7 ms·

U.S. Sugar consumption trend from 1970-2021

83 points by 462436347 3y ago

462436347 3y ago
Alternate title: the graph that broke HN's brain. You'll notice that 1) sugar consumption peaked around Y2K and declined after 2) the decline was driven by a decline in consumption of High-Fructose Corn Syrup (the most vilified sugar) specifically, and 3) the average American now consumes about as much added sugar as the average American did in 1970--yet their waistlines are not remotely comparable. Technically the graph is of per capita added sugar availability and isn't adjusted for loss (due to spoilage, plate waste, etc.), but it meshes with NHANES survey data: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9434277/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9434277/ >In conclusion, over the 18 year time span, from 2001 to 2018, added sugars intake declined significantly among younger adults (19–50 years) in the U.S., regardless of race and ethnicity (i.e., similar for Black and White individuals), income level, physical activity level or body weight status, and declines were mainly due to reductions in added sugars intake from sweetened beverages (primarily soft drinks and fruit drinks). These trends coincide with the evolving emphasis in the DGA on reducing added sugars intake and the increasing focus on population-level interventions aimed at reducing intakes.
- djmips 3y ago
  So have any research on why the waistlines today are not remotely comparable to 1970?
  - fulafel 3y ago
    Sugar's effect to 1970s waistlines would be determined by preceding decades. Insulin tolerance and other MBS things develop slowly over a person's life.
  - 462436347 3y ago
    It's probably multifactoral. For example, here's a recent provocative paper from a highly respected researcher (John Speakman) arguing metabolic rates have actually slowed since then: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10445668/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10445668/ But two decades of "fat doesn't make you fat" probably didn't help, and neither did the continued trend of increasing empty calories from cheap vegetable oils, especially soybean oil: https://thedietwars.com/why-are-americans-getting-fatter-a-food-love-story-in-six-graphs/ https://thedietwars.com/why-are-americans-getting-fatter-a-f... https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/59529/indicators_goal_diet_fig01.gif?v=378 https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/59529/indicators_goa... >Added fats and oils provide more calories per day for the average American than any other food group EDIT: I think most Americans would be shocked to discover that their "favorite" food group is added fat/oil.
    - kmoser 3y ago
      A massive increase in environmental plastics may also have something to do with it. "The scientists theorize relationships among the global increase of plastics production, human exposure to microplastics, and the global increase of overweight and obesity in populations." https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/programs/geh/geh_newsletter/2022/6/spotlight/microplastics_may_increase_risk_for_obesity.cfm https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/programs/geh/geh_newslett...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - bsder 3y ago
    In spite of sugar, a lot of people went hungry. You can note that average male height in the US continued increasing up until the late 1980s. That points to a general caloric deficit up until roughly 1990--which is roughly where we claim the "obesity epidemic" kicks off. Also, a graph of sugar doesn't include caloric fillers like "soy protein" which now seems to be in everything.
    - 462436347 3y ago
      > You can note that average male height in the US continued increasing up until the late 1980s. Fat is estrogenic, and estrogen accelerates growth plate fusion.
      - 462436347 3y ago
        > Fat is estrogenic I meant bodyfat specifically
  - oijkuij 3y ago
    One possibility: we have been collecting learning to use our feet less throughout life. "In 1969, 48 percent of children 5 to 14 years of age usually walked or bicycled to school (The National Center for Safe Routes to School, 2011). In 2009, 13 percent of children 5 to 14 years of age usually walked or bicycled to school (National Center, 2011). In 1969, 41 percent of children in grades K–8 lived within one mile of school; 89 percent of these children usually walked or bicycled to school (U.S. Department of Transportation [USDOT], 1972). In 2009, 31 percent of children in grades K–8 lived within one mile of school; 35 percent of these children usually walked or bicycled to school (National Center, 2011)." [Source](http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/introduction/the_decline_of_walking_and_bicycling.cfm http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/introduction/the_decline_of_...)
    - raws 3y ago
      Yeah I'd believe a stronger sedentary lifestyle is the biggest factor in the waste line stagnation if the diet is not the same. They did not have omnipresent smartphones in 1970.
      - arketyp 3y ago
        Heck, back in my days, we kids at least had to walk to each other's house to play video games together.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      I wonder how jobs have changed too. I started gaining weight when I switched from a delivery job to a lab job.
    - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
      Yeah, I always get a bit amused when people point to one sole food or environmental issue ("microplastics!" says one comment) to blame for the obesity epidemic, when there are two glaringly obvious pieces of data: 1. As another commenter posted, total calories consumed per capita has gone up considerably since 1970. 2. As you posted, we move a lot less than we used to. There are tons of studies that confirm this across a number of different metrics (e.g. average grip strength has gone down considerably since the 80s, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/13/481590997/millennials-may-be-losing-their-grip https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/13/4815909... ). We eat a lot more, of more foods that have higher calorie-to-nutrient ratios than we used to, and we move a heck of a lot less.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    I think a major factor is that today people eat a lot of food designed by engineers to maximize sales. Designs that makes people overeat probably increases sales so they optimize for that. So we should expect people to continue to get fatter as we get better at engineering food. Note that I don't think that engineered food is inherently bad, just that today most food are engineered to be unhealthy because that is better for sales.
