Obesity

Yes, I was born in 1956 and have noticed rising weights. I do not think it is primarily a change in exercise habits. In the early sixties people already watched television and rode around in cars all the time. It seems to be a change in the quantity and quality of food eaten. People eat out more now and the portion sizes in restaurants are huge. A higher fat diet like the one eaten earlier leads to satiety. Widespread cigarette smoking back then, while unhealthy, acted as an appetite suppressant.

^ I mostly agree with you, but there were 3 television channels when I was a kid and one tv. Tv was called "the idiot box" and we were limited in hours watched. The first time I saw a color tv was the first super bowl. People walked. Kids played outside. Children rode bikes (nothing more laughable than some fatso on an electric bike) and ran around. A creamsicle from the ice cream truck was a weekly, not daily treat.

In the year 5555, your arms are hangin limp at your side; your legs have nothing to do, some machines doing that for you. Zager and Evans, in the year 2525. bing.com

Exactly! Same thing occurred to me watching the Woodstock movie. Curly from the 3 stooges was comically fat. Today, he wouldn’t stand out at all. Agree on strip clubs/dancers as well. Maybe Ozempic will change things? Instead spending on boob jobs maybe get a GLP-1 prescription?

What about height? As time has gone on and people have gotten wider, they’ve also gotten taller.

Those were simpler times. When you left work, you didn’t work. Today that’s a different story for almost everyone. Is it safe to say it’s virtually impossible to be a single earner for a family income these days? I think these are all factors to increases in stress which often equals more weight, in addition to bad food options. I am guilty of this as many of us are, choosing a bad food option merely for convenience or because we are pressed for time.

And as for the weight, just about every product is loaded with sugar these days, from your tortilla chips to your soup.

I hope weight loss drugs can be an answer to the health problems but they still aren’t readily accessible or cheap enough for everyone, yet. I think that is changing for the better every day. I also have this fear that they may have some sort of unknown long term effect like in the movie “I Am Legend,” where everyone takes a cancer curing drugs that eventually spreads a virus that turns everyone into zombies. I know that’s far fetched but could other health issues arise for many on it long term (as in several years)? Reward outweigh the risk? Today I see a lot of well to do women (and some men) who look anorexic because they took weight loss drugs to lose that last 10-20 pounds they couldn’t get rid of simply because they can afford $1k+ a month for a drug out of pocket. These people don’t need it, they WANT it. The people that really need it, I don’t see many using it. I’m not sure if that’s by choice (doubt it) or merely access (aka) their insurance doesn’t cover it and they can’t afford it. Most current insurances will only cover Ozempic and the like if the patient has type 2 diabetes, and are not eligible if they have type 1 or are pre-diabetes. Trump mentioned Medicare covering the cost, this could be huge for many if it does happen.

There is some good news. "The average-sized breast for an American woman is now a C cup and lingerie stores sell sizes from H to KK."

A more sedentary lifestyle cannot be discounted when looking at America's obesity crisis. Some folks did sit all day at any typewriter or switchboard, but there was more walking and less general sitting. However, increased quantity and decreased quality is the primary culprit. There were fewer preservatives, stabilizers, and artificial garbage than today. Eat clean, folks, and move around more.

I went to Disney World with the grandkids last week - first time I’d been there in 20 years. I was amazed at the number of people in their 30s, 40s and 50s on those motorized electric mobility scooters. Many, many more than the last time I was there 20 years ago. I used to think it was a scam to avoid the lines. Now I think there’s just a lot more fat, broken-down people who never gave a shit about their weight or health. It really is a national crisis.

In addition to televisions being called the idiot box in the early sixties they were also called the boob tube. Some of those old shows, though, were pretty good: Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock, Dick van Dyke and Andy Griffith and so on

I did not do much physical exercise then because I lived in the city where it was unsafe to play in the street and youth sports leagues were more a suburban thing. I read a lot of comic books, watched TV and worked on my stamp collection.

