Near the entrance to SeaWorld San Diego’s popular Manta roller coaster stands an actual seat from the attraction. It’s there to help size up would-be riders, to determine whether they’re too fat to fit. If they can’t pull down and lock the seat’s rigid restraint system, they can’t ride.
Park officials say they don’t know how many ill-fitting patrons are turned away, but given that two-thirds of American adults are, by medical definition, overweight or obese (not to mention one-third of American children) the number is probably uncomfortably large.
So places like SeaWorld have had to adapt, as have airlines, which now often require obese travelers to purchase two seats, and ferry operators who have reduced the maximum number of passengers they can safely carry. Even the dead weigh upon the living: Caskets now come in super-sizes; some more than 4 feet wide. And medical schools turn away donor cadavers because they’re too big to store, too heavy to move or the excessive fat simply renders them useless for anatomy lessons.
Most of us know we’re way too heavy and none too healthy. We just don’t like to admit it. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, more than half of American adults think their weight is “about right.” Actual weight versus reported weight is up nearly 20 pounds since 1990. That’s self-delusion on a grand scale.
The debate, though, isn’t about whether we’re fat and getting fatter, it’s why. Answering that question requires a discussion of evolution, human biochemistry, food history and ever-shifting trends in social, political and cultural norms.
In three sentences, it’s this:
- We eat too much.
- We eat badly.
- We don’t get enough exercise.
The average American consumes 2,700 calories per day, 530 more than we ate in 1970. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends 2,000 to 2,500. This is the era of overstuffed. Abnormal is the new normal. In the 1950s, the average soda size was seven ounces. It was the pause that refreshed; not an all-day relationship. Now the average is a big-gulping 42 ounces. Sixty years ago, the average hamburger weighed 3.9 ounces and came with 2.4 ounces of fries. The modern burger plops down at 12 ounces with 6.7 ounces of fries.
We’ve lost all sense of proportion. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a typical restaurant meal today is now four times larger than it was 50 years ago. Plates are larger, creating an optical illusion that oversized helpings are smaller than they actually are.
“If I had one thing I could teach everyone,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, “it’s that larger portions have more calories. That turns out not to be intuitively evident and everyone, even me, tends to eat what’s in front of them.”