As I understand it last century, everyone smoked 60 a day, never exercised, drank beer morning noon, and night, and deep-fried everything. Salad was for decoration, and every meal was followed by pudding and custard.
Yet in every old photo I've ever seen you hardly ever seen anyone fat or unhealthy. Why?
I couldn’t say for sure, but I can at least offer an anecdote from my mom, who started in the work force in the mid-1950s: she always said she started smoking because when she first started working, other women got her into skipping breakfast and having coffee and a few cigarettes on the way to work, as it would be “better for her figure.”
I’m thinking portion sizes were maybe smaller back then though. Maybe that’s just an American thing, lmao, maybe our plates are just too big to start with.
Science has always been science though, even before we understood it. So it’s just calories ingested vs calories expended when it comes down to it, and there was clearly less of that. My dad said he drank Coca-Cola all the time growing up because it was my grandma’s lifeblood, haha; but I saw some pics of him with his shirt off at some kind of canoe race when he was about 18, and he looked to be in very good shape. Trying to think of reasons like less sugar and whatnot, but you’re right; people are kind of crazy. Sugar bowl out for your morning cereal, full diesel Coke, etc.
I think we must just be getting to be more sedentary, plus everyone is eating from restaurants all the time, where you don’t really control the ingredients. Sometimes if I get takeout from a place that gives the calories for each item on the menu, I’m shocked at how many calories are in some pretty small amounts of food. Like I can easily get 60% of my daily calorie allowance out of just one meal, maybe more. So if people are eating and not counting, even at two meals a day, you’re going over what you’re probably burning, and that’s not even factoring in your beverages that probably ain’t water, haha. And now you work 60 hours instead of 40, etc…it’s just a different lifestyle, and probably a lot of hidden calories in takeout food, which most people seem to live off these days.
It's the food. I moved from Canada to a developing country in SE Asia and lost 15 lbs in my first month without changing the type of food I eat. I buy all my food at a local market where I can buy my seafood from the fisherman that caught it, and my fruits, veggies and meat direct from the farmer who picked it or butchered it. Everything is completely organic because nobody can afford pesticides or additives to the meat to plump it up. I eat three times as much as I used to and don't gain weight because none of the food has been modified or processed.
Olden days? lol Christ, I’m 53, and I can safely say that people have always come in different sizes. Why you would think everyone was slim then I’ll never know! The only difference was generally people were shorter because we didn’t have all those additives and hormones in food. When I think back to the 70’s for example, people were more active. We didn’t use the car to nip to the shops or the park. We walked. We spent lots of time outdoors. Kids were always out playing games or cycling. We didn’t sit around watching TV and rarely ate takeaway. Everyone usually ate as a family and the meals were cooked from scratch so no ultra processed food.
Corn fructose, palm oil and tons of emulsifiers in every food that binds water in human bodies as well. Back then industrially processed food wasn't filled with all that stuff like it is today. Most people in 1970ties could cook and prepared their meals by themselves. Nowadays, my Bimbo friends look at me like I was retarded when I tell them I prefer food I cook at home, while they enthuse about sushi restaurants.
They worked harder they ate 10 times better the food
People are still eating McDonald's I cannot believe it there is no real food in McDonald's whatsoever except for the potatoes and the potatoes are so laced with a pesticides but there is no real meat there is no real bread
It's chemically everything that McDonald's is chemically made even their ice cream is disgusting If you knew how it was made
Their hamburger buns you can pour molten liquid metal on it and it will not penetrate it hits it and rolls off there is no real meat in the meat is chemically made and if their whole franchise is like that just think about other restaurants fast food restaurants you're putting nothing but chemicals in your body even the stuff you buy at the grocery store now is all chemically made most of it
Next time you go to the store and you buy fruit or vegetables fill the outside of it does it feel like there's a wax on it because there is a wax it's chemicals on it to make it last longer to make it shine pesticides have a wax feeling on the outside of it pesticides or liquid fruits and vegetables need liquid they suck it up we're eating it
The foods that are out nowadays are not food and it's destroying people everywhere in every country
That's why America government will not give us Healthcare because they know what is going on
The government's bunker Fallout Shelter they had something like 80 something trucks per day for 3 years hauling food into their shelter that was the rest of all the real food that came in boxes and stuff like that now it's all chemically made that we're buying at the stars
To some degree we are a victim of our own success in western economies. Unlimited food readily available in forms that are not healthy such as fast food, soft drinks, and processed foods packed with sugar and salt.
