Site is a link aggregation of a series of blog posts that cite various studies about the mystery of why the obesity rate is increasing, and why the rate of increase is itself accelerating. Authors make a compelling argument that normal homeostatic processes (the theorized lipostat specifically) tend to keep people within a certain BMI range. Authors argue that environmental contamination is breaking the lipostat, driving obesity rates upwards, and faster where there's more contamination.
Interesting read and a great reason to switch to :vegan-v: with a focus on not buying anything wrapped in plastic.
Sadly it just seems to be far more complex in this. The human body is very smart with regulating intake with the foods it evolved to eat, that's not true of modern processed foods and snacks. When you eat a banana or an apple, you digest lots of things like fiber and vitamins, and your body feels satisfied with it, because it's designed to see that intake as food and respond accordingly. Many of these foods take a while for a body to digest and use up the energy in them, leaving us to feel full for a long time.
When you eat a bag of almost pure sugar filled cookies, it's completely out of whack because nothing in history has prepared it for this. All of the amazing indicators that we've developed to tell when we're full aren't there, our blood sugar and insulin spikes hard and then drastically begins to drop in just a few hours causing us to feel very hungry again. It's not that the body is stupid, is that what you're putting in is literally not what it's designed to expect.
You can test this for yourself too, I certainly have. I used to sit there and eat half a family size Oreos (with milk!) in a single sitting and I would still desire for more. Meanwhile if I cook a potato or eat a banana, I can only get though two potatoes or three bananas max before I feel like Ive had way too much. In my quest to eat healthier, I've noticed that the foods I eat have substantial impact on how I feel for that day, and once you start paying attention to this it's very hard to stop noticing.
Even this study suggests a similar idea, that disruptions to our body cause our hunger response to not work properly and this helps lead to people overeating because they feel the need for food even when it's not true.