Photo: MaomanWe’ve posted repeatedly on this blog about the rise in U.S. obesity and its causes. While there may really be only one “cause” — calories are cheap and plentiful, and consuming them is fun — there are surely a number of contributing factors, including a decrease in smoking, the prevalence of restaurants that serve large portions, and so on.
The other day, while reading a children’s book called When I Was Young in the Mountains to my daughter, I came across a passage that made me wonder about another possible contributing factor:
When I was young in the mountains,
Grandmother spread the table with hot
corn bread, pinto beans, and fried okra.
Later, in the middle of the night,
she walked through the grass with me to the
johnny-house and held my hand in the dark.
I promised never to eat more than one serving of okra again.
Is it possible that the availability of good plumbing has contributed to our national weight gain? This may sound ludicrous, but think about it for just a moment. Very few people have to trek through the night to use an outhouse anymore; furthermore, restroom facilities are readily available just about everywhere — which means you don’t have to worry about getting rid of your waste, which frees you up to consume as much as you’d like.
As a kid, I remember taking a long bus ride to New York City for a ballgame. There was no bathroom on the bus. No one on the bus was drinking anything either. (Yes, this was before you could readily buy bottled water; but there were such things as cans of soda.)
A few times in the recent past, I’ve rented a summer house with no garbage pickup. This meant not only paying for how much waste you produce, but also storing your trash until the one day that the dump is open. During these times, our behavior changed radically: not only did we compost all our food waste to cut down on stink, but we thought about everything we bought before we bought it to make sure we wanted to deal with the waste. As a result, we bought a lot less.
I know of no legitimate research connecting plumbing and obesity, though I would be interested in hearing from anyone who does.
The idea does remind me a bit of a book by the economist Werner Troesken called Water, Race, and Disease. It argues that life expectancy for African-Americans rose even at the peak of the Jim Crow era because of unintended consequences of white racism: in their zeal to “protect” white neighborhoods against waste from black neighborhoods, public officials upgraded the sewer and water systems in black neighborhoods.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
I happen to side with Gary Taubes’ “Good Calories, Bad Calories”.
You don’t have to agree with it, but I think it provides some outstanding insights.
now, posts like *this* are what i come here for! the ‘plumbing/obesity’ paradox is logical; makes sense; and is entirely counterintuitive until you really think about it. once again, the law of unintended consequences excercises its iron will.
one hopes the newly-chastened banking regulators are paying attention. (but one doubts it.)
I challenge any reader to send their comment from an outhouse (with wi-fi) and tell me there’s not some truth to this!
Yes it’s difficult to tell whether it was the rise in sugar tariffs in 1982 and the subsequent explosion in the use of high fructose corn syrup or the introduction of indoor plumbing in 1981 that marked the beginning of the current obesity epidemic.
Outhouses aren’t that inconvenient, though your behind might freeze to the seat in the winter. And what of chamber pots? Even more convenient than the newfangled water closet (you barely have to get out of bed), but I doubt you’d find a correlation between their usage and obesity.
Is there a correlation between plumbing and obesity? Perhaps. Is there a causal relationship? Seems unlikely; I doubt people eat more calories because they can eliminate waste conveniently.
Moreover, the root “cause” of obesity is not the abundance of calories – it is an excessive ratio of calories-consumed to calories-burned (along with consuming high-glycemic index foods). The cause is most likely too little physical activity to use the calories consumed – and it would take an awful lot of trips to Grandmother’s outhouse to burn a significant number of calories.
The cause of ‘rising obesity’ is probably a function of an infinite number of variables, many
unknowable and not be able to be found due to lack of present mehtodolgies unavailble.
It is countered by the growing incidence, some part of it related to an epidemic celebrities who are continuing the growing tendency, ‘to be sexy a woman must be thin…’ Then the media spreads the word endlenssly via content and ads…
Beds, toilets, toilet paper, soap; all the fru fru hoitie toities are making us all soft! Why in my day…