    - chefandy 3y ago
      There are lots of "common wisdom" answers to this but almost every one spins out pretty quickly. Look at the snack foods readily available in Japan.
      - Jensson 3y ago
        What about them? Are they designed to make you overeat? Or do they fill you up? I don't know which is why I ask. It is possible that they regulated things differently or their food companies had different values so they engineered snacks and fast food to not make you overeat. As I said, engineering food isn't bad in itself, it depends on what goals you have when you engineer it. Just because Japanese people eat a lot of engineered food doesn't mean it is bad for them if that food wasn't engineered to make them fat. Many say they slim down as they visit Japan, so I wouldn't rule it out. What I'd want to see is if two countries that has the same snacks available had vastly different outcomes. But as far as I know most countries has domestic snacks so it varies wildly around the world. For example, why is Czechia much fatter than Slovakia? They were the same country 30 years ago.
      - Mawr 3y ago
        I'm looking... https://youtu.be/lr4MmmWQtZM?t=34 https://youtu.be/lr4MmmWQtZM?t=34
        chefandy 3y ago
        Ok, so this time look in good faith? Japan is famous for their huge variety of junk food. Is it equivalent? No. Is the ratio of availability the same as the ratio of obesity between the two countries? No. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpgXdQ0QXRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpgXdQ0QXRA
  - fsh 3y ago
    That part is pretty clear. People are eating more calories than they did in 1970. The more difficult question is: why are they doing that?
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      One simple explanation is protein. Modern diets have terribly low protein levels, and much of that protein comes from sources with extremely poor digestibility [1], meaning the effective protein consumption levels are even worse than they seem. Protein is a major appetite suppressant. I'd read this but never really realized how true it is until starting on a protein heavy diet. I now eat near 500g of chicken breast a day, and by the end of the day I'm basically having to force feed myself. Yet 500g of chicken breast is less than 800 calories! And the other stuff is just to balance out my diet. And I love eating as much as anybody else. But you simply cannot eat that much when you're on a protein heavy diet. Finding data on protein consumption rates over time is difficult, but I'd hypothesize we were probably much higher on effective protein consumption in the past. I know absolutely nobody that regularly had something like 'steak and eggs' for breakfast, yet it seems that was indeed a thing at some point. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digestible_Indispensable_Amino_Acid_Score https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digestible_Indispensable_Amino...
      - fulafel 3y ago
        Meat consumption per capita has almost doubled since 1960: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-consumption-by-type-kilograms-per-year https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-consumpti... Meat consumption is associated with higher BMI: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32443920/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32443920/ (summarized in: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200615/Vegetarians-have-lower-BMI-and-are-less-extroverted-than-meat-eating-people.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200615/Vegetarians-have-...)
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        3y ago
  - jdietrich 3y ago
    The obvious answer is more calories. The obvious answer for why more calories is pretty obvious to non-Americans - your portion sizes are crazy, albeit everyone else in the world is catching up. Even if you buy a "healthy" meal in a quick service restaurant or as a pre-packaged retail product, the smallest portion size is still likely to be grossly excessive. The obvious answer for why portion sizes are increasing is that food keeps getting cheaper, in particular relative to other costs in the food service industry. The traditional formula for restaurant pricing is 1/3 ingredients, 1/3 labour and 1/3 overheads; if your food costs have decreased over time but your rent and labour costs continue to increase, it's natural to increase portion sizes to maintain the appearance of value-for-money. The same would apply (to a moderately lesser extent) to convenience foods sold at retail. This has a quite drastic anchoring effect - when you normalise excessively large portions, reasonable portions seem meagre.
  - deleted 3y ago
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- golergka 3y ago
  They don't smoke nearly as much as in the 70s though.
- finite_depth 3y ago
  Pure sugar may have peaked, but total calorie intake is still much higher than it was in 1970. Pew[1] has it 23% higher, which corresponds reasonably well to the rate at which weights have been increasing[2] over the past few decades (i.e., at about 3-4%/decade). The data is reasonably consistent with weight increasing ~linearly with calorie intake. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/12/13/whats-on-your-table-how-americas-diet-has-changed-over-the-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/12/13/whats-on-... [2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/328241/americans-average-weight-holds-steady-2020.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/328241/americans-average-weight...
  - 462436347 3y ago
    [flagged]
- dilyevsky 3y ago
  It's calories. It's always been calories https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-supply?tab=chart&time=1970..2020&region=NorthAmerica&facet=entity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-...
  - 462436347 3y ago
    The point is the added calories aren't coming from sugar, contrary to what everyone here thinks. And even if sugar did somehow magically make you fat regardless of calories, sugar consumption has actually gone down, yet the obesity and diabetes epidemics have only gotten worse.
    - bsder 3y ago
      But, body weight increase is going to correspond to the "area under the graph" (the integral) and NOT the current level (the instantaneous value). Yes, it's nice that we're getting sugar consumption back down to 1970 levels so we don't keep adding more obese people to the cohort, but that doesn't help everybody who gained weight prior to 2020. From 1995 to 2005, people ate roughly an extra 10 pounds relative to 1970 of bodyweight in sugar every single year. That's an extra 100 pounds in bodyweight over 10 years if you don't adjust something else. That's huge. Literally.
