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Comment by acjohnson55 | Hacker News Reader

Most research indicates "yes", conditioned on the consensus of what comprises the modern lifestyle.

I've been trying to understand what changed to create the obesity epidemic. Many things contribute, but it's hard to identify the smoking gun. My understanding is that one major lever seems to be the advent of snacks, refrigeration, and microwaves. Drastically reduced food prep overhead has radically alerted eating patterns.

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It seems pretty obvious that the massive injection of sugar in the 60s and 70s into diets paved the way for pretty much everything else that followed(snacks, fast food, convenient food, etc). I guess we can all ignore that diabetes is driven by insulin resistance and the body's inability to process glucose, which is conveniently also the predominant thing in our food today, because we would rather look the other way and continue living in a fairy tale...that is until we are disease ridden in our 40s, at which point we can live out the rest of our lives on meds and in the hospital.

To pile on other popular theories on smoking guns, there is a widespread decrease in physical activity levels. Physical activity can delay or prevent type 2 diabetes, as well as having widespread benefits on almost every system of the body. Physical activity also improves mental health, which impacts some behaviors around emotional/addiction driven over eating.

We do more physical activity now than people did in the 70s and 80s and we are significantly fatter also. I doubt it's that.

I doubt we do more physical activity now than people did in the 70s and 80s.

Sure, people may go to the gym more... But they also take the lift or the escalator in stead of the stairs much more, and the car in stead of a bicycle or walking. Any source for your claim?

Read Gary Taubes

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