The biggest problem with this piece is that it doesn't even mention that in the modern era obesity is negatively correlated with income. Your entire narrative is that Americans are fatter today because we're wealthier, but this seemingly inconvenient fact was just omitted. I really can't take this piece seriously unless it includes all the relevant facts and then forms a conclusion
One puzzle I don’t see addressed much is why there seems to be a sort of “ratchet effect” where it’s much harder to stay at a healthy weight if you are or were recently overweight. People (including slime mold time mold) take it as a given but don’t really dig in.
This does fit well with the contaminant theory (although unlike lithium it would point to something fat-soluble), where something in the diet or environment interferes with satiety, leading to fat accumulation, and that something gets stored alongside the fat. And then when the body encounters an energy deficit that substance ends up back in the bloodstream and once again interferes with satiety.
What about other countries with relatively similar access to food? Are they gaining weight at the same rate? Is this a uniquely American food consumption issue? Thinking about countries like Canada, Australia, Western/Northern Europe. My anecdotal travels tell me that the USA is unique with regard to the amount of obesity, even if you factor in access to cheaper food as a portion of income. Which leads me away from an answer like it is because the U.S. has cheap food as the most significant factor.
I always find Matt's takes intelligent and/or thought provoking, but this post was less so. Matt completely fails to grapple with changes in diet and environment, looking at this issue largely through an economic/historical lens.
For instance, other countries have gotten richer over the same time period as the United States. Do they all suffer from the same increase in obesity rates? If not, do they have a different food culture? Could America's heavy subsidization of corn and soy play a part in creating an obesogenic environment? Matt does not consider or discuss these angles.
If you go to a country in the Mediterranean, the food culture there is *very* different to America. It's much easier to eat smaller portions, much less red meat, more seafood and vegetables, and much less sugar. For example, in Israel, there are always different salads and vegetables available at breakfast throughout the country. Perhaps not coincidentally, people who eat a Mediterranean diet also happen to live much longer than people who eat an "American" diet, regardless of how wealthy they are.
Arguing America's obesity problem is largely a function of its wealth feels like an extremely reductive take, lacking in the thoughtfulness and rigor Matt usually applies to most issues.
I agree that increased wealth is a major factor in US weight gain, but I'm not convinced that's the only factor at work. For example, there's reason to believe that animals --- both wild and domestic --- are becoming fatter too [1]. That's almost certainly not due to seed oils, but it's also not necessarily explained by increased human prosperity. So, I do think that the subject deserves more investigation --- even if it doesn't deserve the full whodunnit treatment.
Not sure if this is the ideal place to comment on Bad Takes, but here goes
I've really appreciated that in both obesity episodes, even when talking about using social stigma for good, you haven't tried to make being fat shameful.
When we stigmatize smoking, we make it embarrassing to be a smoker. It's cringe to stand out in the cold because you need your fix, to always smell like smoke, or to have shaky hands. It is not embarrassing to have lung cancer, heart attacks, or preventable diseases.
When we use stigma to fight obesity, we shouldn't focus on how fat people are unattractive, unhealthy, or have a low quality of life. We should, on the other hand, make it embarrassing to eat fast food every day, to always be snacking, or to drink coke like it's water. Thin people generally aren't thin because of a paralyzing fear of getting fat, they're thin because of their habits, behaviours, and environment.
I'm a skinny guy, always have been. Most of the people I know are not. None of them strike me as particularly gluttonous, or unconcerned with health. However, I am continuously surprised by how *central* food is to everything. If we're getting together, odds are the goal of the event is to eat something. If we're getting together to watch a game, we spend the day beforehand figuring out what we should order. If we're going to a park, a non-trivial amount of effort is spent coordinating snacks.
When my partner found out I was intentionally losing weight over the holiday, they were upset and thought I would cast a shadow over the whole thing because "it's about the food".
I don't think that any of them would benefit from feeling unattractive. Our society genuinely does a lot to make fat people feel bad about themselves, that one Cosmo cover be damned. But perhaps they would benefit from feeling a bit weird about how central recreational/social eating is in their lives.
Is there a culture in the world in which food and eating isn’t central to social fabric of the society? That’s something that’s pretty ingrained in most human cultures that I can see.
Apparently in Sweden you typically don't eat when visiting someone's house, so there's one.
I believe every culture observes celebratory meals. Not sure if eating is the "default social activity" everywhere though - in part because there are certain slices of my social circle where it isn't.