      - parineum 3y ago
        Obesity isn't something that stays around if you consume less calories over 20 years.
        cycomanic 3y ago
        Actually, there is significant research that shows that childhood obesity is an excellent predictor of adulthood obesity. Because sugar drinks made it so easy to take in way too many calories for children and hence became overweight, we now have a big cohort of adults with weight problems.
- bsder 3y ago
  > Alternate title: the graph that broke HN's brain. It breaks my brain, but on the "Holy hell, that's a TON of extra calories for the entire population to be consuming." That graph shows almost 30 pounds of sugar consumption differential between 1970 and 2000. That's roughly 15 pounds of bodyweight per year every year in calories. That's a HUGE amount of body fat packed on that has to be explicitly removed. In addition, even in 2020, there's a difference of somewhere between 5 to 10 pounds of sugar consumption relative to 1970 which is roughly 2.5-5 lbs of extra body fat every year. That's 4-8% more calories consumed by the population every year. That's a LOT. If there is no corresponding decrease in caloric consumption in some other category (remember: there was a big anti-fat push which switched everything to turbo amounts of sugar) then it's no wonder there is an obesity problem in the US. Side note: my favorite anecdata on this is iced tea in Austin, TX. In the early 1990s, the default iced tea serving was a 32oz glass of unsweetend iced tea. When I came back in the late 2010s, the default is now a 16oz glass of sweet tea which is actually a hyper dose of sugar. Think of the gigantic amount of extra calories that people eating out are now consuming.
  - akira2501 3y ago
    > That's roughly 15 pounds of bodyweight per year It's an extra 4,300 calories per month. Or 145 calories per day. Or about 35 minutes worth of light walking.
- m463 3y ago
  Note that some artificial sweeteners produce an insulin response like sugar - which leads to calories converted to fat. Also, I wonder about fiber and other carbohydrates. Fiber moderates carbohydrates of all types and prevents glucose spikes (and crashes). and other processed carbs/starches can be very similar to simple sugars - breads, pasta, rice, potatoes, cereals, etc.
  - financypants 3y ago
    Is this trend vastly affected by the rise of artificial sweeteners like aspartame?
    - I_Nidhi 3y ago
      If it is, then I believe new sugar alternatives are in order since FDA released a warning against aspartame.
  - hammock 3y ago
    Which artificial sweeteners?
    - parineum 3y ago
      It's one of those truisms that has shotty science behind it.
      - reaperman 3y ago
        *shoddy, not shotty. But yes[0], while metabolic pathways have been identified where artificial sweeteners certainly could cause insulin issues, RCT's have failed to find this effect expressed in vivo. Artificial sweeteners do cause notable changes in gut biomes, and the effects of that are unknown. 0: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2020.598340/full?ref=assuma-o-controle-de-sua-saude.com https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2020.59834...
      - hgomersall 3y ago
- raincole 3y ago
  > the average American now consumes about as much added sugar as the average American did in 1970--yet their waistlines are not remotely comparable. But people don't become obese overnight. People ate much more sugar in 2000-2010, and those people, if not dead now, are still contributing to the obese rate today. Also this graph shows people are still eating more sugar in 2021 than in 1970. Just not as much as in 2000. No one says sugar is the only reason causing obesity. But this graph doesn't debunk the correlation between sugar and obsesity either.
  - bastijn 3y ago
    Plus in the 70s I can imagine life was far more physical than today.
    - fbdab103 3y ago
      I sometimes ponder how quickly we are descending into Wall-E. I spend so much of my life in front of a screen, I have to force myself to get a baseline amount of daily physical activity. Now it is entirely possible to spend the entire workday having barely taken any steps or physical exertion.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
albert_e 3y ago
is there a strong support for the refined cane sugar trend line at 60 pounds per person? :) looks like a decade+ long decline trend abruptly stopped there and miraculously stayed flat for 20+ years
- changoplatanero 3y ago
  My guess is that it has something to do with the government tariffs on sugar imports. As Americans, we all pay way more for our sugar than the rest of the world does. The sugar industry spends a bunch of money lobbying congress to keep it that way. Someone ought to start a lobby group for the sugar consumers of America, those of us who like cookies, cakes and ice cream, in order to reduce the tariffs and bring down the prices.
  - 082349872349872 3y ago
    I suspect the revolution in .cu had something to do with the tariffs as well...
- fbdab103 3y ago
  Maybe that is just the American baseline? Plenty of people enjoy cakes, cookies, doughnuts, brownies, etc that will be made with real sugar either at bakeries or at home. 60pounds/year is ~2.6oz/day (74g/day) which sounds pretty achievable given a once or twice a week snacking habit.
- deelowe 3y ago
  I'm guessing tariffs and subsidies. At some point, maintaining the ability to grow corn became seen as a matter of national security.
INTPenis 3y ago
My dad a farmer from Croatia always said; corn is what you feed livestock before you drive them to market.
pstanger 3y ago
The title says consumption but the graphic says availability. Does availability have a different meaning in this context? Or is this just the amounts of various forms of sweeteners available to a consumer
bluejekyll 3y ago
This graph does not go back far enough. Processed foods really took off during WWI, and then again in WWII. Using 1970 as a base line feels like skipping over the biggest jumps in those trends. My guess is that sugar consumption rose during those same periods.
infogulch 3y ago
I'd like to see trends since like 1950.
- mkl 3y ago
  https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-supply?tab=chart&time=1946..2020&region=NorthAmerica&facet=entity&country=CHN~GRC~IND~KEN~UGA~BRA~OWID_WRL~USA~NZL~AUS~JPN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-...
thumbsup-_- 3y ago
