Just How Did We Get So Fat
When you consider that, two out of every three Americans, 63% of Australian adults and 60% of the United Kingdom population are now considered to be overweight or obese, you might be wondering just how did we get so fat ? Lets take a look at 4 reasons :
1. Our portions are enormous
Thanks to the big plate we’re getting when we eat, we’ve built a culture of “more is better“. And this has confused our sense of a proper serving size. One Rutgers University study measured the amount of food people served themselves from a breakfast buffet.
Then they compared the results to a similar study conducted 19 years earlier. The recent study participants served themselves 16 per cent more toast with jam, 43 per more orange juice, 28 per cent more milk for their cereal and 19 per cent more cornflakes that the similar group did nearly two decades earlier.
2. Added sugars lurk everywhere
We’re also eating more carbs as processed grains, potatoes, corn and sugar. A recent study by the university of Cambridge found that we dramatically underestimate the amount of sugar we eat each day. The problem is that it’s not just chocolate and cakes that contain a lot of sugar, it’s often hidden in seemingly “healthy” foods like juice, bread, condiments, frozen dinners and cereals.
3. We drink our kilojoules
When you’re at the pub, it’s easy to forget about the kilojoules content of drinks. But alcohol is hugely fattening. Drinks are especially stealthy in this war because the brain interprets liquids as less filling than solids. When Purdure University gave subjects food in both liquid and solid forms, people consumed far more kilojoules when they ate food in liquid form than when they are solid food.
4 Old father time is against us
We have much to look forward to as we get older – ear hair, bifocals, a prescription for Viagra. Add a slower metabolism to your list – The older you get, the fewer kilojoules you burn. An 82kg man in his forties burns on average about 50 fewer kilojoules per hour at rest than a man of the same weight in his twenties.
That means he ends the day with 1200 more kilojoules that the younger guy – Unless he does something about it. Researchers estimate the decline continues at the rate of 2-4 percent per decade after 40.
