What’s causing obesity?
It’s corn syrup and fructose
Consider this chart of what’s happening with obesity in the US. Clearly, something major happened between 1980 and 1995:
Child obesity also exploded in that period:
The trends in physical fitness and transportation aren’t dramatic enough. TV watching as a proxy for physical inactivity didn’t really have a dramatic jump in that period either:
Perhaps it’s diet that’s to blame. I’ve used ManyEyes to check what changes were there in that period:
Indeed, a 3-fold increase in consumption of high-fructose corn syrup — on a huge calorie basis. All other changes just vanish compared to this transition.
Here’s another chart showing the rapid arrival of corn syrup on the market:
The corn syrup and fructose-based soft drinks are the primary sources of calorie intake increases from ‘70s to ‘90s:
http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/nutrans/publications/NielsenJAMAPatterns2003.pdf
It’s happening elsewhere too: after US, Hungary has the highest corn syrup consumption in the world [1], and they’re also struggling with one of the highest obesity rates [2].
Yes, this is just a long tweet, not even a blog post. Maybe someone can go and write a paper, examining the onset of obesity in other countries, examining the introduction of corn syrup as a sweetener. And mind the cacophony of diet fads, blaming obesity on fat, meat, or whatever. Of course, calorie intake needs to be offset by enough physical activity: but what else explains the rapid increase of obesity starting in 1980s, or the Hungary outlier? The corn syrup defense [3] provides no alternative explanations of the 1980 explosion. Yes, corn syrup is not the only source of fructose — but it’s the cheapest and largest one. Fructose in general seems to be an issue.
The one thing that stands out with US obesity spurt in 1980's are non-sugar sweeteners that went mainstream in the same period.
