Obesity: Historical Overview: Obesity Epidemic

Despite the designation of the low-fat diet as the gold standard, Americans continued to gain weight, and rates of heart disease did not decrease. Apparently, the dietary fat–heart health link applied only to a small subgroup who were at risk. In the early 1980s the obesity rate—constant during the 1960s to 1970s—went up by eight points. By the end of the decade, one in four Americans was obese. Those people with obesity problems were most likely to be poor, concentrated geographically in depressed rural areas of Mississippi and West Virginia, and among ethnic groups of African, Asian, and Hispanic Americans in the inner city.