Calorie consumption

An interesting chart from Business Insider/ Credit Suisse in this article

If you look at photos from the 20s, 30s , 40s and 50s hardly anyone was fat, let alone grotesquely obese. According to this wikipedia article, a 24 year old man weighing 80kg doing moderate exercise would need to consume roughly 3000 per day to keep his weight stable.  But if he did no exercise, he would have to restrict his intake to 1900 calories.  Since over the whole period depicted in the chart, consumption exceeded 3000 calories a day, it must have been exercise which kept them thin.

So it's not just the rise in calorie consumption which has led to the obesity epidemic.  It must also be the decline in exercise.  I don't mean going to gyms, I mean that 60 years ago ppl walked more, mowed the lawn with manual mowers, climbed stairs, got out of the car to open the garage, etc.  I used to cycle 10 k's to school each way.  And so on.

It won't be enough to cut calorie consumption.  We will also have to start to exercise in the way our grandparents and great grandparents did.  And (sorry, but there it is) the best way to cut calories is to adopt a mostly vegetable diet.