Wtf. Why the heck would you simmer vegetables and remove them instead of just using vegetable stock?! I'm all for food abundance but isn't food waste its own glaring issue?
Yes, yes, yes! I found it really disturbing too. Why throw perfectly good vegetables away?
If you want homemade vegetable stock, here's what you do: save the inedible parts of vegetables (onion peels, potato peels, the inner parts of bell peppers, the ends of zucchini and eggplants, celery "hairs"). Put them in a bag and shove them in your freezer. When the bag is full, put the vegetable scraps in a pot with some water and boil it for an hour. Strain the resulting liquid, throw away the solids and voila! You've got a nice vegetable broth without wasting anything.
Lots of comments of what we eat, but *when* we eat is also important.
I was a child in the People's Republic of Poland in the 80s, and we as a population were much slimmer than America today. Yes, there were fat people, but you hardly ever saw the kind of extreme obesity you routinely see in the U.S.
And one glaring difference between Poland then and America now is that back in Poland it wasn't socially acceptable to shovel food in your face at any time of day outside of mealtimes. With some exceptions, it just wasn't done. And the exceptions were "go to a nice cafe, order a pastry on a plate (a real ceramic plate, not a disposable one) and a cup of coffee, slowly eat your pastry and drink your coffee while sitting at a table and relaxing, then go about your day." It was not "grab a bag of chips/candy/whatever and shovel it down while running errands or driving or whatever." I think being more mindful about when we eat would help a lot with obesity.
I say this as someone who routinely snacks on sugary food when tired or stressed, so this is definitely a "do as I say, not as I do" comment.
I think this is an underrated point; so much of eating habits worldwide have a social and cultural aspect beyond just "I need calories right now".
If I had to guess, the thing missing from the American story is the importance of marketing. Another commentator noted that there isn't any real history of American foods going back hundreds of years. We're a mishmash of a variety of cultures and foods. Which has been a great benefit in most ways; the variety of food all of us can eat today is really remarkable and Matt is very correct to note how much better and tastier food is then even 20-30 years ago. But it also meant there wasn't a unified food culture. Enter savvy marketing that helped sell Americans on the idea that sugar water was a good use of your money or that cabinet full of crackers, cookies and snacks is part of having a wholesome middle America household.
Reading the comments I think we can sum up that MY failed a basic 101 here: correlation ≠ causation. Sure, average weight increased this past century, as did wealth. It does not follow that there is any causal connection, and there are *plenty* of reasons to doubt this, as raised in the comments.
Gotta say: I think the case for "Matt's oversimplifying a bit" is stronger than "Matt's wrong."
That is, to me the claim that greater food availability has prompted people to eat more food—often in excess—feel highly intuitive. We evolved from creatures who regularly survived episodic calorie shortages. Remove that natural check, and fat gain is off to the races.
I suspect the oversimplification part has to do with not taking into consideration our more sedentary lifestyles: the rise of the automobile, TV, and the decrease in physical labor strike me as being important factors, too.
Except gdp and obesity don’t really correlate I don’t think? And worse still and income and obesity *really* don’t correlate. As shown in the comments in the us at least they inverse correlate for women and show no effect for men. All this challenges the resource hypothesis and to an extent even most of your added factors.
Maybe democracy is obesogenic. Democracies don't do famines and prioritise food for their citizens. Might explain some precocious obesity in the developing world as its democratise.
I'd be really interested to know the impact of minor labor-saving changes on weight increase. It's not just what you eat; how much you burn is equally important.
"Everyone is eating themselves to death" is probably lowkey a top three issue facing this country, and hearing the way people talk about it is a real black pill.
The biggest problem with this piece is that it doesn't even mention that in the modern era obesity is negatively correlated with income. Your entire narrative is that Americans are fatter today because we're wealthier, but this seemingly inconvenient fact was just omitted. I really can't take this piece seriously unless it includes all the relevant facts and then forms a conclusion
One puzzle I don’t see addressed much is why there seems to be a sort of “ratchet effect” where it’s much harder to stay at a healthy weight if you are or were recently overweight. People (including slime mold time mold) take it as a given but don’t really dig in.
This does fit well with the contaminant theory (although unlike lithium it would point to something fat-soluble), where something in the diet or environment interferes with satiety, leading to fat accumulation, and that something gets stored alongside the fat. And then when the body encounters an energy deficit that substance ends up back in the bloodstream and once again interferes with satiety.
