The American diet: What's changed?

[Racnad]

Last night we watched a show on CNN about the relationship between diet & obesity, espeically child obesity.

I'm wondering through, what is different between now and what I was growing up?

I seem to remember when I was a kid in the late 60s/early 70s, other kids I knew were eating lots of

Cookies
McDonalds and Burger King
Potato chips, Fritos, Cheetos and Doritos
Snickers and other candy bars
Twinkies, Ding-dongs and Ho-Hos
Soda pop

And every Saturday morning & weekday afternoons we say lots of colorful, fast-moving commercials for this crap. I don't think all this stuff was that good for you then, but I don't remember childhood obesity beign such an issue then. So what is different?

Here's some possibilities.

1) Everone else is doing it - NOT! Sometimes I tend to perceive that everyone esle has money than me, takes nicer vacations than me, drives nicer cars than me, and has more sex than me. Intellectionally, I know that's not really the case. While I perceived that other kids were eating this stuff all the time, my mother limited our access to them, so they are all occasionaly treats for me and my siblings, not daily snacks as served by moms in Saturday morning TV commercials. That may be the case for lots of other people in my generation as well, and today's moms may actually be serving more junk.

2) Corn syrup: A lot of sugar has been replaced by High Frutose Corn Syrup over the years, and has been getting lots of bad press lately. Is HFCS really worse than cane sugar?

3) Protective parents: When I was a kid, we rode our bikes all over the neighborhood all the time. I'm under the impression that media hype about child abductions scared parents into not letting their kids go anywhere unsupervised. This means a lot less bike riding, and if you're not doing that,...

4) While I wasn't a big sports guy, other kids in the neighboorhood had almost daily softball or football games in the coul-de-sacs in the neighboorhood. This may be replaced now by video games. When I was a kid, to play a video game you had to ride your bike to the arcade (after you've mowed the lawn to get enough quarters), or ride to a friend's house who had an Atari set, but all you had to play was Pong, which you really couldn't do for hours.

So is it really a different diet (or rather diet choices), less physical activity, botth, or other reasons?

[Plan9]

I'd vote for both, man. Activity has gone down drastically (video games, internet) and insta-junk-food-pellet intake has gone up horribly (overworked parents, insta-grat culture).

[Shauk]

protective parents and world of warcraft, and things in a similar nature that promote a sedentary lifestyle.

hell, you could blame the internet and jerry springer too.

[Plan9]

Jerry Springer?

I mean... outside of teevee... you could blame Jerry Springer?

I don't know why, but that just made me laugh.

[Racnad]

Another factor could be two income households. Until I was in high school, my mom was a stay-at-home mom who could start preparing dinner before 4 pm and have it ready by the time Dad came home. Home-cooked meals tend to have more fresh veggies and less sugar and carb fillers. When both parents work, there's less time for cooking so there's more fast food and processed foods (with more carbs, HFCS and trans-fats) that needs little more than heating up before it is served.

[Nimbletoe]

My guess that it would be a combination of a decrease in general activity among today's youth and a decrease in time available in the average family to eat cooked meals. PE programs are always the first thing schools cut to save money, which is a shame. Kids would also rather sit inside and play games then go outside. I should know, I was one of them. My mom was a single parent who worked full time, so we ate on the go, and I liked video games. I'm obviously not growing up right now, but I can only imagine that over the past 5-10 years, things have gotten way worse.

Another thing to factor in would be the insane increase of portions over the last 20 years. While I'm not a kid anymore (22), I'm younger than a lot here, and was growing up while the portions at fast food and restaurants just got exponentially larger. I topped the scales 3 months ago at 338 pounds. Once I realized what I had become and decided to change, it was insane to look at the lifestyle I had become accustomed to from my teenage years. I ate *so* much food it wasn't even funny. We're talking thousands of calories per sitting, easy. I didn't exercise, ever. I've lost 50 pounds in these three months simply changing how much I eat, cutting out the pure crap (fast food, pop, other super greasy foods) and exercising 3-4 times a week.

