The Obesity Time Bomb: Exploring the Perfect Storm of Modern Eating Habits

The human body runs on food. Once, food shortage was a major concern. Obesity was often seen as a sign of wealth and status, as it indicated that a person had access to abundant food and resources. In many cultures, a fuller figure was considered more attractive, and women in particular, were expected to be curvier. 

After the Second World War, technological advances in food production led to a new era that was characterized by an overabundance of inexpensive food and relatively little physical activity. In the decades that followed, other socio-cultural shifts continued to contribute to the changing way we ate. Women who had previously controlled most of the average family's food preparation now enter the workforce in significant numbers. And the processed food industry began to capitalize on our need for fast, convenient food. This meant that fewer meals were being cooked at home, and since convenient foods were generally higher in calories than home-cooked meals, the average person’s caloric intake increased dramatically.

In the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st century, societal attitudes towards obesity began to shift. As industrialization and urbanization led to more sedentary lifestyles and the availability of high-calorie, processed foods, obesity became more prevalent and began to be seen as a health concern. In the mid-20th century, public health campaigns focused on the risks of obesity and the importance of maintaining a healthy weight. The emergence of obesity was recognized as a chronic disease with well-defined health consequences, and medical recommendations were made to try and address this growing health crisis. 

A lot of attention was focused on reducing saturated fat and total fat in our diets. And the processed food industry responded by giving us what we wanted. But, they still had a vested interest in selling their products, so they found other ways to make the reduced-fat products taste good. One way they did this was by adding significantly more sugar, and other forms of sugar, like corn syrup, to almost everything we ate. This not only made the reduced-fat foods more appealing, but it also increased their shelf life. So the food industry had a huge incentive to add corn syrup and other sweeteners to packaged foods. The increased intake of simple sugars fueled our modern epidemics of obesity and diabetes.

These shifts in our food consumption patterns have led us to a point in history where our physiological adaptation, our ability to store energy as fat, has become maladaptive. The balance between food availability and energy expenditure has been disrupted, and it’s left us with an exponential increase in the incidence of obesity over the past 60 years. An epidemic that the World Health Organization has labeled a worldwide public health crisis.