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Something changed in the last century, but it's not what you think.
It's not the food.
Caloric availability and palatability isn't much different from 1990, when the obesity rate was half of what it is today. Japanese food is incredible, as is Korean food, and the Japanese and Koreans can afford as much food as they want. They have single digit obesity rates. Italians in Italy have better food than Italian-Americans, with a much lower obesity rate.
It's not willpower. There hasn't been a great willpower monster that suddenly appeared in 1970.
That which changed is obvious to everyone but aspies like us: It's individualism.
Everybody outside of the individualistic world doesn't need to exercise willpower, because everyone else in the planet and in the past simply has no agency. Where you live, what you do for work, when you eat, who you eat with, and what you eat wasn't your choice, and isn't your choice in most of the world. Your elders eat first, and how much you take, what you eat, and how much you eat is governed by elaborate social codes.
The Japanese aren't thin because Japanese food is terrible, or because the Japanese have amazing willpower. The Japanese are thin for the same reason the Japanese commit less crime and have no children out of wedlock. If someone you know in Japan is fat, you're conditioned to call them fat. If you're fat, you're conditioned to listen to them. That keeps the Japanese thin.
If you're an American, you're conditioned not to judge others, and you're conditioned not to respond to other's judgement, because this is 'Murica and you can't tell me what to do.
There's nothing in the individualistic world that can get you out of the obesity crisis, because for many people the only thing stronger than the desire for food is the desire to fit in. We don't have that tool in the toolbox anymore, so only aspies with high agency, people with lucky genetics, and people who still belong to strong communities (anyone from Japanese-Americans to the PMC) will stay thin.
Great post, it’s entirely about social shaming and the lack thereof in the West.
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The fattest countries (outside of Pacific islands) are mostly Arab countries.
The most individualist countries are Anglosphere or Northern European countries. Arab countries score very low on individualism comparatively.
Moralism is tempting, but the real explanation is more likely to be biological.
But our genetics has not changed since 1970. People who were skinny young adults in 1970 are in their 70s now. They’re riding scooters in Walmart. What has changed drastically in many cases leading to declines in student achievement, more crime, more drug use, and in this case obesity. All of these social vices have increased since the 1960s or so. And it wasn’t genetics that did it.
The patterns you're describing aren't happening. If we take the US as an example, crime has been declining since the early 90s (when people were much skinnier). US PISA scores peaked in 2014 before declining to their 2000 levels today (this is probably related to smartphones). Drug use seems to have peaked around 2000, while alcohol peaked around 1980.
One thing that has skyrocketed is vegetable oil consumption. I think the introduction and ubiquity of an evolutionarily novel food is a greater explanation for obesity than the whole world getting lazier in the 1970s for no reason.
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The Arab countries, like the pacific islands, have their own issues with a sudden surge in availability of food, newfound prosperity and biological adaptation to long periods of fasting (in the desert / remote islands respectively) combining to lead to a big surge in obesity. In large parts of MENA there is also a big gender divide in obesity, women are much fatter than men precisely because women are extremely, almost unfathomably (to Westerners) sedentary in those cultures. Overweight women are also considered less unattractive in those regions.
It’s a mistake to assume the cause of obesity is always the same. Nevertheless, when looking at western countries where male and female obesity rates are quite similar, and where beauty standards (correctly) favor slim bodies, and where almost all people have been rich enough to buy more than enough food to get fat for 75+ years, lack of shaming is the most likely explanation.
Pacific islanders also have the additional issue that they are genetically predisposed to higher BMI. In a lot of the rest of the world since the agricultural revolution there has been selection against high BMI over the last 10,000 or so years (we know this by comparing modern vs ancient DNA), however pacific islanders haven't seen the same thing happen. As such today they have more high BMI alleles so it's no surprise they just balloon when exposed to modern highly processed western food.
IIRC the Native Americans who are still full blooded and not just white people with interesting family histories have the same issue.
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I don't think this explains it adequately. I've never known someone who was fat and who didn't feel social pressure for it. Yeah some HAES Tumblrinas are out there saying that they're proud to be big, but they're not the modal experience. For most fat people (everyone I've known at any rate), they were ashamed to the very bone to be that way.
And so on. The reality is, social pressure (and internal pressure from yourself) to not be fat is still very strong and it isn't solving the problem. Perhaps individualism is a piece of the puzzle, but it can't explain the problem by itself.
As a fat person, I am constantly ashamed of myself. Unfortunately, delicious food is the only thing that makes me feel better. Tragic.
It’s a vicious cycle.
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I have some fat relatives, who have no problem getting dates. They're female, and their dates are male and fat also, so I don't think this is true. Maybe they can't get dates attractive to thin people, but they can definitely date within their weight class, which is large in both senses.
Fat people tend to have fat friends.
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