Why were Americans of all ages so thin during the 1960s and 1970s?

[Anonymous]

Because now she weighs this

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/12/look-at-how-much-weight-weve-gained-since-the-1960s/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4119ec6974cc

[Anonymous]

My family has always been beefy, but now we don’t stand out as much.

[Anonymous]

Obesity in the 1950s - this woman would be considered normal or average today. Obviously, there is a similar trend for American males.

https://www.vintag.es/2013/09/obesity-in-usa-in-1950s-from-early.html?m=1

[Anonymous]

Also: Vintage Large People

Back in the day, these people were freakshows. So unusual, that they necessitated having their pictures taken for their obscurity. Now people this large are so commonplace.

http://avax.news/fact/Large_People_1.html
http://avax.news/funny/Large_People_2.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:People ate far less processed food. Sugar wasn't snuck into everything.

Part of it is this. People did eat junk food, but there wasn't as much sugar in regular processed food, because high fructose corn syrup was not so cheap.

Uhhhhh were you alive in the 1970s? I think it's an era where food was especially crappy. All kinds of junk food, candy bars, deep fried everything, fast food as ubiquitous as today without the healthy options. I was born in 1969 and have many friends my age who never tried a vegetable that wasn't canned until going to college. Plenty of people were obese although I suppose not as high a percentage as today. There was definitely a subset of people that were into health food in a hippie way. All I can imagine is that when I was growing up in the summer we left the house by 9am and didn't come home until 6-7pm. We were on our bikes, playing in the woods, etc. Except when we were watching Scooby Doo.

Born in 1967 and this is what I remember. My siblings and I were not allowed in the house during the summer except for lunch. We came hoe for dinner around 6 after playing outside, riding bikes, swimming at the pool, etc. all day. But there was plenty of crap food (twinkies, bugles, funyuns, sunny delite).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think we start things off badly now, with this idea that babies and toddlers need to snack all the time.
From the earliest days, my kids got three meals a day, and one snack (whether the snack was in the morning or afternoon depended on when their naps were. That is, when they had the longest awake stretch between meals.)

And they never ate on the run. Snacks were eaten at the table, just like meals. They didn't drink milk all the time like so many kids. Or juice. All they drank was water.

I know people will say I was a mean mom, but they never asked for snacks between times. One result of the meal schedule was that when they did have meals or a snack, they ate more than their peers, because they'd actually waited long enough to work up an appetite. (This also helped them be less picky eaters, in my opinion.)

Call me a sanctimommy if you want, but I feel it worked well to snack less. (and yes, there were exceptions to the rule if there needed to be. But my kids never begged for food. They were too busy!) I think too many parents offer food as appeasement (you're upset? Want a yogurt?) or as a reward (you've been so good! Let's get an ice cream!)

It is unhealthy for babies and toddlers to eat only 3 meals per day.

They are supposed to eat several smaller meals throughout the day.

You aren't mean, just misinformed and wrong.

[Anonymous]

Fighting dinosaurs burned a ton of calories

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:OP, where exactly are you getting your premise that everyone was so thin back then? Are you looking at photos or movies or something? I was alive then and I remember seeing people of all sizes, with plenty who were on the heavy side.

I lived in a pretty international neighborhood, with a lot of immigrants from various countries, so that might have affected the looks of the people I sàw regularly. But even still, we were out and about in many places and I saw a wide range of sizes of people everywhere we went.

OP, are you out there? Can you give some background on what you're basing your ideas about how people looked in the 60s and 70s? Thanks!

LMAO that you've ignored streams of data of how much fatter we are and asking OP to verify it.

This is a totally different point: how much fatter we are. No one is debating that. What is being questioned is the notion that the entire population was very thin in 1970. Do you see the difference in those two points?

No there have always been fatties. There are just more now.

But the OP said that people of all ages were so thin during the 60s and 70s. We're asking what that assumption is based on.

It's not an assumption. It's a fact which has been studied for decades. One example of reporting research: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/12/look-at-how-much-weight-weve-gained-since-the-1960s/?utm_term=.49540e50ed9a

You are not posting any information about people being very thin in the 60s and 70s. You continue to post information about how fat people are NOW. Do you really not see the difference???? There's a difference between people being fat now and people being very thin in the 70's. Is this not clear to you?

NP. are we reading a different article? The one PP just posted has a very clear graph that shows how much heaver the average woman has gotten since the 1960s/70s. What exactlya re you looking for?

This article says the average woman weighed 140 in 1970. How is that very thin?

Yes, how is 140 lbs. "so thin"?

Maybe a better question would’ve been why the average woman weighs so much more than they did just a generation ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree that people, especially kids, were far more active.

I was also a kid (born in 1980) that was outside from sunup to sundown with my friends. I wouldn’t even go home for lunch sometimes and that was fine. Riding bikes, swimming, exploring the junk dumped in the woods, LOL. Every single day!

My parents were more active too and their lives didn’t revolve around my siblings and me. My father played softball recreationally but his team played tournaments a few weekends of the summer and it was never the mindset of “Dad’s putting his hobby above the KIDS!!!” It was “Dad had a tournament this weekend and we’re going. Bobby and Sally will also be there and there’s a playground or you can bring a book.” So we’d still be somewhere outside playing. Dad was allowed to indulge in his active “hobby” and it was fine and not Dad being selfish. So he stayed in shape, well, even to this day.