So where am I going with this? Well, one of my favorite restaurants is Olive Garden. My favorite dish there is chicken fettucini alfredo. Obviously, health wise it is abysmal. Well, I had been doing really well, so last week my friends and I went when I was back in town visiting, and I ordered it. I used to eat probably 5-6 breadsticks, a couple bowls of soup, and the entire farking meal before I felt full. This time? One breadstick, one bowl of soup, and half way through my meal I felt sick from how much I had eaten. It's VERY easy to eat a ton of food and not even realize it these days, because everywhere you order food they give you way too much.

[Plan9]

Portion sizes are OUTTA CONTROL!

Gnarly radical mondo portion sizes.

[MexicanOnABike]

portions is the answer. I remember when i was a kid, we had 1 set of plates that would fit a full serving nicely and you'd be full. last year, we bought some new plates at costco and they wouldn't even fit in my dishwasher. that's about 2-3 inch more in diameter than the current ones i have which are even bigger than the ones i had when i was a kid. so in the last 20 years, i think portions have really gone up!

and by that, i mean, if you fill the plate everytime, you'll get used to that portion just like if a can of pop is 300ml, and then they bring it up to 400, you'll get used to that too. they can't keep making them bigger!

Costco and large size store like that aren't helping either!

oh and internet too. that kills all after school and weekend activity most kids had.

[aberkok]

I just listened to a recent Scientific American podcast about this. The link is, um.... here:

http://www.sciam.com/podcast/podcast...95&ref=p_sciam

One of the biggest culprits is how industry is producing about 3900 calories per capita per day: more than almost anyone needs. The result is that we look for more places to sell these calories. It has now become socially acceptable to eat anywhere - in the car, on the walk to work, and even while working. A couple of decades ago that didn't happen as much. Remember when cafes in bookstores were novel (pardon the pun)? Well now it's expected.

The podcast also brings up the fact that we intake more calories through our beverages.

[Shauk]

yeah, I haven't drank anything aside from tea or straight water the last 2 weeks, thats been the hardest part. not the food, not the exercise.. the drinks.

[Charlatan]

Sedentary lifestyle.
HFCS (not as a replacement but in addition to the sugar already in most foods).
More processed foods and less fresh.
More calories in general (portion sizes).

[Catdaddy33]

From July 2005 until July 2006, I lost a total of 110lbs, I did it by counting calories (no real diet other than my own) and at least an hour of exercise a minimum of 6 days a week.

Now that I'm at my target the hardest part is maintaining, I still count calories but not that strict as I did when I wanted to lose. It amazes me what eating out does to the calorie count. I noticed that my weight was creeping up so I decided that I would only eat out once a week and make that my cheat meal, lo and behold I lost weight and back down to my original target weight. I still do at least 30 minutes of cardio and weight training a day but the only thing that changed was eating out an average of 3 times a week down to 1 and made all the difference.

Here is a link that I used to plan my dining out schedule http://www.dietfacts.com/fastfood.asp

It's amazing what eating out can do to someone trying to eat 2000-2500 calories a day, one meal and your done..

[maleficent]

that cnn special referred a lot to Brian Wansink's book, Mindless Eating, Why we eat more than we think... and a lot of what is in the book is true...

Costco and large size store like that aren't helping either!

that's one of the points the writer makes in the book, that we think we're saving money by buying the jumbo economy sizes of things, but the reality is, unless you portion stuff out ahead of time, we're eating more... there were a bunch of other studies int he book as well...

Since may of 2006, til now, I've lost over 180lbs with about 40-50 to go... Pre may of 2006, I never ate fast food, never ate fried foods, ate fairly healthily but just never took the time to measure out portions - plus 15 years of being ont he road living in restaurants didn't help much - even healthy looking foods in restaurant menus pack in the calories...

One of the big things I've done is changed plate sizes -and it's made a big difference... a portion of something looks a lot bigger on a small plate than it does on a big plate... and your mind says -oooh i'm satisfied rather than -- ooh that portion looks really tiny i must still be hungry.

