The best explanation for obesity I’ve ever really heard is the continuation of “the southern diet” into the modern age.
When you spent 12 hours in a cotton field, you needed massive amounts of fried okra and potatoes and grits and pancakes and pig’s feet and all the cheap carb-heavy stuff coooked in pork fat that Southerners ate for generations.
When you’re working as an insurance agent, that diet will kill you inside ten years.
My family is Italian, but my grandmother had to cook on a strict budget. So, there would basically be one plate of spaghetti with a very basic sauce and maybe a meatball for everyone if my grandfather didn’t gamble away the rent money. That’s a filling meal.
To get to that next generation where everyone in my family died. If you went to their house for Sunday dinner, it was endless amounts of sausage and peppers and meatballs and cheeses and desserts. It’s relatively cheap food so if you suddenly have disposable income, you can have all of it you ever wanted. And that will kill you - especially if you are smoking while eating it and washing it down with Crown Royal.
I’ve read that the Irish laborers would take a half-baked potato for their lunch. It was felt because it wasn’t fully cooked it would last longer in their stomachs.