Here is the page from which the chart is from https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=105374 https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery... The data in the chart is sweetener "availability" and not really consumption, though it can be assumed that if less is available per capita, then less is consumed as well (per capita). But, this data doesn't explains the increase in obesity since 1970. this might be because of data being an average. Stats like p90 sugar consumption might show a better correlation with obesity rates and hence may be more meaningful than per capita sweetener availability.
onetimeuse92304 3y ago
IMO the graph is misleading a bit. Sugar is much less of a problem if you are also being very active on a daily basis. For example, your work contains physical component or maybe you are walking a lot. So while the graph is showing dropping amount of sugar consumption, it is not taking account for also falling healthy limit of sugar consumption, ie. the fact that we should be eating even less overall given falling activity levels. And this is especially true for kids whose activity levels fallen dramatically since smartphones. I can tell that the same amount of sugar has much less effect on me since I lost weight and started running a lot every day. And I know this because I put on a continuous glucose monitor from time to time and can observe sugar spikes from foods to debug my diet. You can learn a lot wearing CGM like the fact that my local Starbucks was serving me lactose-free milk regardless of what I ordered. You can tell lactose-free milk on a CGM because of a huge glucose spike. The reason? "Lactose free" is misleading. In reality they don't remove lactose. Lactose-free milk is obtained by adding to milk an enzyme that converts lactose to glucose and galactose which can be easily absorbed by the body and cause blood glucose spikes.
- raincole 3y ago
  > IMO the graph is misleading a bit. ...how? Like, seriously how? The graph is about sugar. It doesn't have obese or similar words in it. If there is a graph of "U.S. citizen's smartphone usage trend from 2010-2021", are you going to say it's misleading a bit because it doesn't take sugar into account...?
  - onetimeuse92304 3y ago
    It is misleading people because people see the graph and compare it to the graph of rising obesity levels and infer (incorrectly) that if sugar is falling and obesity is rising then it is not sugar that is responsible for obesity. The truth is that obesity is more complex problem but sugar definitely one of the important drivers. One way obesity is a complex problem is that in most people it is delayed by decades. Our bodies can take a lot of punishment for a long time before they become disregulated enough to start gaining weight.
ablyveiled 3y ago
Added sugar is not necessarily problematic, but consumption of anti-thyroid substances like high amounts of PUFA (especially seed oils), chlorine, bromine, fluoride (in absence of iodine) can make it so, by way of increasing energy supply which is not properly consumed. Industrial pollutants like PFAS and hexane byproducts also play a role. There's a very good reason why sugar is so "addictive" -- it's good for you! It's an obscenely easily digestible source of energy, whose products are used very easily by the cells. In the case of fructose, its consumption is relatively more insulin-friendly than the glucose-heavy starches. Sucrose is half glucose and half fructose. Seriously "addictive" sugary foods are psychologically problematic usually for other reasons. Pure cane sugar is not very addictive when consumed alone. Try it.
- 462436347 3y ago
  > There's a very good reason why sugar is so "addictive" Sugar on its own isn't addictive and isn't a necessary nor sufficient ingredient for hyperpalatability. Foods can be hyperpalatable without sugar, and in fact most (~70%) hyperpalatable foods have their hyperpalatability driven by fat and sodium: > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9672140/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9672140/ > The availability of HPF in the US food sysltem has expanded substantially over the past 30 years. The current US food supply is highly saturated with HPF, which our findings indicate comprised almost 70 % of available foods as of 2018. The growing availability of HPF over time, particularly HPF high in fat and Na, may have resulted from the reformulation of existing food products in the food system to be hyper-palatable. Thus, expanding HPF availability may be one key contributor to the obesogenic food environment in the US. Given potential consequences for population health, policy-level action is needed to address the presence of HPF in the food system. Policy may focus on limiting the nutrient thresholds allowed in foods to be below HPF thresholds (e.g. foods should contain <25 % kcal from fat and <0·30 % g from Na).
  - ablyveiled 3y ago
    Yes, this is what I put forward at the end.
- arcticbull 3y ago
gniv 3y ago
The amount per year doesn't tell me much, but when converted to per day it's crazy high: 120*453.6/365 = 149 grams. That's 600 calories from sugar per day. PS. A graph showing the total amount of daily calories from carbs, not just sugar: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-caloric-supply-derived-from-carbohydrates-protein-and-fat https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-caloric-supply-deri...
- eulgro 3y ago
  For reference, the recommended maximum amount by the American Heart Association is 37.5 g for men and 25 g for women.
cyclever 3y ago
This is soooo funny, I scroll through all the comments and everyone tells that it's so obvious that calories or sugar are responsible for the fat population. Not a single one mentions that maybe fat makes people fat... No one seems to be interested that the share of fat in the food increased in the recent decades. Why not? Because it's not fat that makes you fat, it's the sugar! Hilarious. I wish we could get a graph of fat intake of the last hundred years.
- 462436347 3y ago
  The straw-graping replies to this thread are pretty funny. It's somehow still all sugar's fault, because it just is, with at least one repost of Dr. Lustig's viral Sugar, The Bitter Truth lecture from 12 years ago (when people ironically ate more sugar and weren't as fat or obese as they are today), and a neurotic low-carber who wears a CGM despite not being diabetic (and not knowing that dietary fat intake is actually a stronger risk factor for T2D than sugar). >I wish we could get a graph of fat intake of the last hundred years. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38094902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38094902
anArbitraryOne 3y ago
This is making me want to "refine" my portfolio
olliej 3y ago
I'm surprised this peaked at 2000 rather than earlier

