When did it go bad?

It's 5:56 am and I'm watching the History Channel as I blog (sound off to avoid waking the family). I can't help but notice how thin everyone was in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s!

I can recall when losing five (5!) pounds was the great quest. Now, for me, losing fifty (50!) pounds is my desperate quest.

What led us to go from a nation of physically active and (relatively) skinny people to the blobs we are today? What lead us to the point where an ordinary looking slender girl became the exceptional beauty? I say "ordinary" because such slenderness was the norm 50, 60, 100 years go. What caused us to slide into blobbiness?

Could it have been the easy availability of high calorie food?

Could it have been the greed of "big business" and it's desire to make a profit regardless of the costs?

I think the first was a response to the second. I think the rest of the world is taking up our "darker values" and will quickly emulate us. I wonder how many years it will take before the Chinese and Indian children will look as overweight as ours?

Probably not very long...

Already, the type two diabetes is spreading out globally.

(I've got the closed captioning on and am reading comments from survivors of some of the bloodiest of the Civil War Battles; it was horrific and the generals must have been either mad or so very unimaginative when they sent their troops out in sword fighting ranks to fight with long distance killing weapons: rifles!)