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Money and economies of scale. Food got cheap, people got rich, and humans are designed to eat whatever they can see. 200,000 years of living feast to famine t
by megiddo 3y ago
Money and economies of scale.
Food got cheap, people got rich, and humans are designed to eat whatever they can see.
200,000 years of living feast to famine tells you "if can get calorically dense food, eat as much as you can, you'll need it later", except your lizard brain never gets the "there's no famine later" message because it's dumb.
- avgcorrection 3y agoSimplified to the point of stupidity. We have been rich for longer than that and wages have stagnated/flatlined compared to wealth creation since about the 80's. And (as sibling comment says) people of more means (say upper-middle class) aren't more obese than poor people. It's more like the opposite. This is just the myth of the pleasure-button rat extrapolated to humans, which has been debunked in any case.
- philipkglass 3y agoFood also got a lot more convenient at the same time it was being optimized toward a "bliss point" that would encourage you to always eat one more bite. Americans in the middle income quintile already had easy access to more calories than they should eat in 1960. But boiling another pot of potatoes wasn't as fast or delicious as microwaving another frozen mini-pizza, so there were fewer temptations to overeat.
- throwaway1777 3y agoAlso processed junk food got way more cheap and common and unhealthy right? almost everyone’s brain is wired to love sugar and salt, and we found good ways to hack that.
- zamfi 3y agoYeah, except this did not change in the '80s and '90s. Also obesity and wealth are typically inversely correlated within developed countries. There's more to the story.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoIt happened in the 60's. Manifesting in the 80's is not surprising.