What about other countries with relatively similar access to food? Are they gaining weight at the same rate? Is this a uniquely American food consumption issue? Thinking about countries like Canada, Australia, Western/Northern Europe. My anecdotal travels tell me that the USA is unique with regard to the amount of obesity, even if you factor in access to cheaper food as a portion of income. Which leads me away from an answer like it is because the U.S. has cheap food as the most significant factor.
I always find Matt's takes intelligent and/or thought provoking, but this post was less so. Matt completely fails to grapple with changes in diet and environment, looking at this issue largely through an economic/historical lens.
For instance, other countries have gotten richer over the same time period as the United States. Do they all suffer from the same increase in obesity rates? If not, do they have a different food culture? Could America's heavy subsidization of corn and soy play a part in creating an obesogenic environment? Matt does not consider or discuss these angles.
If you go to a country in the Mediterranean, the food culture there is *very* different to America. It's much easier to eat smaller portions, much less red meat, more seafood and vegetables, and much less sugar. For example, in Israel, there are always different salads and vegetables available at breakfast throughout the country. Perhaps not coincidentally, people who eat a Mediterranean diet also happen to live much longer than people who eat an "American" diet, regardless of how wealthy they are.
Arguing America's obesity problem is largely a function of its wealth feels like an extremely reductive take, lacking in the thoughtfulness and rigor Matt usually applies to most issues.
Agreed
Does anyone know if all of these statistics on weight increases account for height increases? The average American has increased in height since 1850.
America's obsession with looking for an "Easy Button" and turning everything into a big mystery (or worse, a true crime) is really geting old 😣
I admire your restraint in not mentioning you went to high school with Kenji
You desperately need to be Ray Peat - pilled. http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/fats-functions-malfunctions.shtml
I agree that increased wealth is a major factor in US weight gain, but I'm not convinced that's the only factor at work. For example, there's reason to believe that animals --- both wild and domestic --- are becoming fatter too [1]. That's almost certainly not due to seed oils, but it's also not necessarily explained by increased human prosperity. So, I do think that the subject deserves more investigation --- even if it doesn't deserve the full whodunnit treatment.
[1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/everything-getting-fatter
wouldn't a significant number of wild animals weights directly correlate with human argucultural productivity growth?
Not sure if this is the ideal place to comment on Bad Takes, but here goes
I've really appreciated that in both obesity episodes, even when talking about using social stigma for good, you haven't tried to make being fat shameful.
When we stigmatize smoking, we make it embarrassing to be a smoker. It's cringe to stand out in the cold because you need your fix, to always smell like smoke, or to have shaky hands. It is not embarrassing to have lung cancer, heart attacks, or preventable diseases.
When we use stigma to fight obesity, we shouldn't focus on how fat people are unattractive, unhealthy, or have a low quality of life. We should, on the other hand, make it embarrassing to eat fast food every day, to always be snacking, or to drink coke like it's water. Thin people generally aren't thin because of a paralyzing fear of getting fat, they're thin because of their habits, behaviours, and environment.
I'm a skinny guy, always have been. Most of the people I know are not. None of them strike me as particularly gluttonous, or unconcerned with health. However, I am continuously surprised by how *central* food is to everything. If we're getting together, odds are the goal of the event is to eat something. If we're getting together to watch a game, we spend the day beforehand figuring out what we should order. If we're going to a park, a non-trivial amount of effort is spent coordinating snacks.
When my partner found out I was intentionally losing weight over the holiday, they were upset and thought I would cast a shadow over the whole thing because "it's about the food".
I don't think that any of them would benefit from feeling unattractive. Our society genuinely does a lot to make fat people feel bad about themselves, that one Cosmo cover be damned. But perhaps they would benefit from feeling a bit weird about how central recreational/social eating is in their lives.
Is there a culture in the world in which food and eating isn’t central to social fabric of the society? That’s something that’s pretty ingrained in most human cultures that I can see.
Apparently in Sweden you typically don't eat when visiting someone's house, so there's one.
I believe every culture observes celebratory meals. Not sure if eating is the "default social activity" everywhere though - in part because there are certain slices of my social circle where it isn't.
Wtf. Why the heck would you simmer vegetables and remove them instead of just using vegetable stock?! I'm all for food abundance but isn't food waste its own glaring issue?
Yes, yes, yes! I found it really disturbing too. Why throw perfectly good vegetables away?
If you want homemade vegetable stock, here's what you do: save the inedible parts of vegetables (onion peels, potato peels, the inner parts of bell peppers, the ends of zucchini and eggplants, celery "hairs"). Put them in a bag and shove them in your freezer. When the bag is full, put the vegetable scraps in a pot with some water and boil it for an hour. Strain the resulting liquid, throw away the solids and voila! You've got a nice vegetable broth without wasting anything.
