why do you think people are getting fatter?

YES.. that's when I put on all the weight.. when I moved in with Jon.. well.. a few years later.  I was about 25 lbs heavier than normal when I got pregnant, then ATE my way through my pregnancy.  Jon introduced me to foods I had never had.. never heard of.  HAHaha.. on our first date, he took me to a very nice restaurant and I scoured the menu looking for a cheeseburger.. none.  LOL  I told him I couldn't decide so he ordered for the both of us.  That was my first steak!  I bounced up and down after that.. losing it all on liquid diets only to gain it back PLUS some. Another factor has to be considered.  The preferences of those in the household.  I have noticed over the years that it's very difficult to maintain any particular way of eating when no one else in the household is interested.  I got tired of making different meals, throwing out leftovers...  etc.  Now it's fairly easy and cheap to maintain!  I could make the same meat for all, but in different ways.  Jon and I basically eat the same, and the two kids eat alike.  Small variations are much more affordable and easier to prepare. 

All of the above, most notably far less activity, way more stress (Em, point well taken - working women only borrowed 40+ hours in the workplace on top of the home scene!)Social marketing - a big deal. It IS sick to hear my 2 yo grandson sing the McD song - one of his first songs he knew. TV is just on in most homes, no thought to its impact on children's psyche.  I think back to my family forefathers on the farm - yes, they ate meat, but also tons of lard laden white bread.  LARD!  They even spread it on bread when the cows was dried up - or mixed real butter with the lard for the spreadability. Noodles and potatoes were part of most meals. They had dessert  the noon meal.  They ate home canned fruits and vggies (packed in sugar or salt)most of the year - gardens were a little hard to manage under few feet of snow! NOBODY was fat - they worked too hard. The sugar on my grandpas cereal in the mornings would have stopped up the sink. 'cept he ate every bit of it! They had to go ge****er outside anyway...both of my parents were born into homes with no running water! That is not seen these days, unless you are an aborigine...even then, bet you live in city apartments! But fast forward to now:  First and foremost:  the availability of food everywhere is a mean issue...learning incentives at school - pass the spelling test, get a roll of smarties.  Good attendance:  pizza party! Sell the most cookie dough (!):  pizza party.....vending machines everywhere, meetings with trays of food, always low quality choices. sodas ev-er-y-where.....lunch provided - NOBODY does brown bag anymore. Honorable mention:  we cannot stand to feel uncomfortable.  At all.  Hunger, as a sensation, not the true condition of food insecurity,  is just not tolerated. We don't think we should have to wait, so we do not. 

Makes sense.. thinking back to my mother, aunts and grandmother... these were petite women..  4'8" , 4'10" maybe 5'......   tiny people... 80 - 100 lbs.  They ate the same things I ate... growing up there was lots of pastas and soups, cheap meats.. bread and butter on the table with every single meal.  OMG.. when I was young, I remember my mother and I sharing a tomato and onion salad w/oregano and olive oil that she had left on the window sill all morning to warm in the sun with 1/2 loaf of day old Italian bread.  THAT was a great lunch!  Now... it would probably kill me! 

yes, my female ancestery on both sides was petite as well (60 inches and under).  No more:  my kids are both 68 inches tall and size 9 feet!  I've wondered here and there if getting larger - taller and fatter is some sort of evolutionary gelf. (loosely means soem future need for this size change is coming)

My father is a dairy farmer, as was HIS father. Dairy farmers' diets are notoriously high in fat. Fat is not the enemy!! My grandfather was a diary farmer all his life-- drank several glasses of unpasteurized milk with full cream every day, a glass of whole buttermilk at bed, fried his eggs and bagon in butter, and he never weighed over 160 pounds. Know when my dad became obese and developed poor health? When the nearest town developed restaurants, convenience stores. When it became as easy to grab a soda as to drink out of the well pump. When the farm wives got careers and stopped baking with grains and started picking up a bag of Cheetos to go with dinner sandwiches. When cable TV got hooked up and made these indulgences look so appealing.

Because the Great Flying Spaghetti monster is making us all pay for having elected George W. Bush. _________________ Actually? A combination of things, but the greatest one being evolution. We've evolved very efficiently, and don't need to be as physical to do what we need to to survive. It's evolution doing it's job and doing it well. Problem is it shortens our life expectancy, eventually, and destroys our quality of life in the short term. The social stigma about being fat will lessen over time (it already has to some extent.) But until being fat can be made less medically dangerous, it's gonna be trouble. Other classics include: 1) High carb high sugar items are the least expensive--- and healthieroptions are the most expensive. With so many working poor, obesity is pandemic in the lower and working classes now. We're the only place in the world (the UK is fast approaching, however) where the poorest of the poor are now our fattest class. A uniquely American experience, eh? Middle and upper classes can pay dieticians, trainers, bariatric surgeons, Jenny Craig. They can't. It's ass backwards, bu****ch as the "haves" become more svelte than the "have nots." 2) High fructose corn syrup is now in every damn thing in the world (largely for reasons of politics) and doesn't metabolize like sugar-- the **** is insidious. 3) Parents overindulging kids/not encouraging outside play/encouraging indoor sedentary activities, using food as rewards/providing unhealthy foods 4) Genetics. Some people are fat because they've always been fat-- my grandparents were obese in the 1950s, and my aunts and uncles, parents...it's not new to us. 5) It's easier now to be fat in our culture that in any era in recent history. Used to be, you got to a certain size and you couldn't get dressed in the morning--- so that motivator's gone. Lousy as fat clothes are, at least they exist. 6) We have affluenza as a culture-- a sense that we need bigger, more. It's why people drive heinously wasteful SUVs. We feel we DESERVE creme brulee, mocha latte cappucinos, these "luxury items" are sold to us as evidence we've worked hard-- so we consume them with a sense of having "made it"-- only to become less effective at whatever we were doing because we now can't even tie our own shoes. 7) The diet industry (BIG BUSINESS, PEOPLE!) only can keep you on if what they are selling is not effective long term. Basically what I am saying is they literally BANK on YOUR failure. If they could market something that'd end obesity forever, why would they? They need your cash! As long as we stay fat, they stay loaded.

Yes!  great points you have in there. Items 4-7 wowed me, in fact.  You are right, it is easy to be fat these days. And, especially as fat as I am - a lot of people are *this fat*, so I rarely reflect on that for too long...I compare mysalf and say perhaps too readily...this is thin enough.  Genetics is a player, by golly. I know several "fat families" - dude, everybody is fat, has been fat, will always be fat. in my family, 3 of 5 kids are beefy t's, 2 are scrawny. None try to be either way, they just are. LOVE  affluenza....it is true, guilty party right here, too. We are snotttyyyy about our food too. We buy panko, not breadcrumbs...real maple syrup, never aunt jemima.... And finally, free enterprise has its place at this table talk. Here is how it works:  they whip an item, we buy it and get addicted, then get fat, then somehow, it's THEIR fault. So we sue them. But I digress.... Hmmmm I wonder if there were a skinny pill, how many would really do it????/  wow, i truly wonder.

I think genetics play a factor, I also believe portions have gotten way bigger than they were before, also the quality I believe hasn't gone up with that. How the food is prepared plays another factor too, I only cook with olive oil when it comes to frying or anything else. I rarley use butter ( unless I bake ) Lifestyles, some people just refuse to excersise, I'd be lost and overweight without it.