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Most Americans used to be farm workers. It's only in the past thirty years that most Americans stopped living/working in rural/agrarian settings and began livin

Most Americans used to be farm workers. It's only in the past thirty years that most Americans stopped living/working in rural/agrarian settings and began living in cities. We have more sedentary work, so that's a factor. I also wonder a lot about other things that have changed and how that impacts our bodies, including weight. There are a lot of things that have changed which don't get questioned in terms of "How does that impact health?" and which I hesitate to specify because I'm pretty sure it will get dismissed as crazy talk to wonder about the connection between such things.

arbitrage 6y ago
It's sugar. All of our foods have way too much sugar.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
slg 6y ago
>Most Americans used to be farm workers. It's only in the past thirty years that most Americans stopped living/working in rural/agrarian settings and began living in cities. What? Is there a typo here? 30 years ago was 1991. Are you saying that most Americans were living in agrarian settings in 1991?
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  This is the stat I was really thinking of: The UN estimates 2007 was the year when, for the first time, more people in the world lived in urban than in rural areas. https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization#number-of-people-living-in-urban-areas https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization#number-of-people-liv... Here is some data on the US: http://www.theusaonline.com/people/urbanization.htm http://www.theusaonline.com/people/urbanization.htm Sorry for the sloppiness. I think the thrust of my point is accurate: We used to have more physical jobs and the world on the whole became citified relatively recently. But I'm probably running a fever and mashed a few things together in my brain inaccurately.
  - slg 6y ago
    Fair enough. The US was obviously much further ahead than the global numbers and which throws off the timing of any potential link between a transfer away from an agrarian society. Americans by and large stopped farming decades before we all became obese.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      My ex husband was career military. At some point while he was in the military, they changed the fitness requirement for younger members but not for him and this really pissed him off. They told him "You have been working out your whole life. You are in the best shape of your life." but after a workout or PT test, he was really winded and needed substantial recovery time that the young guys did not need. They were fine within minutes. The change was really rooted in the fact that younger people coming in were less fit. Young people used to take summer construction jobs and from what I gather that no longer happens anywhere near as much as it used to, which leaves the construction industry struggling to fill those jobs. Kids used to run and play outside and now they play video games at the TV or the computer and hardly leave the house compared to when I was growing up. And there are just a whole lot of factors there. My father grew up on a farm, though my father was born in the 1920s. I grew up with a garden out back and we used to go on public lands and pick blue berries in summer and part of the meat on our table was squirrel and deer meat that my father hunted (or, one year, a friend of his gifted us half a buck to fill our freezer). I grew up in the 'burbs. I am sure there are still people who hunt and gather as part of their way of life, but I mostly hear this about Native Americans, especially in Alaska which is relatively undeveloped. There seems to be a lot less of that sort of thing for people in cities or suburbs, but I have no actual data on that. That's just an impression and I don't know how much that impression is skewed by personal experience, which doesn't always align with aggregate statistics. But I'm quite clear we generally have less physical jobs/lives overall and more citified lives overall than when I was growing up. I'm sure that's a big factor, but I also think there are myriad other factors that get short shrift and we mostly don't bother to discuss them. As just one example: Urban planners used to take fitness into consideration when planning cities and my understanding is this is mostly a thing of the past.
bpodgursky 6y ago
I'll take the downvotes for you. Various very plausible drivers IMO: - Plastics in EVERYTHING throw off hormone balances, including both metabolisms and... other things hormones affect. It's not just BPA. - Dramatically different ages and rates of childbearing. Both lifestyle and hormones again. - Pornography has completely changed how many men (and some women) interact with society. Lifestyle and... hormones. - What percent of Americans are on some form of chemical antidepressant? A lot. I'm sure there are dozens of other plausible drivers, and the answer isn't any single one.
- Google234 6y ago
  Or far more likely they eat more calories than in the last and burn far less
  - netizen-9748 6y ago
    We need to consider that endocrine disruptors (the plastics mentioned) may interfere with the systems that control feeding behavior such as leptin and ghrelin.
  - bpodgursky 6y ago
    It's possible! But when you completely upend society in a generation, changing a thousand variables at once, I do not personally feel comfortable saying "far more likely" about any particular cause for any particular societal outcome.
ssutch3 6y ago
The type of food we eat has a major impact on the prevalence of overweight individuals. The fast/easy food is the most calorie dense, most affordable, and least satiating compared to the food we used to eat 40+ years ago. Even adjusting for eating habits and lifestyle differences (sedentary people tend to get bored and snack) the food itself is just more efficient at delivering calories than it used to be and our population hasn't adjusted to this fact.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Given how desperately most people want to be thin and beautiful, if our standard answer of "calories in and calories burned" as our sum total understanding of how weight gain works were accurate, I imagine we wouldn't be seeing stats like "nearly three fourths of Americans are overweight."
  - SlipperySlope 6y ago
    The standard answer of calories in and calories burned is scientifically accurate. Processed foods created and delivered by grocery chains and by restaurants are the culprit. Ultimately, our appetites will be reprogrammed by the same genetic technology used for miracle cures. You will be able to have your cake and eat it too - but you will have no appetite for sugar.
Buldak 6y ago
One reason this strikes me as implausible is that I doubt other similarly urbanized societies (e.g. Japan) have overweight and obesity rates anywhere near ours.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  Most urbanized societies don't have quite the suburb plague that the US has. It's much easier to get physical activity just by existing (walking to/from bus and train stations or to the office in many cases).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

arbitrage 6y ago

It's sugar. All of our foods have way too much sugar.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

slg 6y ago

>Most Americans used to be farm workers. It's only in the past thirty years that most Americans stopped living/working in rural/agrarian settings and began living in cities. What? Is there a typo here? 30 years ago was 1991. Are you saying that most Americans were living in agrarian settings in 1991?

