Following up on the previous post, I asked some older people about junk food availability in the 1950s and 1960s. They assured me that all sorts of candy, cookies, doughnuts, cakes, etc., were all widely available. There wasn't the variety and immediate availability that there is today, but if someone wanted junk food it wasn't hard to find.
This brings up the same point in the last post, why didn't this availability of junk food lead to more weight issues prior to the 1970s? Other research shows that Americans consume 523 more calories per day than they did in 1970. It follows that these extra calories have led to more people being overweight and obese. But it doesn't again answer the question of why people are consuming more, given that high-calorie junk food was available back then as well.
The argument that it is just a matter of degree doesn't suit me too well. I am starting to lean towards the hypothesis that people's metabolisms are more susceptible to being overweight today than they were decades ago. I will expand on this in a future post.
Following up on the previous post, I asked some older people about junk food availability in the 1950s and 1960s. They assured me that all sorts of candy, cookies, doughnuts, cakes, etc., were all widely available. There wasn't the variety and immediate availability that there is today, but if someone wanted junk food it wasn't hard to find.
This brings up the same point in the last post, why didn't this availability of junk food lead to more weight issues prior to the 1970s? Other research shows that Americans consume 523 more calories per day than they did in 1970. It follows that these extra calories have led to more people being overweight and obese. But it doesn't again answer the question of why people are consuming more, given that high-calorie junk food was available back then as well.
The argument that it is just a matter of degree doesn't suit me too well. I am starting to lean towards the hypothesis that people's metabolisms are more susceptible to being overweight today than they were decades ago. I will expand on this in a future post.