[hga]

And "putting sugar in everything" as a way to make it taste better is completely unrelated to the government scoring this as "good", whereas using fat scores as "bad"?

There are also those who thing the portion size issue might have to do with a too carb rich diet not satiating appetite as well as a more or fat rich diet.

Edibility has gone way up? I don't think so, the old stuff tasted damned good, and often better (I'm of an age where I've tasted a lot of it made by old fashioned grandparents). And many of the changes pushed by this directly make foods taste not hardly so good, e.g. McDonalds let themselves get pushed into removing beef tallow (rendered fat) from their fry oil, their french fries aren't worth much anymore.

I've also been trying some Cambells Chunky Soups for the first time in many many years, and some of the old favorites don't hold a candle to when they came out in the '70s.

Less manual labor doesn't explain why those who didn't do a lot of it didn't used to get fat like they do now.

More sedentary habits, that's a possible cause, but the evidence for it is shaky, and still has to be balanced against calorie inputs.