/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>18579878
They simply ate less calories back then; increased consumption of added fats (cheep seed oils for the most part) have made up the bulk of the increase in calories people eat over the last few decades.

>>18265534
No, dairy consumption has been pretty stable over the last several decades in the US. Between 1970 & 2014 it actually went down slightly. Added oils (most of which are cheap seed oils) are where the bulk of the extra calories are coming from. My theory is that this is because people are eating out more, and fast food has a lot more fried stuff.

Whether or not they cause inflammation or metabolic issues needs more research. Unfortunately, doing proper long term studies on diet tends to be a bitch. People suck at self reporting their diet, and its hard to get people to be lab rats for long term controlled diets.

Seed oils however are usually bad in that they make it really easy to consume too many calories, which is of course the root cause of the obesity epidemic in the US (and the growing obesity issues in many other countries, for that matter).

Americans eat about the same amount of meat, dairy, veg, fruit, and added sugar as they did before obesity became a major issue; oil & to a lesser degree grains are where almost all the extra calories are coming from.

>>18129218
This here; food has gotten cheaper relative to income & more convenient, so unsurprisingly people eat more. Of course when you break down what exactly people are eating more of, it turns out they are eating a lot more added fats/oils, a moderate amount more grains, and about the same amount of everything else. I would wager people eating more fast food that is fried is the issue.

Basically people in the "boomer times" ate a lot less added fat than we do today, probably due to more home cooking & less fried stuff from restaurants. Calorie intake from other sources has not really changed all that much.

Also, a lot of people like to blame sugar for America's growing obesity epidemic, but per capita sugar consumption peaked in the US around the year 2000, and has been steadily declining since then.

The big thing of course, is simply calories in, calories out. You can have lots of fats in your diet, as long you cut back on other foods. Adding a bunch of fat, and still eating the same amount of other stuff, will of course make you fat.