We became parents in 2009 and this is pretty much how we do it. Not in terms of the sun up to sun down part, but my kids play outside a ton and my husband is very active in a sport and that's not just fine, it's normal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in the 60s and 70s. I am 50. We ate junk food all the time. Twinkies, super sweet cereal, cokes, Kool-aide, ...... We weren't fat because we were active all the time. It really is that simple.

I'm 48. The sugary snacks etc weren't prevalent in our house. I had one of those mom's, lol.

We were far more active though.

[Anonymous]

I grew up in the 90s but we played outside all day every day in the summer and on weekends too, riding bikes, playing soccer or basketball, going to the pool, etc. now I live in a neighborhood with a ton of elementary age kids but you'd never know it because they are never out playing. I can only think of a few times I've seen kids out riding bikes unaccompanied by a parent, even with parents it's rare. A lot of my neighbors have nice swing sets and all these outdoor toys that just sit in their backyards, unused. Even the playgrounds are not that crowded. Yes, I know a lot of kids are at summer camps but even on the weekends you hardly ever see kids out playing.

I also think some of this is because parents generally work a lot more hours now than they used to so kids are in daycare/aftercare much more than they used to be instead of being at home. And even when they are at home the parents are exhausted from working so much, managing the household so they are not as active as a family. And parents being exhausted and overworked also means they are eating more convenience foods and not exercising as much (or sleeping as much, which is also very unhealthy).

In short, id blame a lot of the problem on Americans working too much and having too little time to focus on other things (their health)

[Anonymous]

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So here's some random kids from the 2000s. They don't look all that different in size from the kids in the other class picture above.

This looks like a private school pic. Wealthy, white aren't a "random kids" sample.

It looks like a Catholic school. Catholic schools typically have a wide range of families of different economic backgrounds.

Are you saying white peoples tend to be the same weight they were back in the 70s?

No, s/he's saying that WEALTHY people do.

If you can afford private school, you most likely can afford fresh produce for your kids, a focus on non-processed (read: canned) fruits and vegetables, and a stronger emphasis on exercise either through the school's more variable athletic programs and/or skilled athletic professionals hired for classes (my private high school had p.e. credits that included squash, cycling, and tennis) as well as outside help for your family in the form of nutritionists or gym memberships.

Decades ago no one belonged to a gym, there was limited “fresh” food and little outside help. People were much thinner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People ate far less processed food. Sugar wasn't snuck into everything.

Umm, we’re talking about an era when it was normal to mix shredded carrots into your orange jello and serve that as the vegetable with dinner. My mother had an entire cook book about dishes you could make with hot dogs to serve at fancy dinner parties with said hello salad or maybe some sweet potatoes covered with marshmallows.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:OP, where exactly are you getting your premise that everyone was so thin back then? Are you looking at photos or movies or something? I was alive then and I remember seeing people of all sizes, with plenty who were on the heavy side.

I lived in a pretty international neighborhood, with a lot of immigrants from various countries, so that might have affected the looks of the people I sàw regularly. But even still, we were out and about in many places and I saw a wide range of sizes of people everywhere we went.

OP, are you out there? Can you give some background on what you're basing your ideas about how people looked in the 60s and 70s? Thanks!

LMAO that you've ignored streams of data of how much fatter we are and asking OP to verify it.

This is a totally different point: how much fatter we are. No one is debating that. What is being questioned is the notion that the entire population was very thin in 1970. Do you see the difference in those two points?

No there have always been fatties. There are just more now.

But the OP said that people of all ages were so thin during the 60s and 70s. We're asking what that assumption is based on.

It's not an assumption. It's a fact which has been studied for decades. One example of reporting research: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/12/look-at-how-much-weight-weve-gained-since-the-1960s/?utm_term=.49540e50ed9a

You are not posting any information about people being very thin in the 60s and 70s. You continue to post information about how fat people are NOW. Do you really not see the difference???? There's a difference between people being fat now and people being very thin in the 70's. Is this not clear to you?

NP. are we reading a different article? The one PP just posted has a very clear graph that shows how much heaver the average woman has gotten since the 1960s/70s. What exactlya re you looking for?

This article says the average woman weighed 140 in 1970. How is that very thin?

Yes, how is 140 lbs. "so thin"?

Maybe a better question would’ve been why the average woman weighs so much more than they did just a generation ago.

But that is not the question OP asked. OP asked specifically "why were Americans of all ages so thin during the 1960s and 1970s?" A number of us have been pointing out that people were not actually "so thin" during those decades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't forget, most of the adults of that time had grown up during the Great Depression and WWII, during which food wàs rationed. So, many of the adults- the parents and grandparents of the children of that time- had been at minimum borderline malnourished during their own childhood and young adult years.

Thankfully, most adults in the US today never had to live through such hardships.

And to add to this, women who are not well nourished are more likely to give birth to smaller babies.

Audrey Hepburn and her mother survived WWII by eating grass. Grass out in the fields. . It is very difficult for a body to recover from surviving on grass.
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