^except for little league, there were no organized sports other than the school teams. Soccer didn't exist. Basketball was just pick-up games, and no one gave a shit about it otherwise, leading to the amazing fact that the Boston Celtics won the championship every year except 1967 in the 60s, yet never sold out. No youth hockey. No pop warner. We created our own leagues and played other neighborhoods in football and played pond hockey.

^ brings back memories. I learned to fight on our neighborhood street hockey team. We’d played 2 other neighborhood teams from town. One team was a bunch of tough kids who played like the 70s Broad Street Bullies (Flyers of course). Always dropping the gloves. I won my first 2 fights against them and the their goon beat the crap out of me lol.

Kenny "the rat" Lineman, also a Boston Bruin later on. Street hockey question: Did you have sticks with plastic blades or were you like us and we taped up wooden sticks and used em until the broke or the blade worse down to puck level?

^ yes! Lineman came in after the golden era of the Flyers, but he would agitate and start a lot of mayhem. We used replaceable plastic blades you could boil and and curve. That made it a lot easier to elevate and direct the hockey ball with a wrist shot !

Our over consumption of food and drink and lack of movement is a national epidemic. Some European country’s waistlines are bulging more than ever these days too.

I was at a Green Day show in Nashville last year and I was just amazed at all the fat people I saw young and old. I don't know if it just because I was down south or what, but it really shocked the hell out of me. I believe diet is a big thing why we see so many severely overweight people compared to a past. Fast food was more of a treat in the 60s and 70s, but 80s and 90s and onward it started creeping more and more into our diets. Some people out their live off of McDonalds and Burger King and KFC and all this fast food shit. I'm not gonna act like I don't indulge in the shit myself but I don't eat it for every meal. I've heard stories from people some years older than me that grew up in the 60s and 70s that only had Soda as a treat every once in awhile. Man how thing have changed.

Besides, there's healthier alternatives like Subway (Although I rather go to Jersey Mikes or Jimmy Johns. not good local sub places in Oklahoma) or Chipotle.

Yes eating out so frequently has been a massive shift in the past 10-15 years. When I was a kid we almost never went out. Now I see many families with teenage kids who barely eat at home. Take out food or eating out on the majority of days.

Great film.

Anyway, in the 1950s, Americans ate home cooked meals almost every night. The portion sizes were drastically smaller. There wasn't a fast food restaurant on every corner, going out to eat was usually for a special occasion, and ordering in wasn't a thing. And even then, a burger, fries, and soda were served in way smaller portions than what we eat today. Nothing was "supersized," that would be weird and gluttonous back then. And even a soda was more of a Friday or Saturday night treat, or had at a party or gathering, whereas today people will chug multiple of them in a day. Also, people consumed much less sugar than they do today, and people did not snack all day like what is common today. They ate in moderation.

The American lifestyle in the 1950s was much more active compared to the sedentary life that has been normalized. Kids went outside to play all day. No tablets or video games. They walked or rode their bikes to school. Adults were very active, as well. No working from home on a laptop all day. More manual labor. Even housewives burned plenty of calories by doing housework and walking for errands and groceries because the husband took the car to work. There were less appliances to make housework easy, so house chores required more manual labor as well. People also smoked cigarettes all the time which helped them stay trim. And this was all before "gym culture," so people were staying smaller simply based off of their normal lifestyle (as opposed to, say, the 80s, where it was cool for women to be obsessed with aerobics classes).

So, a diet of significantly less calories (and less processed food and sugars) paired with an active lifestyle, is what made the average Americans in the 1950s much smaller than they are today.

^ when we moved from a new apartment to our 1970s house. The dinner plates had to be replaced because they were too big for 1970s cabinets.

I can’t relate to street hockey or any type of hockey (except for the two-time and reining NHL champs), but I had the exact same response as @Studme53 when watching the Woodstock documentary with shirtless college kids in 1969 compared to college kids today taking off their shirts and swinging them over their heads at games. The current state of affairs at Disney is a scheme right now out of Wally, with the fat humans reclined and riding around on carts.

^ I still walk 18 and carry my clubs. The 20 somethings in carts always look at me as if I were from another planet.