
Obesity Trends in the U.S. - EndXA
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/us-obesity-trends-map/
======
andygcook
This Slate article from 2013 has a gif mapping obesity from 1985 - 2010 by
state:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_w...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2013/04/obesity_in_america_cdc_releases_gif_of_epidemic_over_time.html)

It's really shocking how quickly Americans' weights increased. The map also
shows the increases are usually more pronounced in the South and Midwest
first, then spread to the coasts (skipping over Colorado, of course)

~~~
Meekro
The sheer speed with which this happened undermines many theories about what's
causing it. People talk about idle desk jobs, a car-dominated culture, and
abundant cheap food. Those things were just as true in 1990, though, and far
fewer people were obese.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
But how long had they been that prevalent by the 90s? One does not gain 30
pounds overnight.

~~~
mc32
But also it doesn’t take decades to put on a couple of stone.

A poor diet over a year or two will do it without trying.

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m_ke
With the climate crisis and the opioid epidemic in the news we're not hearing
as much about obesity as we used to but it's still a growing problem that's
now spilling over to developing nations. I work on a product in this area and
was really surprised how big of an issue obesity and diabetes is is in the
middle east. ([https://qz.com/1504345/americas-other-unhealthy-legacy-in-
th...](https://qz.com/1504345/americas-other-unhealthy-legacy-in-the-middle-
east/)) It's mostly driven by CPGs and Fast Food chains looking for growth in
emerging markets ([https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/health/ghana-kfc-
obesity....](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/health/ghana-kfc-
obesity.html), [https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/obesity-uk-usa-
developi...](https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/obesity-uk-usa-developing-
countries-western-culture-chains-a8002026.html))

> Of all high income countries, the United States has the highest rates of
> overweight and obesity, with fully a third of the population obese-a rate
> projected to rise to around 50 percent by 2030.

~~~
philg_jr
Specifically, type 2 diabetes. Which is a metabolic disease that can be fixed
with proper diet and some exercise.

~~~
James_Henry
I would change that to "can sometimes be fixed" as type 2 diabetes can damage
the pancreas (and other organs) to the point that "proper diet and some
exercise" alone will not rejuvenate them.

~~~
0x8BADF00D
Even if that's the case, you can actually DIY an artificial pancreas with
relative ease. Biggest blocker is finding the insulin.

~~~
James_Henry
I don't think many (any?) type 2 diabetics have artificial pancreases. Also,
even with good glucose control, type 2 diabetes still seems to lead to some
pretty bad comorbidities.

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stareatgoats
Another of the menu items talks about causes, which is immediately where the
mind goes:

[https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-
source/obesi...](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-
source/obesity-causes/)

It talks about unhealthy food habits, lack of exercise etc. There is probably
solid science behind it, but my gut feeling is that there is something
missing. I mean people have been eating beef steaks and gobbled sweets in
front of TVs for ages now haven't they?

I could be wrong.

~~~
partiallypro
I think it largely has to do with not being as active. We have a lot more desk
jobs now than we had in the past. In the past people didn't have to go to the
gym to not be overweight, they burned it all off when they were going
throughout their day.

~~~
jfries
That's a tempting theory, but the increased ratio of white vs blue collar jobs
isn't enough to explain it. See graph on
[https://www.businessinsider.com/great-news-weve-become-a-
whi...](https://www.businessinsider.com/great-news-weve-become-a-white-collar-
nation-2010-1)

~~~
partiallypro
But even "blue collar" jobs require less labor than before

------
rpiguy
Funny how obesity accelerated with the decline of smoking. Sure lots of obese
people smoke, but my anecdotal experience with my immediate family tells me
that a decline in smoking is a factor.

Everyone who quit smoking in my family replaced it with food (except for one,
who replaced it with alcohol, and then later replaced alcohol with food when
they realized they were becoming an alcoholic). Instead of reaching for a
cigarette they reached for a snack.

It hit my grandparents the hardest because they quit smoking in the late 80s
when there was also a war on coffee/caffeine with wild studies blaming it for
a ton of health problems.

Boom - they lost two appetite suppressants in one fell swoop.

I am not advocating for smoking, which has worse or comparable health effects
to obesity, but I do think it is a factor in a multi-factor phenomena.

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gedy
I wonder the impact of working mothers and need for fast, convenient processed
meals?

[https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/04/FT_14...](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/04/FT_14.04.07_Stay-At-Home-Moms_momstayinghome640px.png)

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brailsafe
This has been a solved problem for years now. Step 1: Go to Kroger, pick up a
gallon of milk. Step 2: Uppercuts, Kickers, Twisters. Obesity solved.

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=tAAAbwEtZRo](https://youtube.com/watch?v=tAAAbwEtZRo)

/s

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tzs
If you made a time machine, went back about 45 years, and brought my then
overweight teen self who was probably in the top 5% for obesity then to
today...I think his reaction would be the same as Jack the Ripper in the 1979
movie "Time After Time" when Jack was brought to modern San Francisco [1]:

> I belong here completely. In our time, I was a freak. Today, I'm an amateur.

[1] Briefly, in the movie H.G. Wells actually builds the time machine. Jack
steals it to escape capture coming to our time. Wells, fearing he was
unleashed a monster on what he expects to be utopia follows (the machine had
been set to automatically return when Jack stole it).

------
standardUser
I feel like people have become far more health conscious in recent years.
Working out regularly and caring about your diet used to be fringe activities,
but now it seems like almost all anyone talks about! Maybe these trends are
concentrated in urban areas? That would help explain why the highly-urbanized
West and Northeast have managed so much better than the less-urbanized South.

