
Rising rural BMI is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults - tokai
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1171-x
======
shadowtree
As the article states, once automation hits a rural area, people there spend
less energy than in cities.

Very much observable in the US, where rural and suburban population never
WALKS. You need to supply artificial sources of movement (aka sports) to make
up for the delta.

In cities, you walk more by default - your baseline energy expenditure is
higher. Take the stairs to the subway, walk to work, get out for lunch ... all
of that counts.

Driving around in your F150 and have everything as a drive through? You're the
slob from the movie "Up".

~~~
tosser0001
For whatever reason, I was struck watching the special on PBS, "Woodstock: 50
Years Later".

Everybody was thin. It was sort of amazing when you stopped and really noticed
it, then contrasted it to what you see on a day to day basis out on the
streets. There just weren't any overweight people to be seen, at least nowhere
near approaching the magnitude you see walking around today.

There's got to be some cultural component to all this too. I'm not sure the
built environment is really all that much different than from what it was when
I was a kid in the suburbs. It's as if people just collectively stopped using
their bodies and started consuming more calories.

~~~
idoubtit
The demographics is worse than what is seen in the streets, because of the
correlation between overweight and outdoor activities. The CDC facts are that
39% of the American adults are obese and 75% are overweight (including
obesity). So overweight is the norm, and thin people are the exception. As the
tendency is stable, I wonder if a "hidden minority" lobby will emerge in a few
years, claiming that TV speakers and movie actors are too thin to represent
the average citizen.

~~~
Retric
Young people still tend to be significantly less overweight.
[https://www.stateofobesity.org/obesity-by-
age/](https://www.stateofobesity.org/obesity-by-age/)

However, you do see more overweight people on modern films than in the 50’s.
What’s really odd some characters where supposed to be noticeably overweight,
but they don’t seem that way to modern eyes.

~~~
lostapathy
Curious - do you have examples handy of characters like you described who were
"overweight for the time" but don't seem so today?

~~~
krustyburger
Even going back just to the 90s, characters like George Costanza were meant to
look noticeably overweight but look fairly typical by 2019 standards. And
Homer Simpson weighed a very specific 239 pounds, a weight that seems much
less extreme now.

~~~
flukus
On the extreme end there was John Candy
([https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001006/mediaindex?ref_=nm_phs_m...](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001006/mediaindex?ref_=nm_phs_md_sm)),
he used to be "the funny fat guy" but if he were to cameo (and be alive) today
I don't think he'd stand out like he used to.

------
dfsegoat
_" Data on how BMI in rural and urban populations is changing are needed to
plan interventions that address underweight and overweight."_

Specifically in the U.S., isn't it true that the population landscape is
rapidly shifting from Rural => Urban? I intend to read more to see how this
may/may not be a confounder in this type of temporal analysis.

Tldr: If the rural population is decreasing, then your denominator is smaller
and estimates of disease proportion would increase over time.

These confounders are commonly addressed in systematic reviews - just haven't
found it specifically in this one.

~~~
dcolkitt
Agree with this observation. This might simply be a burn-off effect. Consider
a simple model. Fact one: Obesity is disproportionately concentrated in the
less-educated. Fact two: Urbanization is disproportionately concentrated in
the highly-educated.

Well, what we would see over time is faster rising obesity in rural areas than
urban areas. But that's simply a manifestation of the sorting effect. The
underlying populations (the educated vs. uneducated) have not fundamentally
changed, just relocated.

Without considering this we might be spuriously fooled into misunderstanding
the causality of obesity. Under this model, rural living itself has absolutely
nothing to do with rising obesity. It's merely serving as a proxy for a more
important variable.

------
CalRobert
I just moved from the middle of a walkable city to the country and indeed I've
put on some weight. Key factors:

* I used to walk and cycle as my only means of transport (well, 99% of it at least).

* This is kind of a desert for decent food. The local shops have candy, chips, cakes, beer, and some almost-rotten bananas and apples.

* .. well actually that's about it. Though everyone else being heavier probably hasn't helped on a subconscious level.

~~~
tootie
I think when everyone is heavier, it sets a lower bar for attracting a
partner. That's a big factor.

------
droithomme
The food in those areas is also insanely sugar and fat oriented. It made sense
back when people were doing hard farming work 15 hours a day and needed the
calories. But the cuisine didn't change, if anything it got sweeter. When I'm
traveling, I run into difficulty finding low calorie dishes when passing
through rural areas and now basically simply don't eat there. It's infectious:
the asian cuisines found in rural areas has nothing to do with actual asian
food. Expect deep fried chicken drenched in actual sugar syrup in most dishes.
Because nothing else will sell so the restaurant owners adapt. It's not
surprising to look around and see so many people that are waddling around,
driving around stores little electric cart things, with pasty acne riddled
skin, thin hair falling out in clumps, and generally looking like they are at
death's door despite being under 40.

------
pcdoodle
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4sRsb0a30Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4sRsb0a30Y)

The hacking of the american mind.

------
mbritton72
It keeps being said: you must eat only what is needed to fuel your body for
the activity you are doing in an average day.

By the time someone acquires the maturity to accept this, their lifestyle has
been too deeply established for change to be possible.

------
jp555
We need a study to tell us that _increasing average body mass_ drives obesity
averages more than urbanization?

In related news, eating too much too often is more a cause of weight gain than
how much screen time you get.

~~~
wutbrodo
The very second sentence of the link:

> This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most
> important drivers of the global rise in obesity

The study's findings are that the rise in overall weight is attributed
primarily to rural areas, contrary to the current consensus that it's driven
by urbanization. Let alone not reading the link before commenting, it seems
you didn't even read the full title of the post.

