• Obesity has been a growing problem since the late 19th century, not just since 1980.
• The population aging has a mechanical impact on average obesity that is unrelated to changes in diet and nutrition.
• The average Americans’ weight change since the 1980s is startling, but the data suggests a much more boring story about a long-term increase in average weight punctuated by the Great Depression and World War II.
• Food insecurity was incredibly common for most of human history, but now spending on groceries has plummeted as a share of household spending.
• Food is also better across many dimensions of betterness, from ultra-processed junk food to home cooking.
• The downside to living in a society with a great deal of material abundance is that it is much less common to need to choose between going hungry and eating something you don’t like.
Published February 2, 2023
Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post Americans have been gaining weight for as long as records exist
