3 ms·

Interesting, but i'd really like to see some figures on fast food growth in the 70s onwards. Not only growth in fast food, but some sort of metric of quality of

• hannasanarion 3y ago
  People are quick to blame fast food, but it doesn't really make sense. Fast food is as old as society, before there was hamburgers there was fish and chips, waffles, pies, pastries, fried chicken, doner, kebab, and curry, many of which can be more calorie-dense than modern fast food burgers. Ready-to-eat food restaurants were even common in ancient rome, and drive-thru burger chains blew into the mainstream in the 1920s and 1930s, but obesity didn't start rising until the 70s and 80s. It's not like sweets and calorie-dense foods were rare before the reagan administration. Just look at an old cookbook, tons of sugar and fat everywhere. Despite the availability of calorie-dense foods many people struggled to raise their weight above 23 BMI because their bodies naturally made them eat fewer calories, to the point that most weight-management pharmaseuticals were geared towards helping people gain weight. You can't explain that with fast food and food culture alone.