LSU nutrition expert: modern obesity epidemic began in 1950s

Melinda Sothern, a leading fitness and nutrition expert at LSU, has a theory that the tide of obesity sweeping the nation in the past two decades is rooted in what young mothers did—or didn’t do—in the postwar, suburban-sprouting 1950s, The Los Angeles Times reports. If she’s right—evidence is stacking up on her side—reproductive-age women may become the central focus of efforts to reverse America’s fat problem. The obesity epidemic has multiple causes, Sothern acknowledges. Food has changed in the past five decades. Americans have become much more sedentary. But she thinks that obesity rates soared just when they did—in the 1980s—because a generation of young women decades earlier smoked, spurned breast-feeding and restricted their weight during numerous, closely spaced pregnancies. “It was the evil ’50s. A perfect recipe for obesity,” she says. Sothern calls her theory “the obesity trinity.” And she thinks the key to getting Americans to slim down lies in studying those lessons from the past. Among her prescriptions for change: Women who are significantly overweight should be discouraged from having babies until they shed some pounds. Read the full article here.