Don't worry Mish, Americans are getting fucked by the Machine as well these days

From what I've seen, industry and capitalism goes hand in hand with pop culture. Consider how industry and capitalism is sold. It's by a cute logo, designed by an American company for an American company (all commercial design work is based off of/influenced by pop culture) or it's by having American pop culture celebrities wearing the clothes in movies, music videos, TV shows, with certain hair styles, eating certain foods, etc... it's all pop culture. What I mean by pop culture is the shared mental and physical enviroment of a large group of people so even politics can be pop culture - it's goes beyond lifestyle and affects language, art, music, products, that's all pop culture to me.

I wouldn't dismiss factors such as changes in exertion necessary to living daily life as having much to do with obesity, as you say.

But I don't know if you should be dismissing other possible causes as a scapegoat.

For instance, in the 1950's suburban life was almost as sedentary as it is today. It required about the same level of exertion to live it. People worked in offices or stood in production lines expending probably something close to the same number of calories. People drove to strip malls and supermarkets. People spent hours listening to radio shows or watching TV, they went "out" more but it was usually to activities where they sat down such as movies. Take out and delivery buisinesses were quite lucrative. Automats provided convenience impulse food, fat contents were just as high though there were less extensive use of transfats. Fast food buisinesses were really taking off.

There were probably as many people living suburban life at the same pace in the 1970's as there are today, expending even then about the same low caloric expenditure of energy. Lifestyle and food didn't change much from the fifties to the present, the same junk food, the same life spent sitting on couches watching screens, driving to convenient parking.

If the level of daily exercise were the only factor Dustin, then the levels of obesity for people in these lifestyles would have remained fairly unchanged as their level of activity remained unchanged. It also wouldn't explain easily the obesity problem consistent with the poorest in countries like Mexico among people in low tech who do much more walking and who depend more on manual labor to accomplish normal household tasks in the absence of modern technological conveiniences. I think it's always important before one comes to a conclusion about the obesity epidemic to try to isolate the variables. If daily levels of exercize don't change much, and caloric intake doesn't change drastically either, and obesity increases to epidemic proportions... there might be other factors. If the major difference in the food between now and other times in the past is that the production of many foods has become deregulated and many growth hormones permitted, that the rate of obesity increases with their use as the one changing variable... I don't think that is just simple scapegoating.