Did the Food Environment Cause the Obesity Epidemic?
Open accessAbstract
Several putative explanations of the obesity epidemic relate to the changing food environment. Individual dietary macronutrients have each been theorized to be the prime culprit for population obesity, but these explanations are unlikely. Rather, obesity probably resulted from changes in the caloric quantity and quality of the food supply in concert with an industrialized food system that produced and marketed convenient, highly processed foods from cheap agricultural inputs. Such foods often contain high amounts of salt, sugar, fat, and flavor additives and are engineered to have supernormal appetitive properties driving increased consumption. Ubiquitous access to convenient and inexpensive food also changed normative eating behavior, with more people snacking, eating in restaurants, and spending less time preparing meals at home. While such changes in the food environment provide a likely explanation of the obesity epidemic, definitive scientific demonstration is hindered by the difficulty in experimentally isolating and manipulating important variables at the population level.
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The changing global food landscape in the past four decades has increased access to convenient "snack" foods and decreased time spent preparing foods at home.
“The changing global food landscape in the past four decades have increased access to convenient “snack” foods and decreased time spent preparing foods at home [2].”
From Food Addiction and Psychosocial Adversity: Biological Embedding, Contextual Factors, and Public Health Implications (2020) · cites this paper as [2]
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- Authors
- Hall, K. D.
- Affiliations
- National Institutes of Health (US)
- Corresponding author
- Hall, Kevin D.
- ORCID
- Hall, Kevin D.
- Venue
- Obesity
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2017-12-20
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 11-13
- ISSN
- 1930-7381 (ISSN-L)
- 1930-739X
- PMC
- PMC5769871
- OpenAlex
- W2778102659
- Cited by
- 220
- References
- 18
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 30 · 2022: 51 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 14.38
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- public-domain
- onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor (vor)
- Locations
- Obesity (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (1‐ZIA‐DK013036‐10)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Consumer Attitudes and Food Labeling
- Keywords
- obesity epidemic, food environment, industrialized food system, processed foods, macronutrients, energy intake, food quality, flavor additives, dietary habits, snacking, home cooking, food marketing
- MeSH terms
- Environment, Feeding Behavior, Humans, Obesity
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