I was a child of the seventies. I remember:

Evel Knievil

School House Rock

the bicentennial

Garfield the Cat and Cathy

the Sony Walkman and the Rubriks cube

Rice a Roni, Hamburger Helper and Stovetop Stuffing

watching Charlie’s Angels, Shazam! & Isis and Three’s Company

Buying Love’s Baby Soft and reading Tiger Beat.

The list could go on and on…

My parents grew a big vegetable garden every summer, my mother still made most things from scratch, and we rarely ate out. Statistic show we were not the norm. I look back now and see a shift, even in our household, toward the end of the decade, in our dining lifestyle.

Since the mid 70’s obesity and it’s accompanying problems have been on the rise. I wondered why, what changed? The microwave oven grew in popularity, highly processed convenience foods were the answer to more women working outside the home. The number of fast food restaurants grew significantly as did the proportion sizes. The government began supporting agribusiness more and small farmers less. Government subsides focused on producers of wheat, soy, corn, cotton and rice. Agricultural products that are not grown to be eaten in the form they naturally grow but as ingredients in processed foods.

Here are some of the facts and figures I found:

Sierra Vista, Arizona, was the first city to have a McDonald's drive-through. It first opened its window on January 24, 1975.

Today, Americans eat 24% of their meals in a car.

Food is readily available and in “super-sized” portions. In fact, a study of the ecological basis of the increased US prevalence of obesity estimated that food availability has increased 15% since the mid-1970's. [2]Harnack LJ, Jeffery RW, Boutelle KN. Temporal trends in energy intake in the United States: an ecologic perspective. Am J Clin Nutr 2000; 71:1478-84.

The US also is a leading innovator of passive entertainment. Television viewing, for example, has been shown to be positively related to obesity and the development of diabetes. [48] [49] The average adult American spends half his or her leisure time watching television. Combine this with jobs that involve very little physical activity, plus video games, computing, gambling, etc., and it becomes apparent why daily caloric expenditure has declined precipitously since the 1950's and 60's.

Other factors that contribute to the obesity epidemic include the high energy density and fat content of processed foods, increased prevalence of eating out, particularly at fast food restaurants, availability of food in gasoline stations, vending machines, and in discount and department stores. Essentially, the US culture seems to have created an environment of “sedentarism and obsessive-compulsive eating.” http://www.vhct.org/case2500/etiology.htm

A study by the Council on Children, Media, and Merchandising reveals that approximately 50% of ads in children's programming from 1965 to 1975 were for food, primarily sugared cereals, cookies, candies, and soft drinks; 30% were for toys.