DoreenMichele 6y ago
This is the stat I was really thinking of: The UN estimates 2007 was the year when, for the first time, more people in the world lived in urban than in rural areas. https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization#number-of-people-living-in-urban-areas https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization#number-of-people-liv... Here is some data on the US: http://www.theusaonline.com/people/urbanization.htm http://www.theusaonline.com/people/urbanization.htm Sorry for the sloppiness. I think the thrust of my point is accurate: We used to have more physical jobs and the world on the whole became citified relatively recently. But I'm probably running a fever and mashed a few things together in my brain inaccurately.
- slg 6y ago
  Fair enough. The US was obviously much further ahead than the global numbers and which throws off the timing of any potential link between a transfer away from an agrarian society. Americans by and large stopped farming decades before we all became obese.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    My ex husband was career military. At some point while he was in the military, they changed the fitness requirement for younger members but not for him and this really pissed him off. They told him "You have been working out your whole life. You are in the best shape of your life." but after a workout or PT test, he was really winded and needed substantial recovery time that the young guys did not need. They were fine within minutes. The change was really rooted in the fact that younger people coming in were less fit. Young people used to take summer construction jobs and from what I gather that no longer happens anywhere near as much as it used to, which leaves the construction industry struggling to fill those jobs. Kids used to run and play outside and now they play video games at the TV or the computer and hardly leave the house compared to when I was growing up. And there are just a whole lot of factors there. My father grew up on a farm, though my father was born in the 1920s. I grew up with a garden out back and we used to go on public lands and pick blue berries in summer and part of the meat on our table was squirrel and deer meat that my father hunted (or, one year, a friend of his gifted us half a buck to fill our freezer). I grew up in the 'burbs. I am sure there are still people who hunt and gather as part of their way of life, but I mostly hear this about Native Americans, especially in Alaska which is relatively undeveloped. There seems to be a lot less of that sort of thing for people in cities or suburbs, but I have no actual data on that. That's just an impression and I don't know how much that impression is skewed by personal experience, which doesn't always align with aggregate statistics. But I'm quite clear we generally have less physical jobs/lives overall and more citified lives overall than when I was growing up. I'm sure that's a big factor, but I also think there are myriad other factors that get short shrift and we mostly don't bother to discuss them. As just one example: Urban planners used to take fitness into consideration when planning cities and my understanding is this is mostly a thing of the past.

bpodgursky 6y ago

I'll take the downvotes for you. Various very plausible drivers IMO: - Plastics in EVERYTHING throw off hormone balances, including both metabolisms and... other things hormones affect. It's not just BPA. - Dramatically different ages and rates of childbearing. Both lifestyle and hormones again. - Pornography has completely changed how many men (and some women) interact with society. Lifestyle and... hormones. - What percent of Americans are on some form of chemical antidepressant? A lot. I'm sure there are dozens of other plausible drivers, and the answer isn't any single one.

Google234 6y ago
Or far more likely they eat more calories than in the last and burn far less
- netizen-9748 6y ago
  We need to consider that endocrine disruptors (the plastics mentioned) may interfere with the systems that control feeding behavior such as leptin and ghrelin.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  It's possible! But when you completely upend society in a generation, changing a thousand variables at once, I do not personally feel comfortable saying "far more likely" about any particular cause for any particular societal outcome.

ssutch3 6y ago

The type of food we eat has a major impact on the prevalence of overweight individuals. The fast/easy food is the most calorie dense, most affordable, and least satiating compared to the food we used to eat 40+ years ago. Even adjusting for eating habits and lifestyle differences (sedentary people tend to get bored and snack) the food itself is just more efficient at delivering calories than it used to be and our population hasn't adjusted to this fact.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
Given how desperately most people want to be thin and beautiful, if our standard answer of "calories in and calories burned" as our sum total understanding of how weight gain works were accurate, I imagine we wouldn't be seeing stats like "nearly three fourths of Americans are overweight."
- SlipperySlope 6y ago
  The standard answer of calories in and calories burned is scientifically accurate. Processed foods created and delivered by grocery chains and by restaurants are the culprit. Ultimately, our appetites will be reprogrammed by the same genetic technology used for miracle cures. You will be able to have your cake and eat it too - but you will have no appetite for sugar.

Buldak 6y ago

One reason this strikes me as implausible is that I doubt other similarly urbanized societies (e.g. Japan) have overweight and obesity rates anywhere near ours.

Jtsummers 6y ago
Most urbanized societies don't have quite the suburb plague that the US has. It's much easier to get physical activity just by existing (walking to/from bus and train stations or to the office in many cases).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]