83 points by 462436347 3y ago

Alternate title: the graph that broke HN's brain. You'll notice that 1) sugar consumption peaked around Y2K and declined after 2) the decline was driven by a decline in consumption of High-Fructose Corn Syrup (the most vilified sugar) specifically, and 3) the average American now consumes about as much added sugar as the average American did in 1970--yet their waistlines are not remotely comparable. Technically the graph is of per capita added sugar availability and isn't adjusted for loss (due to spoilage, plate waste, etc.), but it meshes with NHANES survey data: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9434277/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9434277/ >In conclusion, over the 18 year time span, from 2001 to 2018, added sugars intake declined significantly among younger adults (19–50 years) in the U.S., regardless of race and ethnicity (i.e., similar for Black and White individuals), income level, physical activity level or body weight status, and declines were mainly due to reductions in added sugars intake from sweetened beverages (primarily soft drinks and fruit drinks). These trends coincide with the evolving emphasis in the DGA on reducing added sugars intake and the increasing focus on population-level interventions aimed at reducing intakes.

djmips 3y ago
So have any research on why the waistlines today are not remotely comparable to 1970?
- fulafel 3y ago
  Sugar's effect to 1970s waistlines would be determined by preceding decades. Insulin tolerance and other MBS things develop slowly over a person's life.
- 462436347 3y ago
  It's probably multifactoral. For example, here's a recent provocative paper from a highly respected researcher (John Speakman) arguing metabolic rates have actually slowed since then: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10445668/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10445668/ But two decades of "fat doesn't make you fat" probably didn't help, and neither did the continued trend of increasing empty calories from cheap vegetable oils, especially soybean oil: https://thedietwars.com/why-are-americans-getting-fatter-a-food-love-story-in-six-graphs/ https://thedietwars.com/why-are-americans-getting-fatter-a-f... https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/59529/indicators_goal_diet_fig01.gif?v=378 https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/59529/indicators_goa... >Added fats and oils provide more calories per day for the average American than any other food group EDIT: I think most Americans would be shocked to discover that their "favorite" food group is added fat/oil.
  - kmoser 3y ago
    A massive increase in environmental plastics may also have something to do with it. "The scientists theorize relationships among the global increase of plastics production, human exposure to microplastics, and the global increase of overweight and obesity in populations." https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/programs/geh/geh_newsletter/2022/6/spotlight/microplastics_may_increase_risk_for_obesity.cfm https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/programs/geh/geh_newslett...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bsder 3y ago
  In spite of sugar, a lot of people went hungry. You can note that average male height in the US continued increasing up until the late 1980s. That points to a general caloric deficit up until roughly 1990--which is roughly where we claim the "obesity epidemic" kicks off. Also, a graph of sugar doesn't include caloric fillers like "soy protein" which now seems to be in everything.
  - 462436347 3y ago
    > You can note that average male height in the US continued increasing up until the late 1980s. Fat is estrogenic, and estrogen accelerates growth plate fusion.
    - 462436347 3y ago
      > Fat is estrogenic I meant bodyfat specifically
- oijkuij 3y ago
  One possibility: we have been collecting learning to use our feet less throughout life. "In 1969, 48 percent of children 5 to 14 years of age usually walked or bicycled to school (The National Center for Safe Routes to School, 2011). In 2009, 13 percent of children 5 to 14 years of age usually walked or bicycled to school (National Center, 2011). In 1969, 41 percent of children in grades K–8 lived within one mile of school; 89 percent of these children usually walked or bicycled to school (U.S. Department of Transportation [USDOT], 1972). In 2009, 31 percent of children in grades K–8 lived within one mile of school; 35 percent of these children usually walked or bicycled to school (National Center, 2011)." [Source](http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/introduction/the_decline_of_walking_and_bicycling.cfm http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/introduction/the_decline_of_...)
  - raws 3y ago
    Yeah I'd believe a stronger sedentary lifestyle is the biggest factor in the waste line stagnation if the diet is not the same. They did not have omnipresent smartphones in 1970.
    - arketyp 3y ago
      Heck, back in my days, we kids at least had to walk to each other's house to play video games together.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    I wonder how jobs have changed too. I started gaining weight when I switched from a delivery job to a lab job.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Yeah, I always get a bit amused when people point to one sole food or environmental issue ("microplastics!" says one comment) to blame for the obesity epidemic, when there are two glaringly obvious pieces of data: 1. As another commenter posted, total calories consumed per capita has gone up considerably since 1970. 2. As you posted, we move a lot less than we used to. There are tons of studies that confirm this across a number of different metrics (e.g. average grip strength has gone down considerably since the 80s, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/13/481590997/millennials-may-be-losing-their-grip https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/13/4815909... ). We eat a lot more, of more foods that have higher calorie-to-nutrient ratios than we used to, and we move a heck of a lot less.
- Jensson 3y ago
  I think a major factor is that today people eat a lot of food designed by engineers to maximize sales. Designs that makes people overeat probably increases sales so they optimize for that. So we should expect people to continue to get fatter as we get better at engineering food. Note that I don't think that engineered food is inherently bad, just that today most food are engineered to be unhealthy because that is better for sales.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    There are lots of "common wisdom" answers to this but almost every one spins out pretty quickly. Look at the snack foods readily available in Japan.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      What about them? Are they designed to make you overeat? Or do they fill you up? I don't know which is why I ask. It is possible that they regulated things differently or their food companies had different values so they engineered snacks and fast food to not make you overeat. As I said, engineering food isn't bad in itself, it depends on what goals you have when you engineer it. Just because Japanese people eat a lot of engineered food doesn't mean it is bad for them if that food wasn't engineered to make them fat. Many say they slim down as they visit Japan, so I wouldn't rule it out. What I'd want to see is if two countries that has the same snacks available had vastly different outcomes. But as far as I know most countries has domestic snacks so it varies wildly around the world. For example, why is Czechia much fatter than Slovakia? They were the same country 30 years ago.
    - Mawr 3y ago
      I'm looking... https://youtu.be/lr4MmmWQtZM?t=34 https://youtu.be/lr4MmmWQtZM?t=34
      - chefandy 3y ago
        Ok, so this time look in good faith? Japan is famous for their huge variety of junk food. Is it equivalent? No. Is the ratio of availability the same as the ratio of obesity between the two countries? No. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpgXdQ0QXRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpgXdQ0QXRA
- fsh 3y ago
  That part is pretty clear. People are eating more calories than they did in 1970. The more difficult question is: why are they doing that?