Lots of comments of what we eat, but *when* we eat is also important.
I was a child in the People's Republic of Poland in the 80s, and we as a population were much slimmer than America today. Yes, there were fat people, but you hardly ever saw the kind of extreme obesity you routinely see in the U.S.
And one glaring difference between Poland then and America now is that back in Poland it wasn't socially acceptable to shovel food in your face at any time of day outside of mealtimes. With some exceptions, it just wasn't done. And the exceptions were "go to a nice cafe, order a pastry on a plate (a real ceramic plate, not a disposable one) and a cup of coffee, slowly eat your pastry and drink your coffee while sitting at a table and relaxing, then go about your day." It was not "grab a bag of chips/candy/whatever and shovel it down while running errands or driving or whatever." I think being more mindful about when we eat would help a lot with obesity.
I say this as someone who routinely snacks on sugary food when tired or stressed, so this is definitely a "do as I say, not as I do" comment.
I think this is an underrated point; so much of eating habits worldwide have a social and cultural aspect beyond just "I need calories right now".
If I had to guess, the thing missing from the American story is the importance of marketing. Another commentator noted that there isn't any real history of American foods going back hundreds of years. We're a mishmash of a variety of cultures and foods. Which has been a great benefit in most ways; the variety of food all of us can eat today is really remarkable and Matt is very correct to note how much better and tastier food is then even 20-30 years ago. But it also meant there wasn't a unified food culture. Enter savvy marketing that helped sell Americans on the idea that sugar water was a good use of your money or that cabinet full of crackers, cookies and snacks is part of having a wholesome middle America household.
Reading the comments I think we can sum up that MY failed a basic 101 here: correlation ≠ causation. Sure, average weight increased this past century, as did wealth. It does not follow that there is any causal connection, and there are *plenty* of reasons to doubt this, as raised in the comments.
Gotta say: I think the case for "Matt's oversimplifying a bit" is stronger than "Matt's wrong."
That is, to me the claim that greater food availability has prompted people to eat more food—often in excess—feel highly intuitive. We evolved from creatures who regularly survived episodic calorie shortages. Remove that natural check, and fat gain is off to the races.
I suspect the oversimplification part has to do with not taking into consideration our more sedentary lifestyles: the rise of the automobile, TV, and the decrease in physical labor strike me as being important factors, too.
Except gdp and obesity don’t really correlate I don’t think? And worse still and income and obesity *really* don’t correlate. As shown in the comments in the us at least they inverse correlate for women and show no effect for men. All this challenges the resource hypothesis and to an extent even most of your added factors.
Maybe democracy is obesogenic. Democracies don't do famines and prioritise food for their citizens. Might explain some precocious obesity in the developing world as its democratise.
I'd be really interested to know the impact of minor labor-saving changes on weight increase. It's not just what you eat; how much you burn is equally important.
I'm not talking about the big changes -- like more people having deskbound jobs. I mean small things. The TV remote (widespread by the 80s), automatic versus crank car windows (ditto). How less frequently people get up from their desks to walk to the printer versus sending a pdf. People typing angry screeds on Twitter versus getting up, walking to the window, opening it, and screaming, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." (https://www.google.com/search?q=network+mad+as+hell+people+yelling+out+their+windows&rlz=1C1FKPE_enUS994US994&sxsrf=AJOqlzXq9ejtUPpBD9ncwDpa300eDNbQhg%3A1675357023988&ei=X-vbY4zsO4e7qtsPkean8Aw&ved=0ahUKEwjMl6Wip_f8AhWHnWoFHRHzCc4Q4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=network+mad+as+hell+people+yelling+out+their+windows&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQAzoKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzoFCAAQgAQ6BggAEBYQHjoJCAAQFhAeEPEEOgUIABCGAzoFCAAQogQ6BwgAEB4QogRKBAhBGABKBAhGGABQ3QRY-C5gxTBoAXABeACAAXaIAZwakgEFMTUuMTiYAQCgAQHIAQfAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:7569e1d0,vid:licwOgzBqo0)
How much do all those tiny things add up to as a fraction of total calorie intake?
I recall reading somewhere that air conditioning is a factor in obesity, too, though I don't remember the causative mechanism.
"Everyone is eating themselves to death" is probably lowkey a top three issue facing this country, and hearing the way people talk about it is a real black pill.