by Barbara Berkeley, MD
If you are over the age of 60, you remember a time when most Americans were thin. Sure, there were some overweight and obese folks, but they were few and far between. Photos and films from the 50s and 60s will confirm the fact that the average weight of America has changed drastically, with the greatest escalation in size occuring since 1980.
It is easy to blame our increasing fatness on cheap, available food, poor willpower, and lack of exercise. But for those of us who actually lived in the age of the dinosaurs, memories remind us that families ate well, indulged in ice cream and pie, cooked with Crisco and never heard of a gym or a personal trainer. While my friends and I did play an occasional ( and not very strenuous) game of stoopball or Hit the Penny, most of our family evenings revolved around the TV, watching shows like The Man from Uncle, The Defenders, and Perry Mason.
As a kid, I ate whole sleeves of Burry's cookies, bought Halvah and Bonomo's Turkish Taffy every day on my way home from school, and ate tons of Hostess Cupcakes and Devil Dogs. French fries and red meat were the default dinner and Wonder Bread was the preferred sandwich constructor. After supper during the summer months, the Good Humor man would come down the street and I would get a Chocolate Chip Candy Ice Cream Bar, which was an ice cream pop whose center contained a large slab of chocolate.
My parents did no physical exercise and we kids did almost as little. While we did have gym at school, it didn't involve much activity and most of the time we made excuses about why we couldn't take gym class and wound up sitting on the sidelines gabbing in our blue rompers.
In other words, the 50s and 60s were not the halcyon days of intense physical activity and excellent eating habits that some would have you believe.
And yet, we weren't overweight. Virtually no one was.
There were exceptions of course. Marilyn S. and James D. were obese kids in my class who had been that way since they were toddlers. Everyone knew them and accepted their size. No one really considered that it had anything to do with how they ate. They just were.
One of my friends had a father who was atypically overweight with a stomach that hung over his belt. He looked alot more like many men do today. He unfortunately died at a young age of a heart attack one afternoon while my friend and I were at the movies together.
My grandmother and her sister were obese while everyone else in their families were thin. Both died prematurely of heart attacks.
While most movie stars were incredibly svelte, a few famous people had an identity that was tied to being overweight. Jackie Gleason was one--the heavy guy with the big personality surrounded by a cast of skinnies on the Honeymooners.
When I remember the 50s and 60s, it seems to me that there is something paradoxical about our current obesity epidemic. Why are we heavy now when we weren't back then? Could this whole sea change be the result of increased portion size? More screen time?
My guess is that the answer is much less obvious and much more insidious and multi-factorial. The best anyone can do is speculate. Having said that, here are some of the things I observe to have changed since I was a kid. I suspect each of these factors contributes to our changed shape, but there are actions we can take to mitigate these changes and perhaps make a difference.
1. Insufficient periods of "eating recovery"
One thing that has changed about eating since my childhood is that we now do it continually. Years ago, we might have eaten alot, but we did not eat between meals and we did not snack. "Don't eat between meals" was a strong cultural rule. It's my personal guess that the body needs periods of time during which food is distributed and metabolized before eating resumes. After putting the body into "intake" mode during eating, I think we need to allow it to slip into "burning" mode. This is the basis for many of the current intermittent fasting diets that are out there. But I believe that we need to practice eating recovery a number of times daily, not intermittently.
If you want to avoid this problem: Try making a rule for yourself. Allow at least 2-3 hours between eating bouts. Stop eating earlier each night and give yourself a nice, long fast each evening that ends at breakfast.
2. A life-long overexposure to sugars and starches
In the 50s and 60s, children were not born having been exposed to high levels of sugars in utero. Today, our exposure to the products of bread, bagels, rolls, muffins, sugars, pasta, potatoes, grains and pizza crust often begins during gestation. While we ate plenty of sugar and baked goods in the 50s and 60s, our moms believed in a "balanced" diet, which meant a meat, a vegetable and a starch on every plate. Yes, portions have increased, but it is the vast proportional increase in sugars and starches that I believe to be the problem, not the overall increase in portion size. We are born with a pancreas and insulin production system that was designed about 100,000 years ago when sugars were not a major dietary component. Thus, this system appears ripe for burn out when overstimulated over a period of many years. The malfunction that occurs as a result leads to sugars and starches being converted to fat rather than burned.