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    One simple explanation is protein. Modern diets have terribly low protein levels, and much of that protein comes from sources with extremely poor digestibility [1], meaning the effective protein consumption levels are even worse than they seem. Protein is a major appetite suppressant. I'd read this but never really realized how true it is until starting on a protein heavy diet. I now eat near 500g of chicken breast a day, and by the end of the day I'm basically having to force feed myself. Yet 500g of chicken breast is less than 800 calories! And the other stuff is just to balance out my diet. And I love eating as much as anybody else. But you simply cannot eat that much when you're on a protein heavy diet. Finding data on protein consumption rates over time is difficult, but I'd hypothesize we were probably much higher on effective protein consumption in the past. I know absolutely nobody that regularly had something like 'steak and eggs' for breakfast, yet it seems that was indeed a thing at some point. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digestible_Indispensable_Amino_Acid_Score https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digestible_Indispensable_Amino...
    - fulafel 3y ago
      Meat consumption per capita has almost doubled since 1960: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-consumption-by-type-kilograms-per-year https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-consumpti... Meat consumption is associated with higher BMI: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32443920/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32443920/ (summarized in: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200615/Vegetarians-have-lower-BMI-and-are-less-extroverted-than-meat-eating-people.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200615/Vegetarians-have-...)
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      - 3y ago
- jdietrich 3y ago
  The obvious answer is more calories. The obvious answer for why more calories is pretty obvious to non-Americans - your portion sizes are crazy, albeit everyone else in the world is catching up. Even if you buy a "healthy" meal in a quick service restaurant or as a pre-packaged retail product, the smallest portion size is still likely to be grossly excessive. The obvious answer for why portion sizes are increasing is that food keeps getting cheaper, in particular relative to other costs in the food service industry. The traditional formula for restaurant pricing is 1/3 ingredients, 1/3 labour and 1/3 overheads; if your food costs have decreased over time but your rent and labour costs continue to increase, it's natural to increase portion sizes to maintain the appearance of value-for-money. The same would apply (to a moderately lesser extent) to convenience foods sold at retail. This has a quite drastic anchoring effect - when you normalise excessively large portions, reasonable portions seem meagre.
- deleted 3y ago
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golergka 3y ago
They don't smoke nearly as much as in the 70s though.
finite_depth 3y ago
Pure sugar may have peaked, but total calorie intake is still much higher than it was in 1970. Pew[1] has it 23% higher, which corresponds reasonably well to the rate at which weights have been increasing[2] over the past few decades (i.e., at about 3-4%/decade). The data is reasonably consistent with weight increasing ~linearly with calorie intake. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/12/13/whats-on-your-table-how-americas-diet-has-changed-over-the-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/12/13/whats-on-... [2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/328241/americans-average-weight-holds-steady-2020.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/328241/americans-average-weight...
- 462436347 3y ago
  [flagged]
dilyevsky 3y ago
It's calories. It's always been calories https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-supply?tab=chart&time=1970..2020&region=NorthAmerica&facet=entity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-...
- 462436347 3y ago
  The point is the added calories aren't coming from sugar, contrary to what everyone here thinks. And even if sugar did somehow magically make you fat regardless of calories, sugar consumption has actually gone down, yet the obesity and diabetes epidemics have only gotten worse.
  - bsder 3y ago
    But, body weight increase is going to correspond to the "area under the graph" (the integral) and NOT the current level (the instantaneous value). Yes, it's nice that we're getting sugar consumption back down to 1970 levels so we don't keep adding more obese people to the cohort, but that doesn't help everybody who gained weight prior to 2020. From 1995 to 2005, people ate roughly an extra 10 pounds relative to 1970 of bodyweight in sugar every single year. That's an extra 100 pounds in bodyweight over 10 years if you don't adjust something else. That's huge. Literally.
    - parineum 3y ago
      Obesity isn't something that stays around if you consume less calories over 20 years.
      - cycomanic 3y ago
        Actually, there is significant research that shows that childhood obesity is an excellent predictor of adulthood obesity. Because sugar drinks made it so easy to take in way too many calories for children and hence became overweight, we now have a big cohort of adults with weight problems.
bsder 3y ago
> Alternate title: the graph that broke HN's brain. It breaks my brain, but on the "Holy hell, that's a TON of extra calories for the entire population to be consuming." That graph shows almost 30 pounds of sugar consumption differential between 1970 and 2000. That's roughly 15 pounds of bodyweight per year every year in calories. That's a HUGE amount of body fat packed on that has to be explicitly removed. In addition, even in 2020, there's a difference of somewhere between 5 to 10 pounds of sugar consumption relative to 1970 which is roughly 2.5-5 lbs of extra body fat every year. That's 4-8% more calories consumed by the population every year. That's a LOT. If there is no corresponding decrease in caloric consumption in some other category (remember: there was a big anti-fat push which switched everything to turbo amounts of sugar) then it's no wonder there is an obesity problem in the US. Side note: my favorite anecdata on this is iced tea in Austin, TX. In the early 1990s, the default iced tea serving was a 32oz glass of unsweetend iced tea. When I came back in the late 2010s, the default is now a 16oz glass of sweet tea which is actually a hyper dose of sugar. Think of the gigantic amount of extra calories that people eating out are now consuming.
- akira2501 3y ago
  > That's roughly 15 pounds of bodyweight per year It's an extra 4,300 calories per month. Or 145 calories per day. Or about 35 minutes worth of light walking.
m463 3y ago
Note that some artificial sweeteners produce an insulin response like sugar - which leads to calories converted to fat. Also, I wonder about fiber and other carbohydrates. Fiber moderates carbohydrates of all types and prevents glucose spikes (and crashes). and other processed carbs/starches can be very similar to simple sugars - breads, pasta, rice, potatoes, cereals, etc.
- financypants 3y ago
  Is this trend vastly affected by the rise of artificial sweeteners like aspartame?
  - I_Nidhi 3y ago
    If it is, then I believe new sugar alternatives are in order since FDA released a warning against aspartame.
- hammock 3y ago
  Which artificial sweeteners?
  - parineum 3y ago
    It's one of those truisms that has shotty science behind it.
    - reaperman 3y ago
      *shoddy, not shotty. But yes[0], while metabolic pathways have been identified where artificial sweeteners certainly could cause insulin issues, RCT's have failed to find this effect expressed in vivo. Artificial sweeteners do cause notable changes in gut biomes, and the effects of that are unknown. 0: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2020.598340/full?ref=assuma-o-controle-de-sua-saude.com https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2020.59834...
    - hgomersall 3y ago
raincole 3y ago
> the average American now consumes about as much added sugar as the average American did in 1970--yet their waistlines are not remotely comparable. But people don't become obese overnight. People ate much more sugar in 2000-2010, and those people, if not dead now, are still contributing to the obese rate today. Also this graph shows people are still eating more sugar in 2021 than in 1970. Just not as much as in 2000. No one says sugar is the only reason causing obesity. But this graph doesn't debunk the correlation between sugar and obsesity either.
- bastijn 3y ago
  Plus in the 70s I can imagine life was far more physical than today.
  - fbdab103 3y ago
    I sometimes ponder how quickly we are descending into Wall-E. I spend so much of my life in front of a screen, I have to force myself to get a baseline amount of daily physical activity. Now it is entirely possible to spend the entire workday having barely taken any steps or physical exertion.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

