What caused the obesity crisis in the West?
13 June 2012
British
people are on average nearly three stone (24kg) heavier than 50 years
ago, but who or what is to blame? Jacques Peretti (pictured above)
investigates.
Contrary to popular belief, we as a race have not become
greedier or less active in recent years. But one thing that has changed
is the food we eat, and, more specifically, the sheer amount of sugar we
ingest."Genetically, human beings haven't changed, but our environment, our access to cheap food has," says Professor Jimmy Bell, obesity specialist at Imperial College, London.
"We're being bombarded every day by the food industry to consume more and more food.
"It's a war between our bodies and the demands our body makes, and the accessibility that modern society gives us with food. And as a scientist I feel really depressed, because we are losing the war against obesity."
One of the biggest changes in our modern diet stems back to the 1970s when US agriculture embarked on the mass-production of corn and of high-fructose corn syrup, commonly used as a sweetener in processed foods.
This led to a massive surge in
the quantities of cheaper food being supplied to American supermarkets,
everything from cheap cereal to cheap biscuits. As a result, burgers got
bigger and fries (fried in corn oil) got fattier.
"Obesity is caused when people consume too many calories without the exercise to balance it out” Susan Neely American Beverage Association
"The number of calories produced
in America, and available to American consumers, went from 3,200 in the
1970s and early 80s to 3,900 per person, almost twice as much as anybody
needed. And that enormous increase, I think it's the cause of a great
deal of difficulty," she says.
By the mid 1980s, corn syrup had replaced sugar in fizzy soft drinks. The move made financial sense from the soft drink companies' point of view, as corn syrup was a third cheaper than sugar.
But it was also sweeter and, argue some scientists, more addictive. In the next two decades, the average American's consumption of fizzy drinks almost doubled - from 350 cans a year to 600.
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18393391
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