Figuring Out the Cause of the Obesity Epidemic

For those Americans that have found that they suddenly weigh thirty pounds more than they remember, new research has shown that it might not be their fault. At least not entirely.

There are a lot of environmental factors that have contributed to our collective obesity. For example, the economic interests of the food and beverage industries, the way our cities’ and towns’ infrastructure has been built, and a corporate world that draws most of us behind a desk for a large portion of the day.

Unfortunately, we’re too deep in the middle of this disease to really understand the cause of it. However, we can look back at the way things used to be, before we were all so large that we couldn’t fit into our own plane seat, to try to find out what is so different now from then.

Some people blame our weight on the fact that we have all these labor saving devices like cars and vacuums and leaf blowers and every other device you could imagine.

But this doesn’t quite fit because ever since 1900 there has been an advent of devices to help save us time and effort (read: calorie expenditure), and yet our weight didn’t start to rise until the 1970s.

Since the 1970s, there has been one huge variable and that has been women entering the workforce. With more women in the workforce, there has been more convenience food in the home. More food that has been designed by businessmen rather than mothers.

This food has been engineered to indulge our sweetest sweet tooth, and our greasiest comforts. They are designed to be craved and devoured, not to nourish and refuel.

Dr. Swinburn, an obesity researcher at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia has been trying to link the change in our lifestyles with the change in our waistlines:

“The 1970s saw a striking rise in the quantity of refined carbohydrates and fats in the US food supply, which was paralleled by a sharp increase in the available calories and the onset of the obesity epidemic. Energy intake rose because of environmental push factors, i.e., increasingly available, cheap, tasty, highly promoted obesogenic foods.”

If Dr. Swinburn is right, then we can help turn back the hands of time, as well as obesity, by eating more foods that have been cooked and prepared within the home.