albert_e 3y ago

is there a strong support for the refined cane sugar trend line at 60 pounds per person? :) looks like a decade+ long decline trend abruptly stopped there and miraculously stayed flat for 20+ years

changoplatanero 3y ago
My guess is that it has something to do with the government tariffs on sugar imports. As Americans, we all pay way more for our sugar than the rest of the world does. The sugar industry spends a bunch of money lobbying congress to keep it that way. Someone ought to start a lobby group for the sugar consumers of America, those of us who like cookies, cakes and ice cream, in order to reduce the tariffs and bring down the prices.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  I suspect the revolution in .cu had something to do with the tariffs as well...
fbdab103 3y ago
Maybe that is just the American baseline? Plenty of people enjoy cakes, cookies, doughnuts, brownies, etc that will be made with real sugar either at bakeries or at home. 60pounds/year is ~2.6oz/day (74g/day) which sounds pretty achievable given a once or twice a week snacking habit.
deelowe 3y ago
I'm guessing tariffs and subsidies. At some point, maintaining the ability to grow corn became seen as a matter of national security.

INTPenis 3y ago

My dad a farmer from Croatia always said; corn is what you feed livestock before you drive them to market.

pstanger 3y ago

The title says consumption but the graphic says availability. Does availability have a different meaning in this context? Or is this just the amounts of various forms of sweeteners available to a consumer

bluejekyll 3y ago

This graph does not go back far enough. Processed foods really took off during WWI, and then again in WWII. Using 1970 as a base line feels like skipping over the biggest jumps in those trends. My guess is that sugar consumption rose during those same periods.

infogulch 3y ago

I'd like to see trends since like 1950.

mkl 3y ago
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-supply?tab=chart&time=1946..2020&region=NorthAmerica&facet=entity&country=CHN~GRC~IND~KEN~UGA~BRA~OWID_WRL~USA~NZL~AUS~JPN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-...