Cheap bad food has exploded in availability over the last 50 years and now people sit at home on the couch cruising the internet or binge streaming TV shows. When I was a kid we had 3 network TV channels and shitty reception with rabbit ear antenna's. So we generally viewed getting out of the house and doing something physical as better than being bored to death sitting on our ass.
Processed foods were still new and were rare in the 1950s, and weren't widespread until the early/mid 60s, and even then, weren't widely adopted until the 1970s, when the divorce rare exploded and women entered the workforce in large numbers. Eating out was a special treat, not a daily routine, with the vast majority of meals made at home from fresh ingredients.
Today, most people can't cook, and many of those who can cook largely are just making processed and pre-packaged food at home, which isn't really the same thing.
Also, white collar office jobs made up a far smaller percentage of overall jobs until the 1960s began a trend of the expansion of middle management and lower level office jobs. Previously, most jobs were much more physical, while machinery has reduced physical jobs by roughly half of 1950s levels.
1. Tobacco Smoking, although harmful in so many other ways, DOES suppress appetite and speed up metabolism. Cannabis, on the other hand, gives one "the munchies", and does not help.
2. Cane and/or beet sugar were less caloric sweeteners than high fructose corn syrup, which is about 2.5x more the calories.
3. Canola and other "partially hydrogenated vegetable oils", that were even pitched as better for our health, turned out to be anything but. The Great Margarine Lie of the 1970s and even into the 1980s is infuriating the more I think about it.
4. The nature of work for most people has gone more and more away from the fields and the factory floor, and toward the office desk. That certainly did not help.
It's not difficult, in the old days people moved more and ate less. Sure, a lot of what they ate was crap, so they died when they were like 68. But food is different now. Back in the day I guess people sat down and ate their meals. Now it's something you graze on throughout the day, non-stop. There's a 20 stone guy in the office and what he will get through is quite incredible. He will buy those big bags of chocolate and crisps, and get through the whole lot in the day. They are like 5 serving packs. Never mind what he eats at home.
Firstly, I'd guess the quality of food was at higher level back then, certainly in the US (our food is garbage now). People didn't sit still much. I was involved in things to avoid boredom of 5 channels of TV content. Band, drama, part time job... weekends maybe run a 6k race early and then go to 6 Flags all day til' midnight, go to the lake and water ski. Rarely ever saw home between the hours of 8am and 9-10pm. Home just meant being alone... tragedy for a teenager as I remember. I stayed around 165 to to 175 lbs into my 50's at 5'10". It's become a sedentary world.
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Anonymous
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I live in Turkey, and the same applies here. I am 28 years old and 5 feet 8 inches tall; despite this, I weigh 211.64 lbs (1.73 m, 96 kg). My parents and grandparents weren't this heavy when they were my age. I suspect that the packaged foods we eat slow down our metabolism, preventing our bodies from burning off what we consume. Also, back in my elders' time, people in Turkey generally walked to get places, and public transport or private cars weren't as widespread. My mother used to say that people back then would sell their homes just to buy a car; nowadays, even a civil servant can take out a loan and buy a car on installments.
No computers No cell phones, except for the big ones. If people wanted entertainment and activities, they had to go out of their house and do it in person and exercise. There was no laying around on the computer all day back then and there wasn’t so much fast food being pushed down our throats
Ate far less , no processed fast foods , far less processed carbs and moved a hell of a lot more.
The kids we called fat in 1978 , people would call " healthy weight " today , which is untrue , nothing should have changed , some individuals are just lazy and consume far too much..
Without cell phones and computer games, people were out and about most of the time and far more active.
There was less fast food and processed food. They ate a lot of home cooked meals with healthy ingredients. They didn't consume as much HFC and concentrated sugar.
They didn't spend their time stuffing their faces and sitting on their asses..
We went out and did things to burn off all the excess fat we might've built up each day. We didn't sit in front of the tube or a computer all day/every day. We were quite energetic and the smokes helped keep the weight off because it's harder to breathe when your lungs are coated with that shit and breathing heavier causes you to lose weight.
It might be because people focused on outside activities a lot more, now you receiving anything and everything while you're sitting, plus backthen the nature of life was different, i have lived in both eras, i was athletic and fit while now i'm overweight and no energy left!
Food wasn't as healthy overall, the average lifespan was also lower, as well as medical care. You were far more likely to get sick and die even if you tried to be healthy, because food wasn't as healthy as it is now.
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