Obesity Epidemic Explained..Kind Of.

So maybe everyone else already knew this and I am like, bumpkin girl, but I just have to take a moment and point everyone to this USDA research site on the massive inflationary trend in daily caloric consumption over the past three decades.

1970 - Americans ate an average of 2170 calories per day
2000 - Americans ate an average of 2700 calories per day.

That’s an extra 530 calories per day - enough to gain about one pound a week or 52 pounds per year. What’s more, the majority of those increased calories came from refined carbohydrates (like white flour/bread/pasta) and fats. I mean HELLO, no freaking wonder we’re busting out of our collective pants. STOP ALL THE OBESITY RESEARCH, WE’VE FOUND THE REASON.

Other points to note: we eat more cheese and soft drinks and less milk. We eat lots and lots of meat and oil and sugar. We suck.

Now we just need to figure out how to get people to eat less. I understand how hard that can be, what with all the Doritos around every corner. Those 99 cent grab bags are just lethal.

(PS. the US Department of Agriculture is kind of my favorite website ever. They have the world’s best food database, figures for lots of food consumption levels - haven’t’ you wondered how many kiwi fruits we import? - and tons of food research...can you tell I’m hungry right now?)


Posted by Anna Gosline on June 25, 2007 at 4:31 PM in
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I wonder, I wonder. Baby boom. Whites with a very high percentage going lactose-intolerant in mid-life (I know, because I did.) Cheeses being easier to digest than milk for said lactose-intolerants. Soda and other sugar-drinks replacing milk (same reason). Huge population of baby boomers moving from 30’s to 60’s between 1970’s and 2000.

Maybe there’s a correlation here?

I say all this because I discovered that I, especially in the last 3 years, had inflated from roughly 2000 cal/day to ~2500-2700 cal/day, and gained a whole lot of weight. Once I got tired of being fat, I started counting (sparkpeople.com is actually _useful_, if a bit overfull of liberal feel-good claptrap, but I’ll grant some people profit from that, too.) I’m steadily decreasing in bulk, more slowly because the exercise of work and walking is building up a bit of muscle where the fat was.

It is important to remember that with increased cals has come a general dependence on ‘labor saving devices’ and addiction to computers (which reduce exercise a lot!) The Wii might be a step in the right direction, if the controllers had auxiliary weights that could be attached to them…

Posted on June 28, 2007 at 7:40 AM by

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