George Monbiot blames the government for rising obesity levels – there’s a simpler explanation
George Monbiot has written a curate’s egg of an article for the Guardian on the subject of obesity. Struck by the near-total absence of fat people in a photo of Brighton beach in 1976, he wondered whether the rise of obesity in the intervening years was the result of more calories in or fewer calories out.
What he discovered came as a shock to him. His first revelation will be no surprise to readers of this blog: calorie consumption has fallen over time. Thanks to the National Food Surveys, we have a treasure trove of information going back to 1940. It shows that the average Briton was consuming more than the modern recommendation of 2,500 calories a day during the war. This rose after 1945, peaking in the 1960s, and falling thereafter. Average daily calorie consumption fell from 2,850 in 1970 to 2,560 in 1980. By 2011, it had dropped to 2,269. Figures from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey, which began in the 1980s, tell much the same story.