My sister volunteered as a vaccine ‘jabber’ during the recent pandemic. In a recent visit she related her experiences and made what I thought was an unusual comment: “I was dealing almost exclusively with the over-75s. And what struck me most was that almost to a wo/man, they were slim.” I only just stopped myself from asking “Why!”…….
Well there are two things going on there, surely -- the cultural and the physiological.
1) cultural: people who ate well in the post-war, tail-end-of-rations era have tended to continue to eat smaller plates
2) physiological: people start eating an awful lot less in their older age, because the human digestive system slows down quite noticeably, so they are fuller for longer, and their sense of taste and smell declines which leads to less enjoyment from food (indeed loss of sense of smell in later years used to be, before covid, one of the strongest predictors of death within five years)
While I have no idea of causality, an alternative possibility is that slim people are more likely to survive past 75? (As someone who is significantly overweight myself I am aware of a variety of life shortening conditions and risk factors caused by being obese or overwight). )
We were skinny (by modern standards) as 20 year olds in the '70s.
Normal exercise levels were higher as well.
"Overweight including obesity increased from 58% of men and 49% of women in 1993 to 68% of men and 60% of women in 2019. Obesity prevalence increased from 13% of men and 16% of women in 1993, to 27% of men and 29% of women in 2019. These increases occurred largely between 1993 and 2001, and since that time have been more gradual."
Peak overweight/obesity for men is now 45-64 years, with a decline after that.
Peak overweight/obesity for women is 65-74 years, with a decline after that.
Based on measured values, mean weight between 1993 and 2019 increased from 78.9kg to 85.4kg among men, and from 66.6kg to 72.1kg among women.
Edited by Huw
Not jabber the hut then.
Once upon a time most schools had a fat child.
Then most school classes.
Now hmm.
Some families contained a history, perhaps current or recent, of abuse of one or several sorts. Whether this is notably different from families whose current generation did _not_ contain such I don't know.
Some had a history of a family member who starved to death. Probably before anorexia nervosa became a diagnosis. They might attempt to avoid it by overfeeding the current generation.
Both were very difficult causes.
And then there is sugar, particularly Fructose, added to everything.
IIRC we don't have a metabolic pathway for Fructose that doesn't involve turning it into fat. Dextrose we can stack up as units in a polysaccharide we hold as a nearly immediate energy source.
So 50:50 dextrose+Fructose when you are a primate running up trees to eat fruit, or a hominid hunter-gardener walking quite some way to find the same, we can cope with.
Something made from corn and hidden in lots of food, not so much.
It is now fairly expensive to eat a decent, chemical-free diet.
Recent BBC program:
Cost of ingredients for a "Factory" jam and cream cake: 28p.
Cost of ingredients for the same, freshly baked home made cake: £4.80 (approx - didn't write it down).
You can't change eating habits by "educating the population" when people are broke and their kids are hungry.
Plus the ingedient mix and processing is designed to stimulate overconsumption.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/irresistible-why-we-cant-stop-eating
Huw said
It is now fairly expensive to eat a decent, chemical-free diet.
Recent BBC program:
Cost of ingredients for a "Factory" jam and cream cake: 28p.
Cost of ingredients for the same, freshly baked home made cake: £4.80 (approx - didn't write it down).
You can't change eating habits by "educating the population" when people are broke and their kids are hungry.
Plus the ingedient mix and processing is designed to stimulate overconsumption.https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/irresistible-why-we-cant-stop-eating
I still seem to have quite a feisty metabolism at half a century old, but I have extremely poor impulse control and the only way I avoid overeating cakes and biscuits is to avoid those aisles in the supermarket. When I give in and buy biscuits it will be one plain pack from nearest the end of the aisle so I don't walk through to make choices.
There is also something I have wondered about and wonder about increasingly: do people who get up earlier and not work late have better metabolic control? There's some evidence that "larks" choose healthier foods to "night owls" and thus that with contemporary diets, weight might be a chronotype thing.
People over 75 typically wake earlier and sleep earlier regardless of their earlier life chronotype.
Edited by Unfocussed Mike
I'm 75. I don't fit in with some of the 'been going downhill for ages' generalisations that are being made here. In some respects that's good
Unfocussed Mike said
I still seem to have quite a feisty metabolism at half a century old, but I have extremely poor impulse control and the only way I avoid overeating cakes and biscuits is to avoid those aisles in the supermarket. When I give in and buy biscuits it will be one plain pack from nearest the end of the aisle so I don't walk through to make choices.
There is also something I have wondered about and wonder about increasingly: do people who get up earlier and not work late have better metabolic control? There's some evidence that "larks" choose healthier foods to "night owls" and thus that with contemporary diets, weight might be a chronotype thing.
People over 75 typically wake earlier and sleep earlier regardless of their earlier life chronotype.
I'm 75. Until I was about 40 I was skinny. Now I'm overweight but not obese. I like food. I like cooking. I do get exercise (my two dogs need a good walk every day). I don't wake early.
My problem is snacking. Even after eating well during the day (i.e. I'm not hungry), in the evening I'm likely to think 'I know what's in the cake cupboard and I know that it will taste good'. And I weaken.