~~~
jessriedel
The urban areas in 2010 had significantly higher obesity rates than even the
rural areas in 1990. So regardless of what people are yapping about, it's not
working.

~~~
shagmin
...or is working, but at too small a scale to overcome general nationwide
trends.

~~~
jessriedel
I mean, even if we attribute 100% of the urban-rural difference to yuppy diet
fads -- neglecting the almost-certainly much more important class, income,
genetic, and cultural differences -- the effect of those fads are being
absolutely crushed by the general nationwide trends. Whatever it is that us
urban people get out of talking about diet fad that people in the rural areas
don't keep up with, I don't think it's motivated by a desire to understand the
obesity epidemic.

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mullingitover
I'd love to see another set of maps showing annual fructose consumption. I bet
they'd line up with these nearly perfectly.

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irjustin
The old adage was "genetics". If you had the right ones you could eat
anything.

Clearly 20-30 years is not enough for genetics to play in so what is going on?
I know we blame fast food and sugars or possibly even fats a lot, but I feel
like a lot of those have existed.

~~~
astura
>Clearly 20-30 years is not enough for genetics to play in

Unless it's some sort of epigenetic factors changing genetic expression?

It's a possibility considering our animals are also getting fatter [1],
including lab animals, whose diet is controlled and has not changed.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/10/its-
not...](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/10/its-not-just-us-
even-american-animals-are-getting-fatter/310063/)

------
nate_meurer
Father in law is a doctor -- a family doctor in a small town, and the only one
in private practice (not in a hospital) within 100 miles. Much of the
population in that area are his patients, so he gets to see everything, from
mundane stuff to exotic illnesses and injuries, and is well-positioned to
discern long term trends.

In recent years, he's suddenly treating hypertension, high cholesterol, and
type 2 diabetes in his pediatric patients. With few exceptions, these kids are
morbidly obese. He says these things were unheard of fifteen years ago.

Let that sink in. High blood pressure, cholesterol, T2 diabetes in teens, pre-
teens, and in some cases even younger. This. is. fucked. up.

------
kapnobatairza
Lots of factors contribute to our "obesogenic environment", and it isn't quite
as simple as pinning it down on any particular food, habit or practice. I
recently read this paper on the "ecology" of obesity and I thought it provided
a fairly good assessment of this viewpoint:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2127317/pdf/928...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2127317/pdf/9284671.pdf)

------
narrator
The truth is is that it happened all by itself. That's because someone coming
along saying that someone with deep pockets is responsible will lead to a
multi-million dollar PR offensive to convince you otherwise. For example, just
look at how much Monsanto had to pay out when they failed at the PR war [1].
Before they eventually failed at their PR war, they had a well funded
department devoted to discrediting any criticism of Monsanto [2].

[1] [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-
department/californ...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-
department/california-jury-hits-monsanto-2-billion-judgment-cancer-
lawsuit-n1005191)

[2]
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/08/monsan...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/08/monsanto-
roundup-journalist-documents)

------
starpilot
Solution is SS + GOMAD.

~~~
seattle_spring
Telling people to employ GOMAD is akin to what happened to Cartman in
"Weightgain 3000."

~~~
markdoubleyou
Right. Rippetoe is very clear that GOMAD is only intended for underweight 19
year-olds who are trying to add mass.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Which is basically no one in the US these days

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mnm1
I think the numbers are likely exaggerated to the point of being almost
useless. It all depends on how BMI is measured. If it's not measured, the
number are useless. The website says:

> There are a number of ways to measure body fat. Some are well suited to the
> doctor’s office, such as calculating a person’s BMI.

That seems to suggest a simple calculation given height and weight. That is
not a proper way to measure BMI. BMI must be measured. Otherwise it simply is
not a reflection of anything but an inaccurate calculation that doesn't apply
to most people and overestimates the number of overweight and obese people.
Yes there are a lot of overweight and obese people, but exaggerating the
numbers by using inaccurate formulas and pretending like the numbers were
measured instead of calculated doesn't do anyone any good.

~~~
tasty_freeze
Every time BMI is mentioned someone brings up this point. I sometimes wonder
if it is mostly an opportunity to humblebrag about how much time they spend in
the gym and "Dude, I am 6' tall, weigh 240 lbs and have 3% body fat but the
BMI says I'm obese. See, the BMI is bullshit."

Yes, there are individuals for whom the BMI metric is spectacularly bad, a
modest percentage for whom it is simply poor, but those people already know
they aren't obese. At a population level, the BMI metric is just fine.

