[Guzba]

This just begs the next "why". Why are people eating more now?

Such a significant behavior change across a large population is not well explained by "we just did".

I'm not sure fast food consumption or huge portion sizes is a great explanation. If fast food is the problem, why does that matter if it just comes down to calories? As for larger portion sizes, would even larger portions make us continue eating? Would tiny portion sizes make us all deadly malnourished?

[bobthepanda]

I wonder if it's correlated with cars.

We do know that walking rates, across the country, have fallen significantly. In 1969, approximately 50% of children walked or bicycled to school, with approximately 87% of children living within one mile of school walking or bicycling. Today, fewer than 15% of schoolchildren walk or bicycle to school. And we see this generally across the board, where for the most part driving to work alone dominates commute habits. If the only walking you do is from the door to the car, you are not getting much routine physical activity.

This would also actually well correlate with the rate of fast food consumption, since it's primarily car-centric, and is more car-centric than other types of eating out.

https://www.saferoutespartnership.org/sites/default/files/pd...

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I also don't think it's really any sort of secret that fast food companies like return customers and engineer the types of food that become addictive. There is a book called the Dorito Effect which theorizes that not only has artificial food become more flavorful over time, but that our industrial scale food production has made the base products less flavorful in favor of prettier or hardier varietals.

https://foodcrumbles.com/the-dorito-effect-book-review/

[xp84]

I’ve read that Dorito book and it was excellent.

[alabastervlog]

Food got way, way cheaper, including and especially convenient (ready to eat) food. Plus a race between companies selling that food to optimize flavor and marketing strategies for maximum sales, which, at some point, had to start meaning “more eating”, not “more eating this instead of something else” otherwise line could not go up.

[Guzba]

With this in mind, is the real cause "calories in, calories out" or "optimized flavor and marketing strategies"?

[esskay]

> This just begs the next "why". Why are people eating more now?

Have you been in a US supermarket? It's absolutely nuts and I don't think many Americans realise it.

To be bombarded with monumentally huge portions of everything is just a recipe for...well....the situation the US is in. Theres not many other countries that have whole food groups focused on cramming in as much peanut butter, jelly, marshmallow, chocolate, or whatever other high fructose corn syrup crap is being used.

Massive slices of cake prepackaged and ready to eat? Yeah why not. 50 different coffee syrup flavors? Yeah go for it. How about a lovely massive bottle of sugary drink to wash it down? Just one? No no have a crate of 20 of the things.

Just for a comparison, look up candy on the Walmart site. Now do it on Tesco UK. Next, try the bakery, or hell even the meat isle, somehow the exact same product ends up being significantly worse for you in the US.

[sevensor]

I didn’t fully grasp how poorly our US bread approximates the real thing until I visited Europe. It’s weirdly spongy and candy sweet, and that’s the “healthy” bread in the bread aisle. Our food culture is just kind of gross most of the time, and the ersatz health food is some of the worst, as it’s been punched up with loads of organic cane juice or pear juice concentrate. Or celery juice if it’s a product that wants to claim not to have added nitrates. And, it should go without saying, truckloads of salt.

[nobodyandproud]

Food designed to circumvent the sensation of cloying or satiation.

Also, eating more in isolation and without talking.

[Guzba]

Food design does seem like a higher potential explanation than many others offered.

[denkmoon]

The proportion of households with a person with time and energy to prepare a healthy home cooked meal has diminished. We have sacrificed domestic life on the altar of profit.

[homebrewer]

It really doesn't have to take more than 10-15 minutes per day in total, you just have to be aware of what you're doing. I know several examples — including myself — who eat healthy food on a budget and spend very little time doing it. We had our problems with American-style food when it appeared and became popular (I had a BMI of 30.5 for several years and blamed everything but myself), but quickly self corrected before real damage was done.

[Guzba]

If healthy home cooked meals are better, why is that? This is a non-answer.

It must be something about the ingredients (invalidating calorie theory) or it must be lower calorie (invalidating ingredient theory).