Why We're Fat

When three-quarters of Americans are overweight, the problem is bigger than our habits.

Photo credit: Peter Bond on Unsplash.

Several years ago, I taught a pre-GED class for adults seeking to get their high-school equivalency diplomas. Most of the time, volunteers were left to come up with our own lesson plans and teaching materials, but there was one exception. Each semester, organizers would instruct us to teach a class on nutrition and fitness, providing us with bright flyers and fact sheets extolling the virtues of fruits and vegetables.

I gladly complied, assigning my students to write essays on the benefits of healthy eating. In return, I received many well-reasoned arguments about how, yes, they understood that salmon and broccoli are healthy. But they were working two jobs, taking care of kids, and trying to get their GED. Fast food, they wrote, is cheap, easy and tasty. So thanks for the helpful tips, but we’ll still be downing Whoppers on the way to class!

As a women’s magazine writer, I had produced countless reported pieces on the benefits of whole grains and leafy greens. I was bored as hell with the topic, but editors kept assigning these stories, so I kept writing them.

My students helped me see a bigger problem. They didn’t lack information; they knew carrots were healthier than chicken nuggets. They didn’t lack discipline; they were perpetual-motion machines of work-family-school. They lacked time and money. I was offering individual solutions; they were confronting a systemic problem.

The obesity rate has tripled since the 1970s, and more than 73% of Americans are overweight. As Washington Post food columnist Tamar Haspel points out, “When three-quarters of humans can’t navigate the system successfully, the problem is the system, not the humans.” 

My students didn’t lack information; they knew carrots were healthier than chicken nuggets. They didn’t lack discipline; they were perpetual-motion machines of work-family-school.

Americans didn’t become lazier, more gluttonous, or less informed over the past fifty years. Instead, the environment changed; food got more fattening. In the 1980s, a typical blueberry muffin was 1-1/2 ounces and contained 210 calories; in the 2020s, that blueberry muffin weighs in at 4 ounces and has 500 calories. Cookies, bagels, soda bottles and candy bars are bigger now. In the 1950s, McDonald’s French fries came in one size—0.2 ounces smaller than what we now call “small.”

In 2022, the USDA revised the number of servings in a pint of ice cream. Source: USDA.

Panic in the snack-food aisle

Our food got bigger for a simple reason—the more we eat, the more money the food industry makes. So it has been interesting to watch the industry’s response to the new appetite-suppressing weight-loss drugs that recently hit the market.

A study conducted by Walmart finds that the people taking these drugs are spending less money on fattening foods, buying fewer units and fewer calories. And a Morgan Stanley analysis finds that the patients taking these medications have cut their consumption of baked goods, confections and sugary drinks by as much as two-thirds. At the same time, these consumers have significantly increased their consumption of fruits and vegetables. The research also finds that people taking the medications drastically reduced their trips to fast-food restaurants.

Source: Morgan Stanley.

The Morgan Stanley researchers predict that 24 million people—nearly 7% of the U.S. population—will be taking these drugs by 2035. The patients prescribed these medications will, of course, be the ones struggling the most with their weight—aka the food industry’s best customers.

The news has sent industry executives scrambling to soothe investor concerns, a scene nutritionists find darkly hilarious.

“Imagine: if the drugs really do reduce appetite and interest in food—horror of horrors—people might eat less,” New York University nutrition and public health professor Marion Nestle wrote in a recent newsletter. “Eating less, as I have pointed out repeatedly, is very bad for the food business.”

On an investor call, Conagra CEO Sean Connolly said the company—which makes Slim Jims and Snack Pack puddings—is considering reducing portion sizes and changing ingredients. “If we end up seeing changes in consumer eating patterns, let’s say they go to smaller portions, then … we design smaller portions. If they switch to different types of nutrients, we evolve the innovation, we switch to different types of nutrients,” he said.

The industry that has been making our food more fattening for the past fifty years is now helpfully explaining that they can make it less fattening. Oh, well then.

Why bad food is cheap

Portion size is one reason American diets are so unhealthy. My students articulated another key factor—bad food is cheaper. As Vox explains nicely, a person would need to eat three apples to get the same number of calories in one doughnut—and the apples would cost them $5 more.

The price difference can be partially attributed to higher production costs—fresh strawberries must be picked by hand, but strawberries destined for jam can be picked by robots.