To avoid this problem: Cut back vastly on the starches and sugars you consume. After you have lost weight, try to KEEP cutting back. If you do add some S Foods back in, watch your weight daily and get rid of any foods that are causing weight to reaccumulate.
3. The composition of our environment
The 50s and 60s saw the beginnings of new fabrics like Dacron and Rayon and the invention of plastic wrap and TV dinners. But our exposure to chemicals, plastics, advanced pesticides and herbicides, and drugs was still limited. All bets are off now. It is impossible to avoid contacting numerous invisible substances that may re-set our hormonal and endocrine balance. And some of us may be more susceptible than others.
To avoid this problem: Drink purified water. Use glass containers. Eat food that comes largely unpackaged, like fresh fruits, vegetables and animal proteins. If it's possible, try not to eat food that has been treated with large amounts of pesticides and herbicides. There is no perfect answer to this problem and exposure to questionable environmental substances is inevitable. But we can try to decrease it somewhat by paying attention.
4. Profound changes in our microbiome
As those of you who follow this blog and/or my facebook page know, I am very interested in the microbiome; the collection of organisms which populates our gut and whose balance appears to be significantly altered in disease states. When I was a kid, there was essentially one antibiotic: penicillin. Since it was generally delivered by injection via a rather threatening needle, it wasn't something a patient got every day. Today, it seems we are rarely off antibiotics. We take them chronically for acne and other skin conditions. We jump on and off them every time we have a sinus infection, a sore throat or a cough. Physicians feel pressured to give patients antibiotics for illnesses that may do just fine without them. The animals that we eat have been laced with these drugs too. Our microorganisms have to process the food that we eat before we do. The way that they do this appears to significantly effect our weight and health, thus changes to our basic biologic "neighborhood" mean changes in us. Antibiotics are undoubtedly one of the major factors in microbiome change.
To avoid this problem: If you are prescribed an antibiotic, ask your doctor about whether it is definitely indicated. If the answer is yes, ask for the simplest antibiotic that will get the job done. Newer drugs are like cannons deployed against fleas and create drug resistance. If you do have to take an antibiotic, take a probiotic along with it. We don't yet know how to reform our microbiome with probiotics, but the current versions of probiotics are probably better than nothing. Most importantly, eat a diet that is as organic and original as possible. Again, decrease starches and sugars greatly. What we eat may very well impact who moves into our "neighborhood", so keep the terrain attractive.
5. A shift in what food actually contains
The 50s and 60s saw the beginnings of convenience foods and junk foods. While it is true that a bag of Wise Potato Chips was tiny then and a Coke looked like a miniature compared to today's Big Gulp, there has been an enormous escalation in the use of food additives and in substances that prolong shelf life. As we saw with trans fats--compounds that were used as shortening in baked goods so that they could stay fresh in the package practically forever--these components may have profound health effects. The very nature of meat has changed too due to tecchniques that grow cattle faster.
To avoid this problem: Try to eat foods that are basic and closer to original versions. Avoid processing and packaging. Eat meats and animal proteins that are raised without antibiotics and are fed on their own natural foods if possible.
6. An overestimation of what medicines can do and too many medicines in our body
In the 50s and 60s, most people were on minimal medicine, if any. Isn't it wonderful that we now have all these new medicines that can control our blood pressure, bring our blood sugar down and make our cholesterol numbers look good? Not really. After all, we have all these medicines in response to all the disease we have. The really wonderful thing would be if we could inspire people to re-capture their own natural health. If, after that change, medicines needed to be layered on for additional control, then it would be great to have them. But I can tell you that for the majority of people, most of their medicines would no longer be necessary. Medicines change bodily pathways and quite a number of them increase appetite and fat storage. It's not a hard sell to convince people that they should avoid food additives, but they continue to add chemical substances to their bodies in the forms of drugs and supplements that have the potential to be far more toxic.
To avoid this problem: Clean up your diet, lose enough weight to resolve some of your medical issues, become more athletic and spend less time plugged in. Ask your doctor to review your medication list to make sure that you are on the fewest medicines possible. Ask about the weight promoting effects of medicines and see if alternatives can be found for those which might encourage weight gain (these include many antidepressants, some of the diabetes drugs, insulin, beta blockers, and others). Remember that the most powerful medicine of all is the food you eat and the attention you pay to the care of your body. To learn how to care for yourself, invest in reading and learning about how the body works in states of both health and disease.