the modern industrial diet seems to have caused an obesity epidemic everywhere it's been introduced in the last half century

this is one of the major reasons for the slowing of the growth in life expectancy laudan mentions here, and even its reversal in places

people who eat weird diets for some ideological reason that rule out eating food made in factories (raw-food vegans, carnivores, extreme-low-fat people) seem to be exempt

but even lab animals are getting obese, despite never picking up the phone to order pizza

it's not clear what's going on but it's probably not sugar, fat, saturated fat, unsaturated fat, protein, outgassing from household furnishings, advertising, lack of willpower, hormones in meat, pesticides, or transgenic grains. my guess is that it's one or more food additives generally regarded as safe that was almost unknown 50 years ago and is now almost universal

unfortunately there are hundreds of candidates

it's certainly true that 75 years ago the picture was very different, and this is not a defense of the kind of culinary romanticism laudan rightly scorns in this piece, but it's a different reason that today you might reasonably opt for old, slow, unprocessed food