Positive Health Online

Abstract

BENTLEY and COLLEAGUES. 1 Anthropology Department, University of Tennessee, 1621 Cumberland Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA.  rabentley@utk.edu  ;.2 Anthropology Department, University of Tennessee, 1621 Cumberland Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA;3 Department of Child and Family Studies, University of Tennessee, 1215 W. Cumberland Ave, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA input annual data on US sugar consumption into a model to explain the delayed effects of added sugar upon obesity rates.

Background

In the last century, U.S. diets were transformed, including the addition of sugars to industrially-processed foods. While excess sugar has often been implicated in the dramatic increase in U.S. adult obesity over the past 30 years, an unexplained question is why the increase in obesity took place many years after the increases in U.S. sugar consumption.

Methodology

To address this, here the authors explain adult obesity increase as the cumulative effect of increased sugar calories consumed over time. In our model, which uses annual data on U.S. sugar consumption as the input variable, each age cohort inherits the obesity rate in the previous year plus a simple function of the mean excess sugar consumed in the current year.

Results

This simple model replicates three aspects of the data: (a) the delayed timing and magnitude of the increase in average U.S. adult obesity (from about 15% in 1970 to almost 40% by 2015); (b) the increase of obesity rates by age group (reaching 47% obesity by age 50) for the year 2015 in a well-documented U.S. state; and (c) the pre-adult increase of obesity rates by several percent from 1988 to the mid-2000s, and subsequent modest decline in obesity rates among younger children since the mid-2000s.

Conclusion

Under this model, the sharp rise in adult obesity after 1990 reflects the delayed effects of added sugar calories consumed among children of the 1970s and 1980s.

References

R Alexander Bentley  1 , Damian J Ruck  2 , Hillary N Fouts  3. U.S. obesity as delayed effect of excess sugar. Econ Hum Biol ; 36:100818. Jan 2020. doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2019.100818. Epub Sep 17 2019.

Comment

This research reveals that the sharp rise in adult obesity after 1990 reflects the delayed effects of added sugar calories consumed among children of the 1970s and 1980s.