There definitely are cultural and psychological problems more than food and medical issues.
Arraya mentioned that our modern society is inducing a lot of stress that wasn’t there before. We are constantly bombarded with media messages that affect our self-esteem.
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It’s something I’ve been looking at a lot this past year. We socially stress ourselves and these stresses are encouraged, to some extent. A lot of it is neurologically based rather than genetic. But, what we’ve seen over the past 4 decades is unhealthy patterns of behavior increasing on multiple fronts that turn into health problems. And these things spread like a disease throughout the social body.
Also, like CAR said, a lot has to do with dramatic changes in food and lifestyles from one generation to the next. I think another part of it is people being pushed to consume more. Which really started to ramp up after WWII. Personal consumption doubled from 1945 to today. The two working parents is also a big change and probably not the best thing for young children not to have an emotionally available, unstressed, parent available at all times. At least up to 5 or so.
The other very interesting study is what Navydoc posted about fetal programming. Prenatal stressing can cause a host of issues. Also ACE( Adverse Childhood Experiences) can cause the brian to develop in ways that can cause issues down the road. Human infant’s brains are undeveloped at birth. So the younger somebody is, the more vulnerable they are to environmental stresses that cause changes in neurochemistry that can last a lifetime.
I posted this before. It goes into the brain triggers with addiction. I think it is, at least, tangentially related to the behavioral changes taking place throughout society. Including over eating.
