This video was made possible by Nutracheck. The calorie counter and exercise tracker app
with a verified database of over 225,000 UK foods.
You’d be hard pressed not to have noticed the high rates of obesity in the developed
world today – despite the fact more of us than ever are obsessed with our diet and clean
eating. However, aside from what we’re eating, we’re also told more sedentary lifestyles
are a big contributor to the obesity epidemic.
Only 50 years ago, people were significantly thinner – that’s despite being far less
conscious about diet and worrying about what they were eating. In the 1950’s a woman’s
average waist size was 27in (69cm), compared to 34 inches (86cm) today.
So why - back in a time when people weren’t fussed about what they ate (and sweet puddings
high in saturated fat were commonplace after an evening meal) - did the population, then,
manage to lead much healthier lifestyles?
An obvious assumption is our more sedentary
jobs are a contributing factor
to the rise in obesity - I’ll touch on that later, but let’s start with lifestyles at
home first.
Cars. Post-war when the country was still getting back on its feet, cars were considered
a luxury and ownership was significantly lower. Just 15% owned a car, compared with 80% today.
So alternative transport had to be used as jumping in the car simply wasn’t an option
for most people.
Let’s think about grocery shopping. In the 1950s, most people had to walk or get public
transport to their local shops. The growth of the supermarket was on the rise, but this
concept was still very much in its early days. So shopping would involve walking between
a number of stores - the butchers, the green grocers, the bakers, the hardware store – compared
to today, where we can shop for everything under one roof.
With your shopping done, getting home meant either a walk or using public transport carrying
heavy bags.
As the number of bags one person can carry is far less than you can load into a car boot,
this meant more frequent shopping trips over the week as well. Plus, only 15% of households
owned a refrigerator back then – another reason for more frequent grocery shops to
keep your produce fresh.
All in all, that’s a lot more walking and activity, just to stock the kitchen cupboards.
Compare this to today. We hop in a car and drive to one store where we buy everything
we need, and then transport a weeks-worth of shopping home. That requires a lot less
effort and calorie expenditure than the same task back in the 1950s. And with the internet,
we’ve made it easier still. We can now order everything online without even moving from
a chair! Lower calorie expenditure still.
With cars less available back in the day, this meant heavier reliance on public or alternative
means of transport to get anywhere. Whether you were catching a bus or train, it required
expending energy to get to your stop. Alternatively, simply walking or cycling was a popular and
cheap form of transport - all burning more calories than jumping in the car or getting
an Uber!
In the home, technology has crept in to help make chores less labour intensive.
Today we take for granted being able to throw our dirty laundry into a washing machine and
it come clean. But it wasn’t always this easy.
In the 1950’s, only 1/3 or families owned a washing machine, which meant the majority
had to clean their clothes by hand. Often with the use of a washboard, this was a very
manual process, taking much longer per item than an automatic washing machine. With no
spin cycle, hand crank wringers were commonplace for wringing out water from garments. Again,
a fairly labour intensive activity. So the calorie expenditure of just washing clothes
2-3 times per week was much higher than simply loading a washing machine.
Then there’s general cleaning. Let’s think about the effort required getting on your
hands and knees to scrub the floor or clean your carpets with brushes…..you’re getting
the picture!
Between 1950 and 1955, television in the UK only had 1 channel. Two more channels were
introduced in 1955 - All of which broadcast at specific times during the day. Needless
to say, there wasn’t much on! No remote controls – not that you’d really need one!
With a lack of other technology to keep us occupied back then, people were much more
self-sufficient at entertaining themselves. And this generally meant (unless you’re
reading a book) just getting up and, well, just doing something!
Whether it was kicking a ball around in the street, tending veg in the garden or a trip
to the allotment, more calories were generally expended entertaining one’s self back then.
Take a moment to compare this to how we entertain ourselves today – it’s shocking how much
external stimulation we absorb whilst being completely sedentary.
But it’s not just leisure time in which people were more active in the 1950s. Work
was a lot more labour intense as well. Let’s take the example of a car production line.
So many more tasks on the 1950s production line were fulfilled by the human hand. When
you consider the number of components in a car, this required a lot of stages to assemble
one. It took lot of hours of manual labour to get cars rolling off the line.
Today, robots have taken over many of the jobs traditionally performed by hand – with
greater accuracy, precision and speed. Labour of this type has pretty much dwindled and
been replaced by the robotic arm.
Even traditional jobs such as carpenters, bakers or even switchboard workers have been
replaced with machines or computers – making tasks far less labour intensive.
So, where does this leave us?
We’ve obviously been in a period of decline when it comes to physical activity being a
natural part of our lifestyle. The introduction of technology to make our lives easier, more
comfortable and pleasurable, has been at the price of less physical jobs and activities.
The problem? Most of us haven’t countered today’s lack of calorie expenditure compared
with the 1950’s, by adjusting our energy intake. Plus, the way we eat and type of food we consume
has contributed to an obesity crisis.
As time has gone on, perhaps the notion of performing manual tasks seems old fashioned
for us. Today, the objective is all about making life as energy efficient as possible.
In a nutshell, on one side of the energy balance we’re packing more calories into the food
we eat – creating energy dense convenience products. And on the other side, we’ve removed
the need to expend energy from our lifestyles. It’s no surprise we’re getting bigger.
One thing’s for sure, it’s about balance. Simply put, it’s a basic notion of calories
in vs calories out. Back in the 1950s, people may have eaten more, but they were simply
burning off more calories. Today – many of us try to diet and consume less calories,
but we’re expending so much less energy as part of our daily lifestyles that we have
to allocate special time to be active. We expect a 1 hour gym session three times a
week to work miracles – but when you think these 3 hours of activity are just 2% of our
week, it’s asking a lot!
And here is the irony.
We’ve used technology to remove so much energy expenditure from our lifestyles – and
now we’re using it to help us put activity back in. The huge growth the sales of activity
trackers to count how many steps we take, and Apps on our phones to ‘Map my run’
or help us work out - suggests digital health tracking is the future!
And if we can no longer achieve sufficient energy burn through manual labour and chores,
balancing our calorie intake also needs to be done through mindful eating. Whether we
like it or not, few of us are now able to manage this calorie balance by guesswork – it
has to be consciously incorporated into our 21st century lifestyles.
A really useful App that can help is Nutracheck. It is a calorie counter and exercise tracker app,
designed to help you strike a healthy balance between calories in and calories out.
It has a huge database of UK and US foods – and the App scans barcodes, so it’s
really easy to just scan an item and log the calories.
The Nutracheck exercise database has calorie burn figures for over 1,000 activities from
household chores to home fitness DVDs to gym works outs. It also links with Fitbit activity
trackers so you can sync your daily step count to your Nutracheck exercise diary.
Having all your food intake and activity expenditure in one place that you can check anytime is
a really easy and effective way to manage your weight that only takes a few minutes
a day.
Download the Nutracheck App and sign up for your 7-day free trial today. If you like what
you try, you can save 20% with the exclusive code 1950 when you subscribe
at Nutracheck.co.uk