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[nolin nae]

Study Details 30-Year Increase in Calorie Consumption

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR

Published: February 6, 2004

We knew we ate more; we knew we had gained weight. Now a new study that looked at 30 years of Americans' eating habits has pinned down how many more calories, carbohydrates and fats are eaten daily.

From 1971 to 2000, the study found, women increased their caloric intake by 22 percent, men by 7 percent.

Much of the change was found to be due to an increase in the amount of carbohydrates we have been eating. The findings may reinforce the current trend, among those sometimes known as carb-avoids, of reducing or even eliminating foods like breads and pasta.

And while the percentage of calories Americans get from fat, especially saturated fats, has decreased, the numbers might be deceiving. The actual amount of fat eaten daily has gone up. It just makes up a smaller percentage of the total caloric pie now that we are eating so many more carbs.

The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and reported in the current edition of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, found that in 1971 women ate 1,542 calories on average, compared with today's 1,877, while men went from 2,450 calories a day to 2,618. Those numbers dwarf the government's recommendations of 1,600 calories a day for women and 2,200 for men.

Cookies, pasta, soda and other carbohydrates appear to be mostly to blame. Among women, carbohydrates jumped from about 45 percent of the daily caloric intake to almost 52 percent. For men, they grew from 42 percent to 49 percent.

"This just confirms that Americans need to be more focused on a total calorie decrease," said Jacqueline Wright, an epidemiologist at the disease control centers and the author of the study.

Ms. Wright said it was unclear whether the study would influence a revision of the Department of Agriculture's familiar food pyramid, which emphasizes a diet rich in breads and grains. Many dietary experts have questioned whether the pyramid should remain the same.

The findings come at a time when public health officials are concerned about a national epidemic of bulging waistlines. According to the National Institutes of Health, two-thirds of Americans are overweight and one-third are obese. Between 1971 and 2000, obesity rates more than doubled, a result, many experts say, of an obsession with oversized portions.

According to the report, most of the surge in caloric intake occurred in two periods: from 1976 to 1980 and from 1988 to 1994. An earlier report by Dr. Lisa Young of New York University tied that increase to decisions by national restaurant chains to expand portions of foods like French fries and hamburgers. Serving sizes, Dr. Young's research found, became two to five times bigger in those years, and cookbooks joined the trend by increasing the portion sizes in recipes.

It is no surprise, said Dr. Gary Foster, the clinical director of the weight and eating disorders program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, that "we've become more overweight as a country as candy bars are now king-sized and sodas are supersized.

"It's much tougher to manage your weight in this environment than it was in 1970," Dr. Foster said.

Part of the problem, some experts say, may stem from the traditional dietary advice to steer clear of fatty foods. This advice, they say, helped set off an explosion of "fat-free," carbohydrate-laden foods that Americans mistakenly believed they could eat with few consequences.

"It's been the standard advice for decades that Americans should follow lower-fat, high-carb diets," said Dr. Meir Stampfer, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "But now it's backfiring. It's clear that this doesn't work because it's not as satiating and people just start eating more calories. This report doesn't demonstrate that, but the results are consistent with it."

The notion that carbohydrates can lead to weight gain has become the mantra of millions of dieters. On the Atkins program, for example, people can get up to two-thirds of their calories from fat and are allowed to eat fatty foods like hamburgers, as long as the bun is set aside.

Ms. Wright said that while she could not say what influence the popularity of low-carb diets would have on the long-term picture, the increase in carbohydrate consumption had not been as significant in the most recent surveys as it was in earlier years.

But saturated fat is still a concern, and experts are warning that the latest figures should not be taken as direct support for any of the low-carb diets. Instead, Ms. Wright said, they should be a reminder to Americans to eat less and exercise regularly.

Dr. Foster said: "This doesn't tell us anything about the effectiveness of any one dietary approach. It suggests that we've been eating more calories over time and that most of it is coming from carbs. But particular diets need to be tested and supported by clinical trials."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/health/06CARB.html?ex=1077071323&ei=1&en=028e915600e64b64

[nolin nae]

ok, forced to respond to my own post...doesn't anyone see that this article is conveying the message that carbohydrates are behind the obesity epidemic in america? can the FDA be sued?

[Hank Scorpio]

[princess]

I disagree with the whole "avoid carbs" thing. Most Korean food is full of carbs and even though some Koreans are chunky, none of them are as big as the biggest Americans.

[Yaya]

[Cthulhu]

It's quite simple, really. A trip to the local supermarket in the West will tell you why people are getting fatter.

The selection of "fast food" and specialty foods is through the roof. 20 years ago you get vanilla, chocolate or strawberry ice cream. These days every chcolate bar maker has an ice cream bar that has 5 times the fat/calories of simple ice cream. Oh Henry bars, Caramilk bars, etc. Even ice cream is complicated: chocolate isn't good enough so we need triple chcoclate brownie delight with enough calories alone for a day's intake.

Ditto for other bad foods--TGI Fridays in the frozen section, cheese everywhere, 20 kinds of frozen burgers and on it goes. The frozen food section alone could keep you fat forever. And the marketing is aimed squarely at kids who are ballooning as fast as any age group these days.

Therein lies the rub: we can eat foods that our parents never dreamed of at our age, and the price we pay are waistlines our parents never dreamed of at their age.

[little mixed girl]

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[Yaya]

[tokki]

[nolin nae]

princess and lmg, as much as i'd like to defer to your obvious wealth of knowledge in the field of nutrition, i must respectfully disagree with your assessments that carbs are NOT at the root of the american obesity epidemic.

number one, it does take time for the change in diet to an overconsumption of carbs to take a hold on a population; approximately twenty years. i believe we are seeing the beginning stages of it here in korea. koreans, in general, are smaller than americans, but if current dietary trends continue, koreans will be facing the same problems. something else to consider: obesity is not the only problem associated with high-carb intake. diabetes and diabetes-related disorders (most noteably heart disease) are also directly associated with high-carb diets. the epidemic of obesity in america has concided with an epidemic in diabetes and higher rates of heart disease. but you don't need to be obese to be at risk and being "thin" is not always a good indicator of "health". if you eat a high-carb, low-fat, low-calorie diet you can keep you weight down, but your blood sugar levels will be completely out of wack (which results in a variety of side effects) and you'll must likely suffer from hunger regularly. which brings me to my second point.

[nolin nae]

[little mixed girl]

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[rok_the-boat]

I read somewhere - can't find the link again - that GM food hormones can transfer over to people from animals through eating the meat. What they were suggesting was that if cows eat growth hormones and get fat quick, and we then eat those cows laden with growth hormones, then, we we tend to get fat rather quickly - all the more so if young (i.e still growing).

If you find such a link - let me know.

Another interesting hormone story is found in English rivers, and I think, Candian lakes: Female Fish - and lots of them. Apparently, estrogen - from the pill - gets into the water supply and affects the fish such that they are all female - there was a big documentary by the BBC about this and they were trying to establish a link between this and the fact that the male sperm count, in the UK, had decreased rapidly since records began over the last few decades. The BBC also pointed out thatthe water authoritiesw had known about the 'excessive' number (like 100% in some rivers they tested) of female fish but had kept qiet about it for 20 years (failed to mention how they repoduce - maybe they travel to other rivers?).

So - do you want hormones in your food?

[kangnamdragon]

Isn't the carb problem really a sugar problem? -- simple carbs Is Korean rice a simple carb or complex carb. I think the problem is sugar. People now eat nonfat food which is full of sugar. Coke is fat-free!!

Please educate me if I am wrong. Isn't the carb in bread, more sugar, different from the carbs in rice?

[Mr. Pink]