/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11976991
>>11976996
One interesting thing I noticed while looking at obesity stats is that while Japan & South Korea have very low rates, Taiwan's is much higher and on par with western European countries. I wonder what is causing that.

Anyhow, have a graph on how calorie consumption has increased in the US.

Invest in technologies that increase food production, provide subsidies to farmers to make sure that increases production happen, and provide vouchers to the poor to increase the amount of food they can buy.

>>11627771
>What? Unbelievable. Literally 25% of things we eat is sugar.
We're also eating a lot more fats and oils and just more food in general.

>>11484204
low fat

The rise in obesity has some strong genetic influences, and how they interact with the environment but not in some retarded thermodynamic violating way. For most of human history stuffing your face when you had surplus of food was a very useful trait; that fat came in handy during the winter, dry seasons, or other disruptions in the food supply. Food in general was just too expensive for the typical person to stuff themselves all the time.

This trait has become maladaptive only very recently, as modern farming, distribution, and storage methods have made food cheap & available in way that is unprecedented in history. As recently has the 1960s Americans were spending more than 15% of their disposal income on food; today it is a hair under 10%. And that smaller portion of income buys a lot more calories.

Breaking down the average Americans diet, the biggest changes are that people eat more fats & more grains. Interestingly, sugar consumption hasn't actually gone up much; in 1962 the average American consumed 520 calories of sugar; 50 years later and it had only risen to 597 calories; that is like a 20 gram difference. Granted, corn syrup might be counted under the cereals section, and explain why that has risen significantly.

https://ourworldindata.org/diet-compositions