diet, exercise and the rest inter-relate. What the government should be doing [i]ideally[/i] is making it harder for people to eat what is not actually good for them, and easier to get access to wholesome nutrition. At this time in the USA, market principles are probably being expected to accomplish this instead, but it won’t work [i]because so few people really believe what is true about nutrition[/i]. Very few Americans really want to spend a few hours a day on food prep, or to eat whole grains, non-dairy oil/fat, lots of fish, and much fresh fruit and veg – never mind making quinoa or the like a steady part of the diet. And they don’t want to drop out the copious red meat, fatty fowl, high cholesterol dairy, and refined carbs products, partly because they taste good or seem to, and partly because it would be so un-American to many. The ‘alternative food groups’ like refined flour and sugar and their products, bad fats/chocolates, fatty meats, and canned whatever are very accessible, and the American lifestyle militates against preparation of food that requires time. It would (optimistically, will) take both education about food groups and nutrition and healthy food preparation AND access to the raw and basic foodstuffs needed for this, to make a difference. There are segments of the population setting a good example and probably there are TV shows doing so, but they may be drowned out in the clamor of ‘I know what I like, and I eat what I want’.
Having to lose my gall bladder and radically change my diet in the past year has taught me as only life can, and it has made the largest single difference of anything I’ve done in my nearly 60 years aside from accepting Jesus Christ as Savior. Perhaps this part of my life is a response of finally accepting Him as Lord as well, since it often occurs to me now that without consciously trying to, I eat a diet very similar to what Our Lord himself ate – fish and more fish, little red meat, olive oil, wine in the cooking, whole grains, fresh fruit (think figs!), nuts, and veg and herbs galore……it’s quite surprising. It alters one’s mental capabilities and stamina very much for the better, and after years of discomfort my joints no longer ache and they work better, my skin no longer itches, and sometimes I think my eyesight has even improved (that could just be passing middle age after decades of near-sightedness though). My digestion runs like a set clock, and I feel about 40 or so. I am the only person in my birth family without Type II diabetes, and I watch the 3 of them as well as my husband and son unable to resist refined carb products and not getting enough fresh produce, and suffering, and failing to grasp why. I keep praying for them all to wake up! and keep cooking, lovingly, the right things for those I feed. This is probably what Mary did for Jesus while she could, after all.
Although I agree with much of your comment, I am afraid I disagree with this part:
RE: “What the government should be doing ideally is making it harder for people to eat what is not actually good for them, and easier to get access to wholesome nutrition. At this time in the USA, market principles are probably being expected to accomplish this instead, but it won’t work because so few people really believe what is true about nutrition. . . . It would (optimistically, will) take both education about food groups and nutrition and healthy food preparation AND access to the raw and basic foodstuffs needed for this, to make a difference.”
The only reason, in fact, that I now have access to organic foods — in increasing abundance — and greater variety of healthy fresh vegetables and fruits along with whole wheat non-refined pasta and other wonderful foods is because of the market itself.
And one really big reason why our people are not educated — 1/3 being functionally illiterate — is precisely the dependence on failed and disastrous public schools.
Please God keep the government further away from the food market and allow prices to continue to fall on many of my favorite foodstuffs. The differences between the cost and variety available now for me in my town as compared to five years ago are profound.
Well – that was why I put ‘ideally’ in italics. It isn’t likely to happen, especially because it would be so un-American. Unfortunately the US population for at least a century has just been a vast experimental ground for agribusiness and processed food industries in cahoots with food marketers, and that was arguably facilitated by government assisting food ‘economies of scale’; so, it didn’t surprise me that Ambinder in McArdle’s article was suggesting government should offer the corrective. Living in a Commonwealth country I’ve seen that the government science research body is prominent in making good nutrition information available and also plays a role in advising agribusiness and smaller farmers. It could turn out in the US that the market makes the corrective, that would be just wonderful, but I’m not that optimistic that any significant percentage of the population will alter their diet enough to have an impact on health trends. Perhaps more effective will be the university cooperative extension programs that advise farmers, help develop the trends to whole foods that are taking hold in some places, and publish nutrition information to guide the next generation. There may well be such a (state) university extension program behind the increasing abundance of fresh and organic foods that you’ve given the market credit for.