A few years ago I had hypnotherapy to stop me snacking. I asked the guy if he could find my brain (a challenge in itself) and then implant the notion that if I'm not hungry I don't need to eat. It worked for about six months, but then willpower started to be needed again. :(
Analyse that. :)
Orson Carter said
I'm 75. I don't fit in with some of the 'been going downhill for ages' generalisations that are being made here. In some respects that's good
Unfocussed Mike said
I still seem to have quite a feisty metabolism at half a century old, but I have extremely poor impulse control and the only way I avoid overeating cakes and biscuits is to avoid those aisles in the supermarket. When I give in and buy biscuits it will be one plain pack from nearest the end of the aisle so I don't walk through to make choices.
There is also something I have wondered about and wonder about increasingly: do people who get up earlier and not work late have better metabolic control? There's some evidence that "larks" choose healthier foods to "night owls" and thus that with contemporary diets, weight might be a chronotype thing.
People over 75 typically wake earlier and sleep earlier regardless of their earlier life chronotype.
I'm 75. Until I was about 40 I was skinny. Now I'm overweight but not obese. I like food. I like cooking. I do get exercise (my two dogs need a good walk every day). I don't wake early.My problem is snacking. Even after eating well during the day (i.e. I'm not hungry), in the evening I'm likely to think 'I know what's in the cake cupboard and I know that it will taste good'. And I weaken.
A few years ago I had hypnotherapy to stop me snacking. I asked the guy if he could find my brain (a challenge in itself) and then implant the notion that if I'm not hungry I don't need to eat. It worked for about six months, but then willpower started to be needed again. :(
Analyse that. :)
I must say, my willpower-substitute strategy will fall apart if I ever share a living space with someone with better willpower than me! It absolutely only works because I live alone and I don’t have a cake cupboard or a biscuit tin. If I buy cakes or biscuits at all, it’s one small pack with the expectation that I will eat them before the idea of them going stale is part of the equation. I never buy more cake/biscuits than I would gobble in an evening, and I only go to the supermarket every five days or so. On foot, at that, so I have to shop pragmatically.
Similarly I can’t have sugar or honey at home, and I don’t have alcohol in the house. Lockdown completely revolutionised my diet because I had to resort to rare delivery slots and I made unavoidably sensible choices about cooking and ingredients with decent shelf life.
Right now I am in a Nero, and I have had a slice of their worryingly good white chocolate gingerbread cake. I will gain weight this winter. Which is why I at least walk all the way up the hill to the more distant Nero rather than ever allowing myself to go to the one around the corner. It has to be something I do more deliberately.
There’s a Pizza Express at the bottom of the hill in TW near where I live. I am lactose intolerant now so it’s no longer a risk, but before I developed bad lactose intolerance I had a rule that I would never, ever get a takeaway from there, and I never did.
I am two people: a child with no impulse control and an adult who plays mind games on him to keep him from gorging himself.
Unfocussed Mike said
Right now I am in a Nero, and I have had a slice of their worryingly good white chocolate gingerbread cake. I will gain weight this winter. Which is why I at least walk all the way up the hill to the more distant Nero rather than ever allowing myself to go to the one around the corner. It has to be something I do more deliberately.
There’s a Pizza Express at the bottom of the hill in TW near where I live...
When I was in TW last year I made a point of walking briskly up that hill. Mind you, I was only 74 at that time. :)
Interesting. I wandered into a local U3A place the other day and found a load of people past retirement age playing table tennis. They were all slim too.
It is said to be expensive to eat healthily, but some older slim people must surely be subsisting on a state pension.
Maybe if you eat the same size portions it is expensive, but what if you need less good food because of the increased nutritional value?
I'm over retirement age and I still play squash and badminton; mostly against considerably younger people. My BMI is 22.5. This used to be the middle of the healthy range (20 - 25) but that range has been extended downwards (18.5 - 25) so I am now slightly above the middle of healthy. I used to be lighter but I am now deliberately slightly heavier. I am physically very similar to my father. His doctor said that he was too light.
I am not convinced that eating healthily needs to be expensive. My wife and I cook healthy meals at a reasonable cost.
bad john said
I'm over retirement age and I still play squash and badminton
OMG do you have a deathwish? I stopped playing at 40 and I'm fit and well :-)
(I didn't play much)
Edited by Unfocussed Mike
bad john said
I am not convinced that eating healthily needs to be expensive. My wife and I cook healthy meals at a reasonable cost.
I agree on this. The main thing one has to get past is needing vegetables to be pretty and e.g. pasta or noodles to be semi-fresh (not dried). Once you can cope with ingredients as they are sold in Lidl you can eat pretty cheaply even now, post-inflation-bubble.
Unfocussed Mike There is a saying: don't take up squash after 40. However, you are allowed to continue if you started before.
There is no history of heart trouble in my mother's or my father's family. Cancer gets us. I don't think that squash increases my risk of cancer.
Exercise is a gamble. You can get injured or even die but being a couch potato is not healthy either.
My worst injury was ripping a calf muscle. For about 6 months, I walked slowly with a hobble. I could not stand on tiptoes. I had to be careful to put my whole foot on the step when going upstairs. Oddly, I could still cycle. I even cycled home 2 miles after the I injury.
Squash…. One of the biggest killers of 50 year old A type males who don’t like to lose to younger men!
Probably safe enough if you make it to your 60s. ;)