But unhealthy food also has an artificial advantage. The crops that receive the most U.S. government subsidies are corn, soybeans and wheat—the key ingredients for the high-fructose corn syrup, soybean oil and bleached wheat flour found in, for example, Twinkies. On the other hand, only 4% of federal farm subsidies support the production of fruits and vegetables—even though the USDA tells Americans that 50% of their dietary intake should come from those foods. The U.S. government scolds us to make healthy choices while putting its thumb on the scale for the unhealthy choices.

Just go for a walk?

Okay, so healthy food is expensive, but moving isn’t. We can all go for a walk, right?

When I wrote for women’s media, I often discussed the health benefits of a brisk walk. I lived in Brooklyn at the time and frequently popped out my door to get groceries, meet friends, pick up laundry.

“When three-quarters of humans can’t navigate the system successfully, the problem is the system, not the humans.” — Tamar Haspel

I knew this wasn’t how most people live, but I didn’t quite realize how unusual my situation was until we moved 100 miles north, and my requirement to live in a walkable neighborhood limited our options considerably. A 2023 report by the nonprofit Smart Growth America finds that in the country’s 35 largest metro areas only 6.8% of residents live in walkable neighborhoods. The report also says that restrictive zoning policies actually make it illegal to build walkable areas in many metro regions.

What makes a person more likely to live in a walkable neighborhood? Again, money. The Smart Growth America survey finds that rents are 41% higher and real estate costs 35% more in walkable neighborhoods. Most people don’t want to be car-dependent; a 2023 National Association of Realtors survey finds that 85% of respondents said that living in a place with sidewalks and places to walk to was important to them.

So what then?

In this newsletter, I want to do more than lay out infuriating facts. There is enough to be angry about these days; you don’t need to add Oreos to the pile.

I’m trying to work through the inherent tension between saying “it’s all rigged!” and “here’s what you can do!” Researching structural impediments is the first step in this project, but this is a work-in-progress so please bear with me.

Before I go further, I want to say that I’m not advocating for these weight-loss drugs (which is why I haven’t named them, though they’re easy to Google). At best, I think they’re Band-Aids for the larger structural problems I’m talking about here.

But I do think the food industry’s clear panic about the impact of these medications—people consuming fewer calories—makes clear that it’s useful to properly identify our relationship to these businesses. They are adversaries, not allies.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollen famously advised readers to never eat anything with more than five ingredients. He later had to revise that advice after supermarket shelves had a sudden influx of packages that said, “ONLY 5 INGREDIENTS!” Pollen’s amended advice: “Don’t eat anything that’s advertised.”

On the University of Chicago’s Big Brains podcast, Marion Nestle offered her food-shopping strategy: “I try to have a shopping list and shop with blinders on, so I don’t get hooked by the things that are being pushed at me.”

I have decent eating and exercise habits—years of repeatedly typing rote fitness advice affect a person! But I’m still 20 pounds overweight. I don’t love my body, but I also don’t hate myself for having a big belly.

Instead, I recognize that I’m up against some formidable opponents and do my best. Viewing my relationship with the packaged-food industry as adversarial gives me extra incentive to subscribe to community farm shares rather than buy convenience food—and keeps me motivated through all that tedious vegetable-chopping.

When I slip—say by eating half a bag of tortilla chips—I don’t waste energy being mad at myself. I have learned from psychologist Kristin Neff that berating myself won’t make me more disciplined in the future. In fact, a growing body of research indicates that people who treat themselves kindly might see better weight-management results.

Those are my individual strategies. On the systemic side, I try to pay attention to the places where I do (and don’t) have power. This coming year, we’ll be barraged with information about the 2024 presidential election. But I live in New York State, so my vote for president is essentially meaningless. However, I have considerable influence in the elections for the U.S. House of Representatives and the New York State Senate, since I live in swing districts for those two jurisdictions. Rather than breathlessly follow the bonkers House speaker spectacle on CNN, it's far more useful for me to read up on how my own representative plans to vote on the Farm Bill—and let him know I’m paying attention.

Speaking of elections, we have one coming up! The national media mostly ignores “off-year” elections, but these are the ones where our votes have the most power. Many local elected officials are working hard (and are paid next to nothing) to make our towns and cities more walkable and to support the local farmers who grow healthy and diverse crops. For example, in my hometown, local officials recently revamped the city’s zoning code to create more affordable housing in walkable neighborhoods and ensure that new development contributes to the city’s walkability.

Revamping zoning codes is about as exciting as eating broccoli. But it beats losing ourselves in a morass of calorie- and step-counting, hating ourselves along the way. We have nothing to lose but our pounds.

What are your strategies for navigating our food system, or other structural barriers to fitness?