Does it take personal health crises to cause people to make large shifts in what they eat – analogous to personal crises causing people to turn to Christ for salvation? Not necessarily but they are effective! And as it is, personal health crises usually send people looking for medical cures, not ‘lifestyle alterations’, even though the medical issue may well be underlain by a dietary problem. Many advocates of government influence on eating habits, in effect, are hoping to prevent the many health crises that bad nutrition produces, like Type II diabetes. I can see their point about taxing soda and the like, but, as you say, so many are illiterate and are otherwise ignorant of how they should eat, that that would be as effective as punishing addicts for a drug problem rather than bringing in the pushers. Some of the population is well beyond the preventative stage, and becomes a health care burden.
I neglected to point to a relationship between obesity and the ‘Bible diet’ I mentioned in my previous post, but after just 5-6 weeks on the new regimen I dropped 15 lbs., and after surgery another 5, though not being able to afford an entire new wardrobe I somewhat consciously stopped this good trend.
RE: “Well – that was why I put ‘ideally’ in italics.”
Understood — but Americans chose to limit the power of the State for good reasons. It is not the State’s job to try to decide what is “good for” the citizens and then produce ways of “making it harder for people” to do other things and easier for people to do what the State desires. The responsibilities and powers of the State are delineated in our Constitution.
RE: “Unfortunately the US population for at least a century has just been a vast experimental ground for agribusiness and processed food industries in cahoots with food marketers . . . ”
I disagre. Most of the last century was about attempting to bring down the costs of production of food so that people of low and middle income could afford it.
If you were forced to eat the “average” diet of the poor Southerner 100 years ago — or even 50 years ago — I think you would not look with such disfavor on what our country has managed to do which is to produce masses of plentiful food at low prices.
I think the primary reason why we are a land of obese people is the same reason why we are a land of porn addicts, Internet addicts, television addicts, sex perverts and so much more. We have chosen to fill the God-sized hole in ourselves with cheap excess of sex, food, and lurid behavior along the lines of Roman circuses and colliseums.
To change that . . . . to change our national character towards a love of art, beautiful music, great writing, organic foods, slow cooking, and so much more, we’d have to have a national character transplant.
I can think of only one way in which our country might receive such a transplant and it is not through the State attempting to force their oft-shifting values upon the citizens of the US.
Sarah1,
You have a beautiful mind. Thank you for your continued cogent remarks. God bless.
Here’s a capitalist reality.
If you make kids fat they will become fat adults. Fat people consume more of your (food) product. Take a look where the high calorie cereals are in the grocery store. They are at the eye level of kids.
Here is a personal reality.
You are in charge of your life. Stop blaming the government, medical profession, Madison avenue or your significant other.
A couple things: if there is one thing the market is good at, it is distributing food.
Government involvement goes back a long way. To some extent, our current arrangements are because of Nixon’s altering of some New Deal programs under Earl Butz. This helped make Corn foundational in our economy. It would be interesting to see what happened if we stopped subsidizing corn.
By and large, government subsidizes agribusiness, which operates – to some extent – like a monopoly. In 1995 the Cato Institute illustrated, for example, that 43% of ADM’s profits came from government subsidies. And they were busy price fixing.
I doubt that the market, however, cures irrationality. Nor do I think that the market is rational. It is, however, a representation of freedom and a necessary check upon the utopian inclinations of ideologues of all stripes.
#8 – you are right. businesses and corporations deliberately use our psychology to get us to buy products. It’s not quite a level playing field. It is a part of the market, for example, to use sex to encourage people to buy things. I tend to think that people are quite susceptible to suggestion, to purchase things they don’t need. I don’t think – always – that businesses put people (or customers) before their own profits.