[snowy]

Originally Posted by maleficent

that cnn special referred a lot to Brian Wansink's book, Mindless Eating, Why we eat more than we think... and a lot of what is in the book is true...



that's one of the points the writer makes in the book, that we think we're saving money by buying the jumbo economy sizes of things, but the reality is, unless you portion stuff out ahead of time, we're eating more... there were a bunch of other studies int he book as well...

Since may of 2006, til now, I've lost over 180lbs with about 40-50 to go... Pre may of 2006, I never ate fast food, never ate fried foods, ate fairly healthily but just never took the time to measure out portions - plus 15 years of being ont he road living in restaurants didn't help much - even healthy looking foods in restaurant menus pack in the calories...

One of the big things I've done is changed plate sizes -and it's made a big difference... a portion of something looks a lot bigger on a small plate than it does on a big plate... and your mind says -oooh i'm satisfied rather than -- ooh that portion looks really tiny i must still be hungry.

I drink a cup of tea or coffee when I feel hungry, to decide whether or not I'm actually hungry or just thirsty. I am a lot more in touch with my hunger response now, and I can recognize when my blood sugar levels are starting to drop.

Americans eat so much they've lost touch with that hunger response, and we're constantly keeping our blood sugar levels so high we burn out our pancreas before its time. Yet a huge portion of that response is psychological, and we can figure out how to control it, but as of now marketers are doing a better job of it than we are.

[Ustwo]

Increased consumption for a lot of reasons and even less exercise.

Though I'd put exercise below the consumption in importance.

Overly permissive and wussy parents did not/do not help.

While I'm not a big fan of that 'honey we're killing the kids show' I have seen a few episodes and the number of families where the kids have snack foods and TV's in their own rooms at very young ages in that show was alarming to say the least.

They say my generation is getting back to 1950's parenting, vrs the precious snow flake parenting of the 90's. Lets hope that helps out.

[flstf]

When I was a child there was always food in the house but we got so much exercise it was impossible to eat enough to get too big. There were no "fat free" products and meals contained a lot of calories, real milk, eggs, etc.. however candy bars and colas were usually onle available on the weekends.

I think the biggest difference is that we were always outside doing something physical and todays kids seem to be mostly indoors unless the activity is organized.

[dirtyrascal7]

I agree with everything that has already been said, I just wanted to add an observation from my own experience.

Over the past year I've been changing how I eat dramatically. I have been eating smaller portions, less junk and fast foods, and I have virtually cut out all foods that use HFCS. Subsequently, my metabolism has shot through the roof. I used to be able to eat as much as I wanted and I wouldn't gain a pound, but that changed in college. Now it seems like my metabolism has returned to what it was, even though I am not indulging just because I can.

The point is, HFCS absolutely kills your metabolism. It is evil, evil stuff.

[Racnad]

Yes, bring back that 1960s Coke and McDonalds!!

[thingstodo]

Besides activity, it's processed foods. That leads to cravings because of the glycemic levels. HFCS also adds to cravings and provides empty calories. Trans fats adds to the mix. All that comes from making cheap processed foods and increasing their shelf life. Then add in that many cut bag on veggies and real fruit and eat bealched flour instead of grains. Everything has been turned upside down.

[hrandani]

I really recommend reading the new book 'The China Study' by T. Colin Campbell.

It addresses issues along this vein in a different light than has been done traditionally and looks at major nutritional changes in America and how it affects health. As someone who has had formal education in science I found it to be fairly mainstream but hitting enough key points to be worth my while. I would summarize it but it doesn't do it justice.

[serlindsipity]

oh! my two cents.

Check out the portion sizes of the 60's McDonalds. Almost half the size they are now. and they are still growing.

Also, same with sodas. 12 oz. was the biggest you can get, and look what you can get now. i remember kids in high school carrying around a 2 liter from class to class! What an upgrade!!!!