Obesity rates in the US have more than doubled in the last 30 years, and rates of childhood obesity and extreme adult obesity have tripled. One third of US adults are considered obese, and another third overweight. This is the "obesity epidemic".
The obesity epidemic has coincided with significant changes in the US diet, which are clearly involved. However, there's another probable contributor that's often overlooked: declining smoking rates.
Here's a graph of cigarette consumption over the last century in the US (1):
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My TEDx Talk, "The American Diet: a Historical Perspective"
On October 21st, I spoke at the Harvard Food Law Society's TEDx conference, Forum on Food Policy. The conference kicked off with three talks on nutrition, by Drs. Walter Willett, David Ludwig and myself. My talk is only 17 minutes long as per TED format, but it's packed with research on both quantitative and qualitative changes in the US diet over the last two centuries. It contains surprises for almost anyone, and I can guarantee you've never learned this much about the history of the US diet in 17 minutes. The talk was titled "The American Diet: a Historical Perspective"; you can access it by following that link.
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An Interview with Dr. C. Vicky Beer, Paleo-friendly MD
As I was preparing my recent article on the Paleo diet (1), I interviewed a local Paleo-friendly MD named C. Vicky Beer. I was only able to include a snippet of the interview in the article, but I thought WHS readers would be interested to read the rest of the interview with Dr. Beer:
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