(2006-02-04) Shapin Obesity

Steve Shapin covers various theories about Obesity. Here Oliver joins other obesity researchers in having one really good idea: the key to the spread of obesity in America is technology-produced Abundance. There are a lot of calories around; they're cheaper than they ever were; and they're more accessible as we move about in the course of a day... As the economist David Cutler and his colleagues have shown, since the mid-nineteen-seventies the average American's calorie intake has increased by about ten per cent and American food production per capita has increased by twenty per cent. Some commentators also blame lack of Exercise, and our working lives have indeed become more sedentary, but we wind up running around more, and Cutler isn't convinced by the evidence that our over-all levels of exercise have declined. Others blame burgeoning portion size for obesity, but Cutler disputes that, too. It's not that we're eating more at meals; it's that we're eating more often and what we're eating is often calorie rich... Sometime in the postwar era, though, the domestic meal began its unremitting decline. Now, like many of us, Leith mostly eats standing up - no grandmother, no mother, often no one at all to witness "greed." The individualization of eating has done much to cut us free of dietary limits. We've been told that an index of our times is that we "bowl alone" (Robert Putnam); something similar might be said of our gastronomic habits. We eat alone and we get fat together.