People take in more calories today than in 1980, primarily through prepared foods. The guy in this blog post said he eats out for every meal. Basically no one but the super rich did that in 1980. Prepared food prices have fallen a lot since 1980.
Calories in/calories out is the only way that the human body can change mass, short of excision. However, itβs very hard to accurately keep track of calories.
Are people more fat today because they are less active, or are they less active because they are fatter? After all, it is no joy to move around with 30 or 50 lbs of extra fat. There seems to be a vicious cycle at work.
"Calories in/calories out is the only way that the human body can change mass"
True, but unproductive when it comes to understanding the phenomenon of rising obesity. WHY people consume more calories? What drives them? This is not a trivial question and without being fairly sure about the answer, we will not solve the situation.
An analogy: the only way that humans become alcoholics is by drinking a lot of alcohol. But that does not explain root causes of alcoholism, it is only a relatively trivial observation of the proximate cause. The reasons why some people can't keep their alcohol intake within harmless amounts and slide all the way to the bottom are anything but trivial.
They looked thinner, but afaik we are healthier all in all. Thin and healthy are not synonyms.
But diabetes 2nd type or chronic non-alcoholic steatosis were much, much rarer than today in < 50 population. Orders of magnitude rarer.
This is a significant disease load.
Why was this not a problem prior to 1980? It is not as if we switched from hunter and gatherer society straight into postmodern world in 1980. People back then drove cars and ate in restaurants, and look at the photos: they looked far healthier. The fattest US state of 1980 was still much less fat than the fittest US state of 2020.
Why the same people who have a willpower problem can tolerate their bratty teenagers, rise up at 5 am to go to work, pull through arduous work etc.? After all, you would expect them to lack willpower generally, not in just one specific domain.
Humans are the same as they were. What changed is the amount of processed food and especially sugar in our diets. A lot.