thumbsup-_- 3y ago

Here is the page from which the chart is from https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=105374 https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery... The data in the chart is sweetener "availability" and not really consumption, though it can be assumed that if less is available per capita, then less is consumed as well (per capita). But, this data doesn't explains the increase in obesity since 1970. this might be because of data being an average. Stats like p90 sugar consumption might show a better correlation with obesity rates and hence may be more meaningful than per capita sweetener availability.

onetimeuse92304 3y ago

IMO the graph is misleading a bit. Sugar is much less of a problem if you are also being very active on a daily basis. For example, your work contains physical component or maybe you are walking a lot. So while the graph is showing dropping amount of sugar consumption, it is not taking account for also falling healthy limit of sugar consumption, ie. the fact that we should be eating even less overall given falling activity levels. And this is especially true for kids whose activity levels fallen dramatically since smartphones. I can tell that the same amount of sugar has much less effect on me since I lost weight and started running a lot every day. And I know this because I put on a continuous glucose monitor from time to time and can observe sugar spikes from foods to debug my diet. You can learn a lot wearing CGM like the fact that my local Starbucks was serving me lactose-free milk regardless of what I ordered. You can tell lactose-free milk on a CGM because of a huge glucose spike. The reason? "Lactose free" is misleading. In reality they don't remove lactose. Lactose-free milk is obtained by adding to milk an enzyme that converts lactose to glucose and galactose which can be easily absorbed by the body and cause blood glucose spikes.

raincole 3y ago
> IMO the graph is misleading a bit. ...how? Like, seriously how? The graph is about sugar. It doesn't have obese or similar words in it. If there is a graph of "U.S. citizen's smartphone usage trend from 2010-2021", are you going to say it's misleading a bit because it doesn't take sugar into account...?
- onetimeuse92304 3y ago
  It is misleading people because people see the graph and compare it to the graph of rising obesity levels and infer (incorrectly) that if sugar is falling and obesity is rising then it is not sugar that is responsible for obesity. The truth is that obesity is more complex problem but sugar definitely one of the important drivers. One way obesity is a complex problem is that in most people it is delayed by decades. Our bodies can take a lot of punishment for a long time before they become disregulated enough to start gaining weight.

ablyveiled 3y ago

Added sugar is not necessarily problematic, but consumption of anti-thyroid substances like high amounts of PUFA (especially seed oils), chlorine, bromine, fluoride (in absence of iodine) can make it so, by way of increasing energy supply which is not properly consumed. Industrial pollutants like PFAS and hexane byproducts also play a role. There's a very good reason why sugar is so "addictive" -- it's good for you! It's an obscenely easily digestible source of energy, whose products are used very easily by the cells. In the case of fructose, its consumption is relatively more insulin-friendly than the glucose-heavy starches. Sucrose is half glucose and half fructose. Seriously "addictive" sugary foods are psychologically problematic usually for other reasons. Pure cane sugar is not very addictive when consumed alone. Try it.

462436347 3y ago
> There's a very good reason why sugar is so "addictive" Sugar on its own isn't addictive and isn't a necessary nor sufficient ingredient for hyperpalatability. Foods can be hyperpalatable without sugar, and in fact most (~70%) hyperpalatable foods have their hyperpalatability driven by fat and sodium: > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9672140/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9672140/ > The availability of HPF in the US food sysltem has expanded substantially over the past 30 years. The current US food supply is highly saturated with HPF, which our findings indicate comprised almost 70 % of available foods as of 2018. The growing availability of HPF over time, particularly HPF high in fat and Na, may have resulted from the reformulation of existing food products in the food system to be hyper-palatable. Thus, expanding HPF availability may be one key contributor to the obesogenic food environment in the US. Given potential consequences for population health, policy-level action is needed to address the presence of HPF in the food system. Policy may focus on limiting the nutrient thresholds allowed in foods to be below HPF thresholds (e.g. foods should contain <25 % kcal from fat and <0·30 % g from Na).
- ablyveiled 3y ago
  Yes, this is what I put forward at the end.
arcticbull 3y ago

gniv 3y ago

The amount per year doesn't tell me much, but when converted to per day it's crazy high: 120*453.6/365 = 149 grams. That's 600 calories from sugar per day. PS. A graph showing the total amount of daily calories from carbs, not just sugar: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-caloric-supply-derived-from-carbohydrates-protein-and-fat https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-caloric-supply-deri...

eulgro 3y ago
For reference, the recommended maximum amount by the American Heart Association is 37.5 g for men and 25 g for women.

cyclever 3y ago

This is soooo funny, I scroll through all the comments and everyone tells that it's so obvious that calories or sugar are responsible for the fat population. Not a single one mentions that maybe fat makes people fat... No one seems to be interested that the share of fat in the food increased in the recent decades. Why not? Because it's not fat that makes you fat, it's the sugar! Hilarious. I wish we could get a graph of fat intake of the last hundred years.

462436347 3y ago
The straw-graping replies to this thread are pretty funny. It's somehow still all sugar's fault, because it just is, with at least one repost of Dr. Lustig's viral Sugar, The Bitter Truth lecture from 12 years ago (when people ironically ate more sugar and weren't as fat or obese as they are today), and a neurotic low-carber who wears a CGM despite not being diabetic (and not knowing that dietary fat intake is actually a stronger risk factor for T2D than sugar). >I wish we could get a graph of fat intake of the last hundred years. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38094902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38094902

anArbitraryOne 3y ago

This is making me want to "refine" my portfolio

olliej 3y ago

I'm surprised this peaked at 2000 rather than earlier