The main proximate cause of increase in human weight over the last few decades is over-eating
This seems to be (trivially?) true, but your post appears to be about obesity and your graph doesn’t necessarily show anything about that. The increased food energy consumption could be due to reduced malnutrition / starvation or changed age structure (adolescents and working adults eating more than children and seniors).
I’m also not sure the super-stimulus theory is the dominant one. Evolutionary adaption to Malthusian circumstances seems at least as common to me, but I must admit I haven’t read much about the topic.
This seems to be (trivially?) true, but your post appears to be about obesity and your graph doesn’t necessarily show anything about that. The increased food energy consumption could be due to reduced malnutrition / starvation or changed age structure (adolescents and working adults eating more than children and seniors).
Graph only illustrates it, it’s not a definite proof, but the thesis is correct. Issues like malnutrition, age structure etc. are secondary at best—massive over-eating is a well established fact.
Recommended daily calorie intake is 2000 for women and 2500 for men—which also happens to be the level world average had in 1960; and as some people were malnourished, other must have been overeating already.
Consumption kept growing in all countries including those far past this level—for example FAO says average for Americans increased 1961-2005 from 2884 to 3855 kcal/day (and is world’s highest).
As I said I haven’t read much about the topic, but it seems to me that including these sorts of points in the original post rather than just the naked graph would have been better, particularly on a site like less wrong.
This seems to be (trivially?) true, but your post appears to be about obesity and your graph doesn’t necessarily show anything about that. The increased food energy consumption could be due to reduced malnutrition / starvation or changed age structure (adolescents and working adults eating more than children and seniors).
I’m also not sure the super-stimulus theory is the dominant one. Evolutionary adaption to Malthusian circumstances seems at least as common to me, but I must admit I haven’t read much about the topic.
Graph only illustrates it, it’s not a definite proof, but the thesis is correct. Issues like malnutrition, age structure etc. are secondary at best—massive over-eating is a well established fact.
Recommended daily calorie intake is 2000 for women and 2500 for men—which also happens to be the level world average had in 1960; and as some people were malnourished, other must have been overeating already.
Consumption kept growing in all countries including those far past this level—for example FAO says average for Americans increased 1961-2005 from 2884 to 3855 kcal/day (and is world’s highest).
As I said I haven’t read much about the topic, but it seems to me that including these sorts of points in the original post rather than just the naked graph would have been better, particularly on a site like less wrong.